Merry Christmas, 2012

When I left my apartment around 10:00 this morning, I thought I'd stepped on a stage from 28 Days Later. The neighborhood was completely silent - no cars, no bikes, and no talking. I only saw a few people walking their dogs, and I only heard a tram rumbling in the distance. When the tram passed me, I saw only a handful of passengers. 

Note another photographer in the lower left.

My first destination was the Rijksmuseum, which I also went to on Christmas day last year. Seems like a good time to visit one of Amsterdam's most popular and crowded museums.

I prefer it to the Van Gogh, both in terms of the aesthetics of the building, and in terms of the style of the art. Most of the paintings depict Dutch life (well, at least wealthy Dutch life) hundreds of years ago, with rich oils paints colored on large canvases.

This apparently symbolizes Catholics (right bank) and Protestants (left bank) "fishing" for the loyalty of followers.

Rembrandt's famous De Nachtwacht (The Night Watch)

After the Rijksmuseum, I followed the Herengracht (one of the canals in Amsterdam's canal ring) to the Bijbelsmuseum (bible museum). The museum was unremarkable. There was a room containing sketches of biblical scenes, and another with hundreds of copies of the bible, and some information concerning the different translations of the bible and conflicts between groups based on translation, but apart from that, many of the rooms didn't hold to a "bible" theme. The museum had a nice garden - a major selling point, apparently - but it is much more appealing in the summer than on a cool, dreary December day.

A room looking toward the garden in the Bible Museum.

Evidence that I indeed took these pictures.

Some biblical figurines. I was a bit puzzled by the cheesy projected backdrop.

My final museum stop was at Our Lord in the Attic, a preservation of a clandestine Catholic church created in the 17th century. After the Dutch rejected Spanish influence from the Netherlands around that time, they outlawed Catholic worship. A wealthy merchant who happened to be Catholic created a secret Catholic church in a narrow Dutch house (and, actually, the attics of three adjacent houses) where Catholics in Amsterdam could worship. According to the audio tour, the Dutch government knew about the church, but decided to not enforce the law given the worship was not harming anyone (this sounds remarkably like the current Dutch policy toward marijuana). At some point in the 19th century, the Dutch rescinded the ban on Catholic churches, and "real" churches were constructed. After being abandoned in favor of other venues, the church in the attic was purchased by amateur historians who wanted it preserved.

And, hence, the museum.

With that, Merry Christmas to all my friends and family.