March 28, 2012
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Amsterdam, Netherlands
Günter came over for some pizza and drinks tonight, so on the way home I stopped at a supermarket close to where I used to live, and one where I used to go quite often. For old time's sake, I walked through the shop and bought stuff for tonight, as well as the contents of a small vegetable shop. I was running out of ingredients for my daily salad so it was time to restock. After having found enough no-carb stuff to keep me going for a while, I got on my bike and cycled home, parking my bike on Oudezijds Voorburgwal and walking the short distance to my apartment on Oudezijds Achterburgwal.
When I saw the building as I turned around the corner, I was very excited. Yes! More of the building was now revealed because more of the scaffolding had disappeared. And the top half of the building, with its new pointing and its white paint, looked wonderful in the afternoon sunshine. I took the above picture and looked at the building, quite satisfied with the progress.
Then I looked a bit closer.
Then... puzzled. Confused. And the more I analysed the situation, the more confused and the more angry I got. The scaffolding was appearing way too fast. On my floor there was a large part of the wall, visible to the left of the picture, that simply could not get reached anymore. Surely that wouldn't mean that they were just going to leave the wall like that? I mean, that would just look ridiculous, right? The good thing was that for the first time there was light coming through my windows again - the bad thing was that those windows were set in a wall that looked absolutely ridiculous. I walked into my apartment and was still thoroughly confused and upset when Günter arrived. "Aren't they going to finish this?" is what he asked almost immediately as he walked in. I had no answer, could only send an email to my upstairs neighbours asking them if they knew what was going on... and try to put the whole situation out of my mind because it began to seriously affect my mood. It worked, because we did have a nice and relaxed evening... but in the back of my mind it kept nagging me all night... what the hell was going on with the building?
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