My host recommended this bike mechanic who lived down the street as being cheaper than a full-on bike shop. His name is Tonie and he’s a semi-retired gentleman who works on bikes. He’s also that totally awesome type of extremely knowledgeable, clever, craftsman that you don’t seem to run into very often anymore. When he started working on the lights, he said, “Now you will see how a man with an electro-technical background fixes a bicycle.” Apparently he had been an electrical engineer or something similar before he retired, and it showed in the methodology he used to test the various components to get the lights working. Example: to test whether the generator that powered the lights for the bike was good, he hooked it up to a power source and ran it backwards as a motor.

It was actually fairly complicated to figure out which wires went where, because somebody had worked on it before and left a lot of extra dead wires which did nothing.

Here are some pictures of Tonie and his shop. I have a few more but the internet is really slow right now at the library, so I’ll post the rest later. EDIT: I have now posted all of them.

I’ve never really seen the point of “goth”, it’s obviously a distinct subculture, but it seems to be centered around nothing more substantial than wearing black and being sad. It’s like emo with pseudo-intellectual overtones. Hell, even punk pretends to be about things other than music and fashion.

Nevertheless, yesterday I was in the Domplein and there was a big goth fair there. Also, I found out that they were having a concert inside the Domkerk, which is an authentic gothic cathedral building, so that seemed appropriate.

The band was a group called Persephone. They were fairly decent, and not what I was expecting. They had two cellos, an upright bass, a percussionist and a redheaded vocalist. The whole performance was pretty overdramatic, with the singer handing out flowers, and dancing around. The lyrics were overwrought goth stuff, “When will my soul stop bleeding…” but musically they were not bad.

Anyway, I took some pictures.

His place was actually interesting. In the Netherlands, when commercial properties go vacant, they often let people rent them as residences for cheap in order to keep out squatters. It’s kind of a weird setup, but you get a huge amount of space for very little money. The downside being they can ask you to leave at any time with 2 weeks notice if a commercial renter wants the property. Anyway, my host lived in this vacant commercial office park about 15 minutes by bus from the city center.

The Rat Tail: I’m really not sure what the thinking on this hairdo is. It’s either a really small, off-center ponytail or one, really long braid. Either way, it ain’t pretty. Every time I saw it, I felt like a long tailed macaque had somehow burrowed its way into his scalp.

Uh, dude, I think there's something on your head

The Dread-Mullet: What do you get when you combine a ridiculous redneck haircut with a styling white kids only wear right after they’ve “gotten really into Bob Marley lately”? That’s right, the dread-mullet (a.k.a. “mulletlocks”). I guess he’s set in case a monster-truck-rally-slash-ganja-fest spontaneously breaks out. Actually, that sounds insanely awesome and somebody should organize one immediately.

Business up front, rasta-party in the back

So, after all the buildup, tada! Feel free to mock me as mercilessly as I’ve mocked the poor Spaniards.

Yes, this would also be my MySpace shot

The tower stands 368 feet (112 m) tall, but they blew all their money on the tower so it took much longer to finish the rest of the church. The central nave was never fully completed–they didn’t get to add the flying buttresses necessary for structural support. When a major storm struck Utrecht in 1674 the nave collapsed. All that remains today are the choir and the transept (Domkerk), and the tower which now stands alone. It took until the 1800s for all the rubble to be finally cleared away, but the space where the nave once stood is now a nice outdoor square.

Anyway, here’s a ton of pictures from in and around the tower and the Domkerk.

Anyway, there were tons of goings-on related to Uit week, as you can see from the photos. What isn’t quite clear from the pictures is the degree to which Uit takes over the city. This stuff is spread out all over the city center, not just in one square or on one street. There was a ferris wheel–interesting historical note/plug for Chicago, the very first ferris wheel was invented for the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago. It only cost one euro, so I rode it with a girl from Latvia who is visiting here. One of the student organizations had a camel they were letting people ride, so that was fun. The camel surprised me by not smelling awful at all. Also, it’s hard to tell from the photos but its front hump leaned to the left a lot. For some reason I assumed camel humps would be basically symmetric.

I got in touch via email with a woman who’s similarly studying technology activists, though in a much more formal way, as a Ph.D. candidate at the European University Institute. Her website was/is here, but it seems to be dead from a database glitch right now. I also made an appointment to meet with one of the main guys from PUSCII.

In de Neude square, I talked to some people from the international students group here, and they were very friendly and welcoming. They invited me to come by their office and see what kind of events they have planned, and to their weekly Tuesday night meet-and-greet, and also to a large party they were throwing that night.

I went to dinner at this pancake place with a Dutch mapmaking student from couchsurfing. Looking at the menu, they had both sweet and savory types of pancakes, so I sort of assumed that “pancake” actually meant “crepé”, and I ordered the ham and cheese one. They actually were real (but thin) pancakes, and the ham and and cheese was sort of baked into it. They did intend for you to eat it with powdered sugar and syrup, so it was kind of a mix of sweet and savory.

Later that night, I went to the International Party along with the Latvian girl, and it was pretty cool. It was free to get in, the place was really busy and beers were only €1.20, yet somehow there wasn’t a line. I attribute this to the fact that there were at least a half-dozen other enormous parties occuring simultaneously at other venues. I talked to a math major girl, and we may have set a new world record for ‘nerdiest conversation ever had in a night club’ by discussing linear algebra.

All in all, it was a pretty awesome day.

I had planned on hitting up the Utrecht University Museum today, but all the museums in town are closed on Mondays. Luckily, the Utrecht Public Library is open, and totally awesome. They have free wifi, lots of computers and books, newspapers from all over the world, and even a great little coffee bar. I wish all libraries were this sweet. My plan is to hide out here until the weather improves a bit.

They sold me a new inner tube for €5, and tried to sell me a whole new tire which, “starts at €50.” There’s no way I’m going to pay the entire price of the bike again for a new tire, so I turned that part down. I also declined having them install the inner tube for €15 thinking it would be a quick and simple process to do myself. After doing some more research, I’m starting to rethink that position.

The fact that it’s the rear tire means that I’ll have to deal with disengaging the gears + chain, this is made more difficult by the fact that Dutch bikes have the chain and gears hidden away behind a plastic chain-guard thing (which is probably good for protecting it). Furthermore, Dutch bikes don’t seem to have the clamp-style brakes I’m used to on the rear wheel. There are rear brakes, I just don’t see where they are or how they work. Also, removing the tire to get access to the inner tube is normally done with a specialized tool (that I don’t have), although I could maybe cheat and use a screwdriver or something to pop it out of the rim.

The tire in question

So I have to make some kind of decision, do I just pay the bike shop to do it and have a working bike more quickly with more money spent, or do I try to do it myself and learn some stuff about bike repair while saving money. I am very loath to sink any more money into the whole having-a-bike thing than I already have, but on the other hand, the longer I’m bikeless the more I’m wasting on busses.

On the other hand, I could just buy a smart car:

Only €5 per dag!

After dealing with bike-related irritation, I went into Amsterdam to see the Van Gogh museum. It’s way overpriced at €12.50 (and no youth/student discounts, unless you’re under 17), but it was a very nice museum. It was interesting to see an entire museum devoted to one artist; you could definitely see how Van Gogh progressed in his technique. The details of his life seemed pretty sad, though. He failed as a religious missionary, so he decided to become an artist. His art was essentially ignored his whole life and he relied on his brother for financial support. Then he went crazy and eventually shot himself. Being posthumously revered seems like small consolation.

I liked this one

and this one

They also had stuff from other artists who were Van Gogh’s contemporaries/inspirations. I thought this one was pretty well done, especially with the ominous shadows on the right.

Jean-Léon Gérôme - Golgotha

Cool

But also did really lame stuff, like this:

Lame

I actually walked through the exhibit in reverse order, so I assumed that he started out drawing simple geometric shapes on white backgrounds (he even did a whole bunch of white-on-white paintings, which sounds like a joke except I saw one in the museum) and later learned how to make awesome things. It turns out I was wrong. He started out cool, but later founded an art movement called Suprematism, which, as far as I can tell involves using only red, white and black to make paintings an eight-year old could do with stencils, and then making grandiose claims about how your art “will not be copies of living things, but will themselves be a living thing,” and how a square represents “the supremacy of pure sensation in creative art.”

Today I went to a this free outdoor music festival thing. It was pretty cool, the first band we saw was a very generic indie rock band, although they did have an electric violin. Later there was another band that was a little more bluesy. The festival vibe was very relaxed with lots of families and people hanging out on blankets and stuff. They also had a “Pimp your ride” tent where they had painting supplies and people who wanted to could give their bike a wild new paint job. I jazzed up my crappy bike–which I have named “Squeak, rattle ‘n roll”–which I think significantly improved its appearance. Sadly, I just sold it to a French student for €35. He said he liked the paint.

EDIT: Apparently in Germany, MTV aired an actual show called Pimp my Fahrrad which is exactly like Pimp My Ride but with bicycles.