thu 21 feb 2008 13:53:35 — witte de withstraat
an old painting at burger king, and a pigeon
the other day when i was returning from weesperplein, i had to wait at least 15 minutes for the tram, and while i was waiting i kept listening to the sound of the car and truck tires on weesperstraat passing over the tram rails. it's hard to describe, it was kind of a lightly percussive sound, six beats per vehicle. as if it were passing over three sets of tracks. and sometimes more than one vehicle would pass over at the same time, or they'd be just slightly out of sync. it was otherwise quiet, so i paid a lot of attention to this sound. wished i had that little sound recorder with me.
this morning at centraal station i was at track 10, and i heard a chorus of singing kids reverberating from behind the train on track 14 or so. wished i had that little sound recorder with me.
riding the train today i found a copy of "SP!TS" newspaper tucked next to the arm rest.
minister piet hein donner thinks we have a problem because nowadays not enough poles bulgarians and romanians are coming to holland. "dalende instroom polen is probleem".
also in the news today, a trend in cussing. they say dutch and flemish people nowadays are swearing more in english. the man on the tv news said nederlanders are more prone to use "engelse vloekwoorden, zoals 'shit' en 'füeck'". there was a whole big investigation about it.
when i returned from the VO session in hilversum, i wanted a double cheeseburger from burger king. i've not been to burger king for quite a while. so i went up to spoor 2b at centraal station and ordered a menu 6.
the dining room at burger king was surprisingly empty and quiet, considering i was there right at noontime. for once i actually looked around at the decor. i'm not sure what the room used to be, but it used to be fancy. i saw above the fancy carved wooden doorframe, an original decorative painting showing a maiden sitting on top of a cow, or might have been a bull. and the animal had its head turned to try and look back up at her. and there were birds, i think eating from the maiden's hands maybe. and then on the ledge just below the painting, there was a real live pigeon sitting, waiting.