Dubrovnik

Tomorrow I’ll be off for work to Dubrovnik, Croatia, after a week full of emotional peeks.

I really cried in the darkness of the Amsterdam Opera House: La Traviata. Such a beautiful production, great singers!

Martin Bril died on my birthday. I hereby declare the 22nd of April ‘Nationale Rokjes Dag’. In the evening we had a lovely diner in Star Ferry and dropped in for a few moments of Russian jazz by the Volkov Trio in the Bimhuis. Too much. We’ll wait for Moscow Art Trio.

We went to a special evening in the Rijksmuseum around the Vermeer painting from Washington: Woman holding a balance. It’s really worth the money to be a friend of the Rijksmuseum. We had plenty of time to look at the lady and while looking we could ask questions to the curator 17th century, Pieter Roelofs. No queues, no crowd, no time limits, just some Rijksmuseum friends who enjoyed a glass of wine and a good painting. How culture vulture is that?

So. Dubrovnik. A conference. A hotel near the sea and the weather will be rainy. Back on Queen’s Day. Next day we will be off to try our new tent, we hope. Hiking somewhere in Germany. I promess I’ll make photo’s. Have a great Queen’s Day. Enjoy spring.

Today it is exactly 400 years ago that Henry Hudson left Amsterdam to find a faster ‘road’ to Asia and eventually found an island that was called Manna Hatta - many hills. Manhattan, New York City. We loved it. And in one of those incomparable, unbeatable American bookshops I bought ‘Island at the centre of the World’ by Russell Shorto, director of the John Adams Institute, in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, of which I was a member for many years. Yes. I’m reading the book now and tonight we went to an evening with lectures by Russell Shorto, Geert Mak and some Indian Chief, who should have been planned, but wasn’t and conquered the microphone. The evening itself was not so memorable: too many speakers. But you should read Shorto’s book and the small Volkskrant book (Forgotten History - Vergeten Geschiedenis). It made us understand why we felt so at home in New York. And, not insignificant, it’s nice that we can also be a little bit proud of what we’ve done in the past.