Day 10.1 Friday, April 16, 2010 Stranded still. The volcano continues to spew, the European authorities in charge of their respective airspaces continue to freak out, many of our fellow passengers are growing irrationally angry, and it’s looking more and more like we’re in this for a longer haul than anyone would like. We wokeContinue reading “The Netherlands: Days 10.1 & 10.2 (the Great Volcano Standstill, 2010)”
Author Archives: Samuel Snoek-Brown
The Netherlands: Days 9 & 10
Day 9 Wednesday, April 14, 2010 We had planned today to go to Haarlem, but when we bought our train tickets to Hoorn yesterday, a saleswoman launched into a pitch to sell us bus-tour tickets, and we decided to take the brochure and peruse it just to make her happy. And sure enough, while waitingContinue reading “The Netherlands: Days 9 & 10”
The Netherlands: Days 7 & 8
Day 7 Monday, April 12, 2010 I am quite too relaxed to write. I’ll try to jot down a few notes, but I expect to sleep soon. We did the Artis Zoo today, a beautiful complex packed not only with an excellent zoo but also with a planetarium, an aquarium, a zoological museum, an AfricanContinue reading “The Netherlands: Days 7 & 8”
A Writer’s Notebook: Script Frenzy
So, as you might know, my planned 10-day interruption in participating in Script Frenzy turned into two and a half weeks, because we were stuck in Amsterdam for a week trying to figure out how to get home. Then I was resting up, then working on other projects, like my travel journal…. Needless to say,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: Script Frenzy”
The Netherlands: Day 6
Day 6 Sunday, April 11, 2010 Today started out continuing the forgetfulness of yesterday, though it improved quickly. We decided to head to the Anne Frank House first thing this morning, thinking the crowds might be thinner early on a Sunday. We were right, but even after a thorough run-through of our new pre-departure checklist,Continue reading “The Netherlands: Day 6”
The Netherlands: Day 5
Day 5 Saturday, April 10, 2010 Today was a weird, difficult day. It started out a little off: Jennifer forgot her chapstick, my hair was so wild in the wind that Jennifer had to braid it just to keep it under control, and we kept missing our trams by seconds and getting stuck waiting aroundContinue reading “The Netherlands: Day 5”
Photo blog 1
I’m going to start a new feature here this week: I’m going to start posting photos. When we were stranded in Amsterdam last during the Iceland volcano fiasco, we decided to ease the tension of being trapped (I called it “maintenance,” as in, maintaining a healthy stress level) by visiting a few of the museumsContinue reading “Photo blog 1”
The Netherlands: Days 3 & 4
Day 3 Thursday, April 8, 2010 There were too many highlights today, and it’s hard to single out the second-best moment. Was it the train ride south to the Hague, the countryside rolling by as we wrote postcards in the flashing sunlight? The splendid Maritshuis museum, with its brilliant focus on the best of theContinue reading “The Netherlands: Days 3 & 4”
The Netherlands: Intro and Days 1 & 2
As I did with my travel journal from Vienna last fall, I am going to start posting my journal from my recent trip to The Netherlands. And, like the Vienna posts, I’m going to break them up by days, partly to keep the posts (relatively) short but also to try and replicate the journal-writing experience.Continue reading “The Netherlands: Intro and Days 1 & 2”
The good times are killing me
We writers and academics love to ask each other what books we’d want with us if ever we’re stranded on a desert island, and we love offering clever, literary answers: Jane Austen, Cormac McCarthy, the Oxford English Dictionary, the Dhammapada. But we’re lying to ourselves.
Samuel Snoek-Brown 