Armageddon

You know that whole April showers bring May flowers deal?

From our outpost in the Netherlands, I fear that the reality is something more like Armageddon-like storm clouds in April foreshadow continuous rain until June.

It doesn't rhyme, but it does have sort of a catchy meteorological lyricism. If I do say so myself.

Speaking of Armageddon, we've been enjoying the very best kind of weekend: the kind that's four days long. For reasons we don't really understand, Easter is a major holiday in the Netherlands, and so we were sprung from the bonds of working on Good Friday and Second Easter Day (otherwise known as the day after Easter).

We started our Easter off with a major treat: a heartfelt delivery of homemade cookies on a scary Bambi plate. Much to my delight, our downstairs neighbor really outdid himself with the decorations.

Unfortunately, it was beyond the bounds of my Dutch vocabulary to grill Marek on the anatomical details of his cookie cutters. So we're not really sure what the non-bunny, non-egg Easter shape is supposed to be. A ham, perhaps? Or a festive Easter slug?



From there, we moved on to what might be the coolest art installation of all time: art-crumbles.nl.

The basic idea is that 30 or so artists have installed their work in an abandoned, unheated, unlit, immensely creepy old school on the outskirts of town.

To get there, we hopped on our bicycles and headed in the direction of the aforementioned Armageddon, although we managed to reach our destination and slip into the building before the skies opened up.

The building itself was a piece of art, with classrooms and cafeterias and hallways in various states of disrepair. There were a few signs of vandalism, but it looked more like the school had been closed up after the last day of classes ten years ago and left to be reclaimed by the brambles growing up around it.

The art, which was hidden away in hallways and dark classrooms, ranged from tiny wax figures to installations the size of a giant lecture hall:

Some of them were kinetic, like the symphony of small appliances hooked to a record-player-like contraption that controlled their movement. Or the totally freaky merry-go-round with legless horses, going in reverse.

Others were interactive, like the narrow hallway filled with long ropes attached to bells in a grid at the ceiling.

Since the entire city of Nijmegen is shut down for Easter and Second Easter Day, we half-expected that we would arrive to a boarded-up building and a note on the door to the effect of "Even though we said we would be open every Saturday and Sunday in April, it's Easter! Go home, you freak!"

(I'm not exaggerating when I say that everything is closed. We went to the grocery store five times on Friday and Saturday to make sure we had all of the ingredients we would need for the long weekend.)

Instead, we were pleasantly surprised. Not only was it open, but it was full of people of all ages, including little kids with their parents, older couples, and teenagers. People even brought their dogs.

As it turns out, nothing says "Family Easter Outing" like edgy contemporary art in a dark, scary, abandoned school building!