Don't want to stare at a wall and look at a duck that can't quack

Wednesday, the 4th, we got up and saw there was apparently some kind of enormous news about Comic Sans, based on my Twitter friends. We also got to better appreciate how these cute little plastic ducks seem to be some kind of mascot for the hotel we were in; they even provided one with the soap and shampoo and whatnot, you know, for travellers who failed to bring their rubber ducks with them. We got breakfast in a quite nice buffet at the hotel restaurant and started to piece together what seems to be the Dutch kind of breakfast, if hotels are really representative of that. The most important thing would be the slices of cheese (and lunch meats, on which we passed), which were about two orders of magnitude better than the ones we'd get in a United States hotel. We ate on the patio, where it was a little cool, but with a gorgeous view of the lake outside, and the local ducks, some of which were noticeably different from United States-model ducks, and some of which weren't.

After that, bunny_hugger had to get to work, to her conference. We set a time to meet up again and went our separate ways. I, actually, took a little extra nap, and then set out in the direction of town. The hotel provided us with a map of downtown Utrecht that just about reached to our hotel, so I thought I'd see how close I could get to any attractions before having to give up and take a taxi. But that didn't go badly. I passed some kids playing what sure looked like baseball, although there were five bases (counting home) and about fourteen kids in the outfield versus ten on the batting side; I guess they were improvising with what they had. And I got to a major road that lead me just right where I wanted to go.

Well, almost. The map had several museums listed on it, among them, the Grocery Shop Museum. Sure I was interested; aren't you, too? But I couldn't find the museum. I walked around and around the blocks it seemed to be on and found nothing more than a Subway sandwich shop, and a metallic statue of a rabbit posed like The Thinker, on what's either a large rock or a subdued bear. But the Grocery Shop Museum, whatever it may hold, whatever it might be, would be a mystery unsolved by my efforts.

So I walked around some more, taking in the very busy and very crowded streets on what was shaping up as a warm, most pleasant day. The things that're just like home are always fascinating, so, naturally, I spotted two Apple Stores --- well, Apple Authorized Resellers using the Apple Store design, although one of them was closed for renovations --- one of which was beside a Claire's. And I found two more Subway shops, or maybe just one more, since the streets are pretty twisty and I'm pretty sure I doubled back without meaning to repeatedly. I also came across a french fries spot which put forth the claim that it was the best fries in the Netherlands; I wasn't quite hungry, but I was interested, and they did look like pretty decent fries. While I pondered this, an English guy actually dug into the garbage bin and pulled out a partially-finished paper cone of fries, and started eating them. So, apparently, the fries really are that good. I didn't have any.

I was wandering more or less toward the museum district, figuring I'd take whatever came my way, and so ran across the Speelklok Museum. I didn't know what that might be, past that ``klok'' suggested, like, clocks. The posters didn't make clear what they were either, apart from that it was the Happiest Museum in the Netherlands. It could put forth a pretty good claim on this: it's a museum of music-boxes, band organs, automata, and other mechanical contraptions, most of them music-playing.

I caught on to the tail end of a guided tour, and was the lone English-speaker, so the docent felt the need to repeat everything for me alone. (She didn't seem bothered by my late appearance, although I have to imagine she was looking forward to having half the explaining to do this one time.) The museum's packed with the sort of wind-up contraptions that really appeal to me, and at every step I know: bunny_hugger is going to be sad she missed this. If I didn't know that for a start, then one of the early exhibits --- wound up and shown off, as one or two in every room were --- sealed it. It was called ``koney in der kole'', or something to that effect, and was a mass-produced toy from about 1905. It's a little rabbit who pops up from out of a head of cabbage, looks around, nibbles some, ducks back in, then pops up for a little nibbling again before hiding for good.

The museum has exhibits ranging from that --- not quite pocket sized --- all the way to the carousel organs and music hall organs which would blast songs out. For one of them the docent even passed out the lyrics to a song, as would be played on the street. It was all in Dutch, so I couldn't follow along, but apparently the thing for buskers to do was play along and lead songs of tragedy and heartbreak, inspiring people to give their money. I guess whatever works.

Besides carousel organs --- the docent warned everyone they were loud, but thanks to bunny_hugger I had an idea of how loud --- and mechanical juke boxes with manhole cover-sized discs encoding tunes like the Washington Post March, the museum also had several instruments two storeys tall, and meant to provide music for dance halls. One of the (several) demonstrations of this had the enormous machine playing The Temptations' ``My Girl'' , when only one person besides me was brave enough to take the docent's offer up and dance or, in my case, sway very nearly in time with the beat. The others just looked on kind of awestruck and maybe a bit scared.

I did ask about where they got the punch-hole cardboard fanfold for a song like ``My Girl'', coming as it does so long after the collapse of the automated band hall industry. Alas, there's not a tiny vestigial automated-music fanfold company left; it's one of the things people connected with the museum learn and do out of love for the instruments. (This did inspire me, after the group and while looking at the other exhibits on offer, to examine the scrolls and fanfolds they had on display carefully. While it would be unreasonable to expect someone to have made a band organ fanfold of any Buggles tune, it certainly wasn't impossible, and wouldn't ``Video Killed The Radio Star'' be exquisite on such a machine? But if they've done this, they don't show the evidence.)

The exhibits in the upper halls gave me numerous little moments of realizing the past was more modern than I realized. One of them was finding a couple of music boxes which had been made for the rental market. Sure, once you've heard there was a rental music box market it's obvious there should be, but did you have the idea on your own either? Another was of little hand-cranked music boxes, done without springs or dampeners to keep things at a constant tempo, and trusting that the person winding them could make them go at the right speed. Again, yes, of course there'd be hand-held and easily portable music boxes with swappable discs, but did you think of it?

It was also while wandering around here that my camera reported the death of the batteries in it. I lacked replacement batteries, so, resigned myself to not being able to take many more pictures. (Even after the batteries are reported dead, I could grab a few more photos by turning the camera on again.)

The gift shop made me aware of just how surprisingly many tiny little gift-type music boxes there are which do Beatles tunes for some reason. They've also got some old reliables of my childhood, like the Pink Panther theme or the ``Do, a deer'' thing from The Sound Of Music.

After being satisfied with this I set out again to see if I could reach the Railway Museum before it closed. I could, but only just; Utrecht museums seem to feel that 5 pm is plenty late to be open. Too bad, but I could now probably find my way back there if I had time another day.

I needed batteries, though, so I ventured into a supermarket which felt pleasantly familiar --- it had the compact size and crowded aisles, not to mention many of the brands, that I knew from Singapore --- but if they had batteries there I couldn't find them. So I went up the street to an apothecary I'd seen from the taxi the night before, pressed the button to have the doors swing open, and then was immediately stopped by a woman coming up from downstairs to ask what I was looking for. It seems the apothecary had closed a half-hour before, so, I guess they're not so much into the locking of doors right at closing as a United States shop might be. They pointed me back to the supermarket and explained I needed to go to the customer service desk, which was true.

After more wandering around I returned to the hotel to check my e-mail and other Internet type stuff, like the comics, and also to buy the ``Chip Card'' used for public transportation throughout the Netherlands. The hotel desk told me I could buy a card from the bus driver, so, when I got on the bus in the direction of the University --- and bunny_hugger --- I took out a 50-euro bill and was told he didn't have change for something like that. I asked what I should do, and, he told me just to ride. Thus was my introduction to the Utrecht bus system one of freeloading.

I got to the main university campus --- a modernist structure which will earn much more attention in a following report --- and found bunny_hugger. She'd had a long day, as the conference had scheduled events from 9 am through to 4:30 the next morning each day, and we leapt at this little restaurant across the street from the campus library. We got sodas and waited for someone to take our order ... or stop by ... or show any interest in us ... or ... anything. It turned out the kitchen had already closed and they were just taking care of what few people were still around before chasing them off. So we went back across the street to find the pizza place was also closed.

I hadn't spent all day wandering around the Utrecht streets for nothing, though; I was sure I could think of places where there was probably food. So we took the bus back, after bunny_hugger explained that I could buy a one-time pass for some amount that's intolerable for long-term use but which I certainly had small enough bills to buy. I had no idea; I thought it had to be cards or nothing, so my freeloading wasn't necessary.

We took the bus back into the middle of Utrecht and started looking for restaurants. These, too, it seems close very early. We found a Mexican restaurant which had an open door, and went in, and they said they'd be glad to seat us but the kitchen was closed. I was starting to think maybe Utrecht is just in it for the breakfasts.

But we found an Italian restaurant, and they were open, and the kitchen was open, so we could go for that. It was a lovely spot, a little cozy and dark and feeling like the sort of eccentric restaurant that'd be open two hours after the rest of Utrecht had closed. The staff there were hanging around out of the kitchen, fairly enough. There was a restaurant cat, who came in and surveyed us several times before the cook took him in hold. And as we ate --- bunny_hugger got an exquisite macaroni and cheese dish, while I got a calzone the size of my car --- we noticed the familiar opening strains of the Kinks' ``Tears of a Clown'' coming over the music system. Except it wasn't quite that. It was that song, but the lyrics were in Italian. We had no idea there was an Italian cover of ``Tears of a Clown'', and this was quite a good one, getting the voices just so.

So we could finish eating in the wonderful convergence of events and chance decisions and bits of luck that brought us to be just there, having a wonderful meal, while such a weird and wonderful bit of music should come on. For all the time we had to spend apart, our first full day in Utrecht went very well.

Trivia: The 1960 Rome games had the first Olympic Marathon run at night.
Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle.

Currently Reading: Splendid Solution: Jonas Salk and the Conquest of Polio, Jeffrey Kluger.