Nijmegen

Thursday ended up being a pretty calm day at the apartment in Amsterdam during which I did some cleaning and packing for my next adventure. The next day I left in the morning after a chat with my landlady. Once I arrived in Nijmegen I passed out for a few hours unexpectedly. I don’t normally have that kind of reaction after a simple train trip but I guess it was really needed. 

That night when I woke up from my post travel nap everything was closed and very quiet here in the city center of Nijmegen. Being able to roam around at twilight was very nice among the old architecture and cafes. After doing a little research I found out that Nijmegen is considered the ‘oldest city’ in the Netherlands due to the area being very popular among travelers, especially the Romans.  So, Saturday I decided to go to the local museum Het Valkhof which ended up being just down the street from where my bed and breakfast is. It was an interesting museum in that it was about 50% Roman artifacts and 50% modern work. I enjoyed a good amount of the Roman pieces, but with the modern art it was pretty normal in that there was some good and some bad when it comes to my taste/opinion.

After the museum I went to the Het Valkhof park and took a look at the remnants of the castle that use to be located there. I admit though it was really strange to be in the middle of an old castle area only to find a giant rabbit sculpture that people go inside of for sight seeing. Other than the castle and rabbit there was also a nice view of a well-known bridge that had been built in the 1930’s that had had a lot of attention in the museum. All of this exploring did not take very long so I continued back down my street and enjoyed the Saturday market that was happening. It was not as extensive as that in Amsterdam but it still had some interesting vendors.

Around three or four I met up with Marie Masson, a student of Monika Brugger’s in France. She was in town for the show at Galerie Marzee as well so we had dinner and got to know one another and talk about work. She had some very nice pieces in the exhibition and it was great to speak with her about her concept and experiences with Monika.