Yellow

The fierce autumn winds have succeeded in ripping the tree in front of our house clean in one week flat. Only last week it and trees all over Europe was still decked out in magnificent autumn colors. Our tree specializes in bright yellow. In fact, nearly all trees in Amsterdam specialize in yellow! Yellow lined the small quiet side canals, framed the cold iron bridges, and circled the tall church spires. And this weekend, all that remains are the bare black branches swaying in the gale winds like witches ’ brooms.

“Hey you with the black fingers
Stop scratching my windows

Hey you, with the black fingers
Give back my yellow autumn leaves

Hey you, with the black fingers
Tick away the dark hours, dark days

Turn back
Look back
Give back
Me, my yesterdays”

Yes, it is time for hearty Dutch pea soup and other potato variations. Let’s face it, there is nothing like Dutch pea soup - a potato base, some smoked sausage bits and basically mushy peas. Then there is “rookworst”: mashed potatoes with smoked sausage swimming in gravy. An alternatively there is “stamppot”: mashed potatoes with boiled meat swimming in gravy. You see the recurring theme: mashed potatoes. Dutch “terroir”! Mmmmmmm

Since more than a month now we have a new coalition government in place in the Netherlands. We have our first single, as opposed to married, prime mister – our own single man! What a liberating thought! It must mean so much to single people all over the world - with or without political ambitions. And I tell you, he is between a rock and hard place. His rock is a right anti-immigrant party that he has had to enter into a support agreement with and the hard place is an economic austerity program of more than 20 billion euro. But he is off to an excellent start. He is tall and handsome and has the gift of the gab – he is an excellent debater. Let’s hope that the minority Liberal and Christian Democrats government is able to find the necessary support in this rather challenging economic environment!

Honestly speaking the Dutch economy is not doing that bad at all. Not unlike Germany the export led economy of the Netherlands has been holding up well. Economic growth is back in positive territory and the unemployment rates are finally coming down. This begs the question whether it is now the time to tighten the belts in Germany and the Netherlands: it seems like precisely now that we should encourage spending to support the economy! As always it’s trust and confidence that makes the wheel of the economy turn and that has a huge price tag!

The US has lost one hero and gained another. Out with Obama and in with QEII. QEII is not longer the Queen Elizabeth II cruise liner, but the famous last ditch to save the American economy called Quantitative Easing II. It all sounds very complicated, but it really boils down to money printing. The US Mint in Washington is turning overtime. The amounts are astronomic. The first round involved 1.7 trillion dollars and the second round is a whopping 600 trillion dollars – that is printing money to the tune of the total Dutch economy in 6 months time! Desperate times need desperate measures.

Yeah, we have been doing some travelling for sure, but this needs to come to its own little austerity package soon! Francois was off to South Africa for a week for his mom’s 92 birthday party and a whirlwind stop-over in Johannesburg.

Paolo and I managed to fit a weekend in London and Cambridge in myself. I stopped by Hugh’s Hall, the feeble tucked-away college that I was in when I studied at Cambridge. It is one of Cambridge’s 5 post graduate colleges. Post graduate is the operative word here: it means pay a lot of money and stay in what looks like a converted Victorian school tucked away behind a parking garage and a swimming pool. You cannot but have a good giggle when you compare it to the opulent colleges that the undergraduates live in. We walked through Queen’s, we punted past King’s and the sun finally came out when we were in the courtyard of Gaius. The memories were bitter sweet: I was so terribly unsure of myself then (the bitter), but I made great friends and had some fantastic times (the sweet). I remember the notices that advertised the weekly Gay and Lesbian Society meeting in King’s College. I can kick myself today for not going! Can you believe it, so far from home and still petrified! How stupid. Think of all the nice people I could have met and how different it all would have been. Well, maybe it was not such a bad thing after all!

But there is also the honey sweet: The fantastic times I had with my colorful year mates: Loving Edda from Belgium, metro sexual Mark from upstate New York and hard-line Stalinist Effie from Thessaloniki, to name but a few. Ah, and I dare not forget the Music Appreciation Society with our liberating outings to London. That is a story for another time! As I stood in front of my room window on the second floor, a new generation of students with Sainsbury shopping bags filed past, building their own bitter-sweet memories – making their own slightly different very unique stories.

“Edda was goodness
Ate chocolates from Belgium on her bed
Mark was handsome
Unbuttoned his shirt’s chest full of hair

All goodness and kindness
All sweetness and cuteness

All longings and desires
All desperate and deplete

All lies and half truths
All false and futile

My far away Southern desert dreams
Their different Northern watery thoughts

Three people on a busy New York street
Holding each other for a moment,
For another moment,
……………………..and letting go”




London was buzzing and exciting as always. We managed to fit in a frothy cappuccino at stylish Borrow Market, a packed Gauguin exhibition at the Tate Modern, Vivaldi’s easy listening Gloria at St. Martin in the Fields, a trendy drink on Old Crompton Street and a leathery spin in a rather disappointing Vauxhall leather club called the Hoist. Nothing really stands out, but it all mixed well into what felt like having a lovely box of Belgian - Pierre Mercolini - chocolates. It only makes a fantastic harmony when you stick them all one after another into you mouth at once! There was the huge man expensively dressed up in leather as a blow up doll with the biggest boobs I’ve ever seen, stepping out of a Bentley. There was near pornographic obsession of Gauguin with underage girls.




And then there was Ai Weiwei’s (the Chinese political activist artist’s) million and one hand painted ceramic sunflower seeds. A sea of sunflower seeds that seems to symbolize the human race - each one so slightly (very) unique. The idea was to run along it, play with it, and examine your own unique seed between your fingers. In typical Western European overzealous bureaucratic fashion it was closed the weekend before we arrived due to remote, possible, or eventual repository complications that it might cause. But this only made the symbolism so much more poignant: it all looked so bland and autumn grey from a distance – like a sea of bland, fragile humans from a distance. It looked so much like a crowded bus station in Johannesburg, or a bustling metro station in Shanghai. The idea really grabbed me, shook me and stayed there all weekend long!

“Drying in the colour of the evening sun
Tomorrow's rain will wash the stains away
But something in our minds will always stay
On and on the rain will fall
Like tears from a star like tears from a star
On and on the rain will say
How fragile we are how fragile we are”

“Fragile by STING”