The Getz Files

Saturday night was Museum Night in Amstredam, when 42 museums stay open until 2 am and do untraditional things, like speed dating in the Van Gogh museum and techno music in the botanical gardens. Still on no sleep after the flights and train ride, I caught the train up to Amsterdam with a whole bunch of people, all working for various international tribunals. There were people from the ICJ, ICC, ICTY, PCA and, of course, the IUSCT (first person who tells me what that stands for gets a prize).

This seems the right time for my first bulleted list:

• Dinner in the maritime museum, then a walk on a real Dutch East India Company ship. Pirates were singing Dutch sea shanties, and I walked around the captain's quarters, poop deck ("Last night, when you kissed me on the..." "Poop.""No, that won't do."") and quarter deck. Wondered where that ship went back in the day - had it stopped in Table Bay? Probably. Also saw a steam-powered ice breaker, which reminded me of an excellent book I read (there will be odd book recommendations in here as well): Scott and Amundsen by Roland Huntford. Totally gripping.
• Van Gogh Museum via canal boat. Aforementioned speed dating, with everyone given an animal sign based on the year of birth. It wasn't quite Chinese, though, because my year, 1972, was given not a rat but a pig. Anyway, looked dreadful, so I looked at the art. Unfortunately, art was not suiting my mood (though I did see a very interesting pair of paintings - a picture by Gauguin of XXX in Van Gogh's house and the corresponding picture by XXX of Gauguin) and I moved on to...
• Hortus, the botanical gardens. Really cool and weird communing with the plants and wandering around the greenhouses in the middle of the night, especially with hundreds of young Dutch people around. (Amsterdam was full of people going to these museums, mainly Dutch and a real mix of young and old. I like it when people really enjoy their city.) One tent had this guy playing some quite out-there electronic music, kind of like Autechre, and a bunch of people watching rapt. These people are very sophisticated. I found some nice repetitive techno, and had a great dance.
• The Science Museum had an incredible laser display, over the water to the accompaniment of more weird (but totally suitable) electronic music. On the roof was an intelligent chill zone, with these huge multicoloured neon plastic cones. Inside was all the usual science museum stuff, plus a whole section where you get to mimic running a ball-bearing factory. These people are very industrious.
• We caught the 1:43 trian back to The Hague. There are trains from Amsterdam toThe Hague and Rotterdam all through the night. These people are very impressive.

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