TRAVEL DIARY

A weblog regularly updated by Jodi Rose.

Thursday, May 3, 2007

2:50 PM
Posted by jodi rose

I woke up this morning on the 17th floor of a high-rise apartment where the only green is on the walls of the endless corridors... and now sit typing looking out at oak trees, gently swaying dandelion flowers and a grassy verge on the other side of the freight train tracks. ah bliss.

Sent a few demented e-cards from the machine at Gate A13 of Berlin's Tegel Airport just before boarding the plane at 8am. In transit... to another world was definitely the most prophetic.

What a place to land. Wonderful ramshackle cottage with bright orange door frames, Indian posters, and the wildest collection of drumming-figure toys I have ever seen. Everything you could imagine needed to unwind the springs of tension after relentless activity in too many small cubes; and recover or completely unravel from existential fraying, art overload and crisis over direction and purpose in life.

Sunshine in the driveway, parked myself next to the most beautiful van in the world - bright yellow, dilapidated merc with rivets and woodstove; met the cats - one peering from an upstairs window, the other who eyed me suspiciously for all of ten seconds then stretched langorously for me to scratch her belly; coffee, oranges, and freight trains. what more could a girl need?? My host is out inspecting a xylophone somewhere in den hague, and neptune's harbous is opposite. The area is a great mix of industrial and super-peaceful, about twenty minutes bike ride out of amsterdam, and already I can feel a week of reading and writing unfurl before me. sheer joy.
Bring on the ice-cream!