so it's been a while

which means i've probably lost all the 6 people who actually sometimes look at my blog, but i thought i should start writing again cause ya "creative outlet."

it's almost christmas which i'm VERY excited about because I LOVE christmas. i think i am one of the biggest fans  of christmas that i know. For someone who is so mad about christmas i have made VERY POOR CHOICES OF BOYFRIENDS because they have all treated christmas with a seriously raised eyebrow. So when I told Joris all the things that would have to happen in order for christmas to be the festive occasion I have grow accustomed to he went ya ok, but i seriously think he is lacking in enthusiasm. He thought Christmas was on the 24th of December. This is how Joris would be about Christmas if he were a cat:

You see the Withers christmas is a series of LONG ADHERED TO TRADITIONS. so firstly there have to be sweets in bowls everywhere leading up to christmas. The christmas cake has to be baked all together with everyone taking a turn to stir the mixture and make a wish. Obviously my mom has to bake a million mince pies and other "holiday biscuits" Then there's the decorating of the tree. Then there's Christmas eve where my dad reads the christmas story (no one else is allowed to read it, except for the one occasion i got the chance to because of withers related christmas eve drama) Obviously the soundtrack for all this is kings college christmas carols. One year john tried to put on Fabios christmas hits which was met with VERY LITTLE LAUGHTER FROM MY FATHER. Then my dad hangs a very special decoration on the tree.  Then we all say something nice about each other ( a tradition created out of necessity given all the christmas eve drama) then we all go to bed and await our christmas stockings and then in the morning it's down to the christmas tree for presents (i get to read the labels and the youngest child hands them out) Basically it's a long process that no one else could really get into unless they were a withers. So I thought ok obviously all this will be done in amsterdam cause ya keeping the withers christmas going. So far i have :
- no christmas cake
- no mince pies
- no christmas tree
- no stockings
- no presents for anyone who will be there for christmas day

I do have an advent calendar though and every morning I say with great enthusiasm Joris lets see what's in the advent calendar and he takes out some sort of sweet and goes oh great and then forgets to eat it. 

So I have no idea what Christmas day will bring. I feel like I could turn into a massive sulky brat if things aren't done properly, but really it doesn't matter. Maybe Joris and I will start our own traditions. Like eating steak for Christmas because we have no oven. And giving each other useful gifts like ice trays. And having a christmas tree with no decorations. In a way it's kind of exciting.

i am reading an article about the sex life of the deep sea squid

and here is a quote from the article which is find HILARIOUS


In a report published in the journal Biology Letters, the authors claim the behaviour "exemplifies the 'live fast and die young' life strategy of many cephalopods"

it's really great to imagine all these squids just you know being a bit like gangsters or something with weird hats and cigars all just swimming around going "yeah i don't care about nothin, live fast, die young. "

LOOK HERE IS A MOUSE THAT WAS TRAPPED IN A POT.

it's really, really gross. joris threw it in the river. i hope it's dead now.

i can ride my bike with no hands

this just happened so ya you heard it here first. hot off the press.

the next thing i want to learn to do is sort of lift the bike up while i ride. joris says i won't be able to. he's probably right.

joris killed a mouse with his foot. (in socks)

that's all. what more can i say about that really.

it's worth remembering that

once john and i were watching american idols and some guy sang some schmaltzy song and when steven tyler was sort of raving about it afterwards he went

"i especially liked the way you really brought out all the crescendos and innuendos"

what he meant to say was crescendos and diminuendos. it kind of made me like steven tyler more. like he was trying to speak in music, but he just couldn't. it would be great if he's been doing this his whole life and just no one has ever, ever corrected him because it's SERIOUSLY funny and i feel like you'd never get tired of hearing him do it wrong. 

i'm going to write about my vacation soon and put pictures up

but right now it seems like a momentous task because there are about 800 photos and a lot of them are just the same. It's that thing where you go ok well I haven't taken a photo for a while so you go beserk taking loads of photos and they are all basically the same except you look slightly more weird in some cause you finally get around to smiling after the 10th photo and you end up looking a bit insane.

I was just outside and there was this couple taking photos of themselves next to the canals and the girl went and posed and looked VERY awkward and then the guy went and posed and looked slightly less awkward, but still not like a real human. Having photos taken of yourself is the worst thing because

a) if there are people around you you know they are just going ooh look at her posing for her photo thinking she looks so great.
b) the person taking the photo is obviously going jees can't she just be normal or i can't believe she thinks that's a nice face to make etc etc

Everyone has a photo face that they think makes them look the most dreamy. Mine is probably to put my face a bit to the side and not totally smile cause my teeth look odd in photos. I only realised this when I looked through a bunch of my profile pictures on facebook and went OH GOD I HAVE A WEIRD "I THINK I'M SO MYSTERIOUS" PHOTO FACE. So to remedy this I just stopped looking at the camera properly when I was in photos and then there would just be whole albums where i was looking down a lot AND IT STILL LOOKED LIKE I THOUGHT I WAS BEING MYSTERIOUS. So now I don't even know what to do in a photo which means that I often just talk a lot and hope for the best. The thing is that this all means I'm really vain cause I can't really bear the thought of a photo capturing this moment where I just look the worst. The other worst thing is that when I finally see all the photos I just go oh man why didn't I just look at the camera in this one or why did I decide to really go for it with the smile in this one.

There are some people who just have tons of dreamy photos of themselves where they've moved their heads in just the right way or they sort of lifted their arms a bit and it made them look "interesting" or their skirt is all blowing a bit in the wind and they look from a nice movie and you just know that when they are a thousand years old their kids will show their friends photos of their mom when she was younger (cause EVERYONE does that) and will be all proud that their mom was such a windswept dreamboat.

Basically the way I am dealing with this whole problem is to just decide that you can't trust people who ALWAYS look good in photos because it means they are just spending most of their time practicing for photos and that makes them creepy.

now that i have done further research

i can inform you that i am absolutely right about not allowing a red hot chilli pepper to name your child because

the main singer's child is called Everly Bear.
the flea guy who plays the bass has a child called Sunny Bebop Balzary.

I feel like this could be a real dealbreaker for me, sort of marrying someone and never having spoken about what we could call our children if we had any and then having a child and being like ok i will call this one Thomas and he goes no no no we will call it SUNNY BEBOP.

something that always makes me laugh

is to say "one hot minute"

the other day joris asked me how long two people we were talking about had dated and i said ONE HOT MINUTE, THEY DATED FOR ONE HOT MINUTE. and then jees i laughed. 

then joris ruined everything by reminding me that the red hot chili peppers had an album called One Hot Minute. Let me remind you that this is from the same people that named an album "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" which is one of the worst things you could ever call anything. I feel like if you married someone in the Red Hot Chilli Peppers you would have to be VERY CAREFUL about allowing them to have any input into the name of your child.

actually i'm going to naples on tuesday

i still somehow haven't managed to get my head around the dates.


ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE
this weekend was gay pride weekend or something like that in Amsterdam. The main event is the canal parade where everyone goes out on their boats or stands alongside the canals and watches all the boats that are part of the parade. Obviously the boats are all playing loads of lady gaga and there are VERY naked male dancers writhing around and it's all quite something to see. Obviously it started raining halfway through the whole thing and obviously our boat had no cover so we jumped onto the boat next to ours to take shelter. Obviously rain has never been known to dampen a gay mans spirit.


Here are some photos

I'M GOING TO NAPLES NEXT MONDAY

Joris and I were sitting around and he was talking about how he'd like to be by the sea and sort of describing the house he'd like to be in and what we'd do and then he went ok lets go on holiday and then he looked up tickets and just booked two to Naples. So yup now we're going to Naples. I really like that Joris is a person like this. If it were me I'd go ok yes lets go on a holiday and then I'd spend a week thinking about where and I'd look for tickets and keep finding different places and then the place I'd go would be called nowhere.

I'm really excited. I've never been to Italy and also because it is HOT in Naples and also BEACHES.

look how dreamy

i have recently been informed

that I check the weather an abnormal amount. I'd say about 5-500 times a day. The reason I check it so often is because I am hopeful that the next time I look at it it won't still look like this:

Basically if you were anywhere in the world and someone put a gun to your head and said correctly tell me the weather in amsterdam right now you would almost certainly walk away unscathed if you said raining.

HOW GENERAL KNOWLEDGE EVENING WENT

not well. that's even an understatement. we were APPALLING.

they asked sooo many questions about dutch things. For example:

1. Who wrote the book Mijn vader woont in Brazilie?
2. What was the last hit single of the Dutch band, Krezip?

The answer to both these questions is:
WHO CARES. 


There were loads more, but I can't even remember them because they were about Dutch tv shows and stuff. Also the first round was just 10 pictures of different dutch ice skaters and you had to name all of them. Seriously, who cares about ice skaters, maybe figure skating is kind of pretty to watch if you're THE MOST BORED EVER. Ice skating is just dangerous and cold. That's it.

One of the most important people to have on your team if you are doing a general knowledge quiz is a person who knows about sports.So this week I am going to find a friend who is good at sport and then next week I'm going back and I'm going to win. Well not win. I'm definitely not going to win, but I'm going to go back and not lose. Aiming low. Low is great, never a disappointment.

andre told me my blog is lacking

SO HERE YOU GO ANDRE.

but really it's true. i never, ever write on here anymore and I'm not sure why that is. I think it's cause I finally feel like I live here or something so I feel like i don't have great little holiday things to say. This is really rubbish cause it's not like I was writing about sipping cocktails on the beach, or some epic mountain adventure where i found inner peace or anything. I wish. Only the cocktail part. It's kind of the same as inner peace. Tonight Joris and I are going to do a general knowledge quiz thing at the bar next door. The bar next door and I have become best friends since I locked myself out of the house a week or two ago and had to sit there for ages just waiting for Joris to come home. I met probably the worst people you could meet that night, a death metal drummer and a 40 something year old woman from Alaska who has sold everything (which I imagine wasn't much since she worked at a bar in Alaska) and was just travelling around the world. A real highlight was when she told me she could speak kiwi and australian. It's the sort of thing that maybe would seem romantic or courageous or something if she hadn't been
a) really unattractive (i know that's mean, but come on if she had been some nice willowy brunette it would just have been a better story)
b) not very bright
and
c) insane

So anyway tonight general knowledge quiz. The questions are going to be in Dutch so now not only will I have to suffer the indignity of probably not knowing that many answers (this is not true, i'm EXCELLENT AT KNOWLEDGE) , but just plain not understanding the questions. 

So yup. Probably got you all just eagerly awaiting the next installment called "how general knowledge evening went."

That's what it will be called. Seriously. Don't get too excited.

The weather is BEAUTIFUL

Really though not like oh yeah it's pretty warm and it's only beautiful because the weather has been so awful for the last few weeks. IT'S REALLY, PROPERLY WARM. This morning I very, very optimistically went out and purchased sun cream. Factor 20. Yup. I also got a new conditioner that I'm very excited about. If you have curly hair you get very excited about conditioner. I can spend HOURS looking at hair things. All these words like glossy and silky are very enticing. Now I'm going to take a book and cycle to Vondelpark and laze around reading and suntanning. I'm not sure how this suntanning business is going to work because it's weird to suntan in a park.  This is a thing about cities without beaches. I remember in New York and Boston that people would get pretty naked for a park that was in the middle of a city. Like bras and underwear naked. I don't agree with this at all. The only public place you should ever wear so little clothing is by a pool or at the beach.

Yesterday Joris and I took a looonnnggg cycle to the North of Holland. It was really dreamy. We took a ferry and everything. Here are pictures.

this is how a lot of the trip looked. joris referred to the scenery as "an acquired taste."

joris

i can now ride a bike and pose for a camera AT THE SAME TIME which is pretty impressive i think

MY hat and MY sunglasses which joris very cunningly took over during the course of the day

the "beach"

some adorable town that had LOADS of hydrangeas

I did some cool things this weekend

well. one cool thing which is that I went to this big festival type of thing all over the city called nuit blanche. I could write all about it and explain it nicely, but instead I'm going to let you google it if you're interested because I really don't feel like explaining it and also THE INTERNET. Ya. The main thing I would like to say in this post is PLEASE SEND ME PEPPERMINT CRISPS AND ALSO MONEY IF YOU WANT.

with love
emma

this post is mainly for rosie.

i have made myself dinner two nights running so now i obviously think i'm a real cook. Both of my dinners were salads, BUT one of them had quinoa in it and the other one had a courgette in it. Sometimes Rosie and I talk about things that make you a grown up. So I thought about it today and went ah ok here's a huge generalisation that if I said to anyone except Rosie they would think i was an idiot. A THING ONLY A GROWN UP WOULD BUY IS A COURGETTE.  Also a thing only a grown up would do is buy a bottle of wine and then only have ONE GLASS which is what I'm doing right now thanks.

Here are my salads.I only took these pictures because I was so pleased with what I made that I wanted Joris to see, but then I was too hungry to wait for him to come home so I just took photos.  I'm writing about food quite a lot which is really, really boring. I'll do something cool soon and then maybe I'll have something to write about. If that fails I'll just keep writing about the mouse because that proved to be a real hit.

a conversation i often have with joris

goes like this:

Joris:  What are you doing on blablalba night?
Emma: I don't know. Why?
Joris: There's a nice blablalba I'd like us to go to.
Emma: Oh ya sorry I forgot I'm seeing all my bejillion friends that night.

Then I laugh A LOT.

The point of this joke is that I don't have bejillion friends.I really like this joke, I like it so much that I would consider not making any friends so I can keep using it. I do know that it's not really a very funny joke. Joris doesn't really laugh at it anymore and he finds everything I say hiiilllaarriooouus.

Anyway the reason I thought about this is that tonight I'm going to watch a movie called source code which is, "An action thriller centered on a soldier who wakes up in the body of an unknown man and discovers he's part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. " The words in this synopsis that make me not want to watch this movie at all are action, soldier, mission and bomber.   Joris is so excited about it though which kind of makes me want to see it a lot more. Also I watched the trailer and it looks like it'll be quite a "fun" movie.

this is the view from my bedroom this afternoon

                                                   LOOK HOW ARTY THIS PHOTO IS.
i really wish i took nice photos. the only reason i thought to take this one was because when my friend kurt (who is actually arty) came to visit he took a photo through the round window in my bedroom and i thought he was very clever for thinking of it. so then i copied him. look how gloomy it is. it's raining a lot and i have promised to go buy groceries, which I'm now regretting. I would just not bother, but I finished all Joris' muesli and yoghurt. And the cheese. And also the bread. I decided yesterday that I might get into cooking and by that I mean I might get into making different kinds of salads. I'm going to buy all these cool sounding things like quinoa and farro and then i'm going to put them in salads and be smug about it. I think it's probably the most into food I'll ever manage to get. It's really nice to be good at food, but one of the worst things in the whole world is when people refer to themselves as foodies. "Oh you know me I'm just such a foodie" It actually makes me want to scream. I also hate it when people describe food in a sexual way or just make weird noises when they eat to let you know it's really good. The only time it's ok to do this is if you're a judge on masterchef and only the British version of masterchef. Then it's really funny.

i've had a nice weekend

mainly because it's been very warm, well at least above 20 degrees. Everyone goes crazy when it's basically not raining so just loads of people all skimpily dressed with white limbs sticking out and really waaaayy too gung-ho about the weather. I also started learning to play chess this weekend. They have nice cafes where people just go to play chess and have drinks and well so far I'm pathetic at chess. I think Joris was very optimistic about my potential chess skills. I think he's under the illusion that I'm a fast learner.

Something else I learnt this weekend is that the Dutch really, really like Afrikaans. They have a real thing about it. I keep getting asked to say things in Afrikaans and then having to explain that I'm really no good at speaking it because I never, ever have to at home. I'm actually so bad at Afrikaans that I was once told that I sound like I'm Russian when I try and speak it. So yes I'm just letting Dutch people down all the time. I actually feel quite bad about only speaking one language properly. The other night i was at a bar talking to joris and two of his friends ( a dutch guy and a french girl ) and I realised that the three of them could all happily converse in dutch, french or english, but obviously they had to speak english because of me and this made me feel quite stupid. Then Joris and I went to get some food from an italian restaurant and joris was happily chatting away in Italian and i felt even more stupid. It would be nice to know loads of languages.  I thought that by now I would kind of be speaking dutch in this weird broken but maybe charming way. Obviously I'm not. Everyone just speaks such good english and no one even bothers to try speak to me in dutch because i think i mostly look quite lost and confused and it's very clear that i'm not a dutch person.

i haven't written anything for a while

because i really don't have much to say. here are the highlights from my day.

- it was warm
- i wore a nice dress
- i went for a nice walk
- i ate delicious falafel

the mouse saga is probably the most interesting thing in my life. i've kind of made peace with it and we live in the same room now and i don't see  it and i'm very polite about making sure it knows i'm coming upstairs. it's the most clever mouse ever because joris and i put a trap out and IT ACTUALLY TRIED TO TAKE THE TRAP AWAY without getting caught in it. Today I heard it in the rubbish bin so I asked joris to get rid of it, but it made a hole in the plastic and ran away. I feel almost bad for trying to get rid of it. It's probably having the best time and who am I to deny a mouse a good time.

MOUSE

I AM SITTING AND WORKING IN MY ROOM AND THERE IS A MOUSE AND I AM ALL ALONE.  IT RAN ALL THE WAY ALONG MY SHOES. IT IS SO BRAVE AND TERRIFYING.

now i am perched on a chair just watching the area it's (hopefully) still hiding in. If I stay like this for the next two hours I'll be able to show Joris exactly where it is. If I move it'll be this serious mouse hunt and if we don't find it I'm not going near my bedroom which is a real problem.

It has also unfortunately taken over the kitchen area of the room and i'm quite hungry. I bet there's a whole mouse family living in the kitchen. I'll see them all dead before sunset. haha.
(the sun only sets here at around ten o clock so there's plenty of time)

i could see this as three things.

an opportunity to leave the house and go shopping to take my mind off the mouse. this isn't a wise idea.

an opportunity to go downstairs and watch dexter which is a great series about a serial killer. this is more sensible.

an opportunity to confront my fear of mice. unlikely.

the photos below

make it look like all joris and i do is play with our phones and ignore each other, which is not true, but we both have new phones and it's quite exciting. 

it's warm here

which is so great. I've been outside all day having walks and joris has taken me into a million cafes just so I can see what they look like. This is a real thing with him. On the way home he told me oh man i totally forgot there is this fish shop I wanted to show you. Obviously I was pleased he forgot. So yes Joris and I have not been to a single museum or church or place of significance, but I have seen loads of shops that sell nice bread or nice ice cream or nice whatevers. 


Here are some pictures of my day since I'm too lazy to write anything else about it. 

looking for a chess set for john in this nice chess shop

some nice place in some big park 

more nice place

i just realised

that i wrote "more constrictive things like actually working," instead of more constructive things.

HOW REVEALING.


pffffff

something that has happened to me since i've been here

is that since I have basically no friends if I do talk to someone or see people I decide that they are THE BEST people ever. For example the other day I went outside to sit on the bench and there was this girl sitting there with a map so I decided to start a conversation with her and by the end of it I just wanted her to come up to the house and have tea with me and be my nice chick friend, but obviously you can't just invite some random american biology student into a house that isn't even yours so I came upstairs all alone and felt a bit sorry for myself. I feel like I might become a bit like George Bluth in arrested development and start having tea parties with dolls. One good thing though is that I end up doing far more constrictive things like actually working. Can't just pitch up at rosie's for a million chats, or have an afternoon coffee with james or a mopey glass of wine with andre. So that's good. It's for the best having no friends. At the end of the day friends were just stopping me reaching my full potential. Pfffffffff. That's not even slightly true.

I went to see Animal Collective last night

and it was very fun, but a bit disappointing. They didn't really play that many of my favorite songs and it started quite early and I didn't feel like people got that into it. I managed to get all the way to the front where there were quite a few bro teams going bananas, but overall it wasn't half as good as I'd hoped it would be. I did go crazy when they played brothersport and summertime clothes, but I really wanted my girls and what would i want?sky. Also I wanted Rafi and Alexis cause they would have been a nice bro team with their fists up in the air and jumping around and getting so into it.

There were quite a few smug americans there complaining about how the show was no good and how they saw them live at some blablabla and it was so much better and then loads of sort of talking about animal collective like they hang out with them everyday which is one of my worst things. Still it was really nice to go and see a band I like a lot live. Next week I'm going to see Caribou which I'm very pleased about. AND THEN WU TANG CLAN ARE COMING IN JUNE. yyiiiippppppeeeeeee.

nice day

Today has been an excellent day. I've basically done nothing except eat and laze around. Last night Joris and I went to have drinks with a whole bunch of his friends who are very nice and who are also not particularly interested in speaking english all night. So basically I spent the night listening to Dutch and sometimes understanding and sometimes speaking english to certain people, but mainly drinking lot's of martinis. The guy who's house we went to (Luuk) has this great deal which is that he can live in his apartment for 100 euros a month (which is clearly nothing) but he can be kicked out at any point. It doesn't sound very glamorous, but really it's an excellent idea. The person who owns the apartment doesn't want it sitting empty because then people will just squat (which was apparently banned a year ago, but people still do it) and ruin it so they get people to live in them very cheap with the understanding that they can kick you out whenever they want to. Apparently it's quite hard to get one of these apartments and if you get called and told you have one you have to be able to move a chair, a bed and a plant into the apartment within the same day. Which is odd.

I also got to find out about riding bikes after a few martinis last night and it's pretty scary, but apparently it's what everyone does. I thought ah obviously there are bike police out who breathalise you and say no no you are over the legal bike driving limit or something, but nope apparently nothing can stand between the dutch and their bikes.

I really write a lot about bikes. I'm sure I'll get over it.

obviously

So the blog thing has been down for two days which is annoying because there are two VERY interesting things I've wanted to write about.

FIRSTLY.
obviously i've had an allergic reaction to something and had to go to the doctor. obviously i'm feeling seriously sorry for myself and being a huge drama queen. obviously i've diagnosed myself with some incurable skin disease. pffffff

SECONDLY
Yesterday I went to see an exhibition called The Svart Metal Series by some guy called Grant Willing. I don't think it's a problem never to have heard of him because HE DOESN'T EVEN HAVE A WIKIPEDIA PAGE. jeeeezzz. So the point of this exhibition was that he was going to "depict the shadowy, rebellious and occult world which is at the heart of Scandinavian Black Metal." which sounds promising or at least like it might be the grown up version of the movie the craft which I LOVED.
It really wasn't though. There was some metal band called wood or something that were meant to be playing, but they didn't seem to be able to get their equipment to work, which was a shame because it would have been quite fun or funny. Also I met my friend Kurt there (who is from Cape Town) and it was very, very nice to see him and to have a nice drink and not feel a tiny bit bad about not speaking any dutch, not knowing my way around or being awful at cycling.

Here are some pictures from the exhibition

and this is the outside of the house

and my bike in the front! I had my seat adjusted today so I'm much better at not falling off now. 

so this is what the house looks like

   

somehow i ended up at the shops today

I kind of wanted to, but I didn't think I'd be able to find my way there, BUT I DID. Which means I'm a genius of both direction and shopping. Here are some boring things I realised while shopping:

There are stripey tops everywhere and they all look great and it's important to remember that it's nonsense to own a zillion stripey tops.
You can't just  buy a short leather skirt with a zip up the back because you are in Europe.
I really like that Coldplay song about ruling the world or whatever it is and it makes me a bit sad.
It's sometimes a real shame that when people are trying on clothes in the change rooms and they come out and look at themselves in the big mirror in front of everyone that you can't just say to them you know what that really looks awful.

I'm not going to the shops again for a while because everything is nice and it makes me panic.

First Weekend

So now I have a blog and the reason for this is that
a) it's hard to send everyone emails and
b) rosie did it and it was great

It's quite hard to have a blog. It's a huge pain to choose how it will look and my computer has decided to make everything Dutch so I have no idea what's going on.

ANYWAY

Amsterdam is great. really. The weather is very warm and everyone is really friendly and I live very close to an H&M. The house I'm staying in is "so charming." All these beautiful paintings and loads of books everywhere and I have this loft bed with a nice little window and it feels kind of like I live on a cool boat. I've walked around loads and seen tons of stuffs, but I think the most important thing is that I have now ridden a bike around Amsterdam. Jees. Jees. It's hard. It's like how I find driving hard except I'm even worse at it and I have no idea where I'm going most of the time and people are SERIOUS about cycling here. I went for my first ride yesterday after sulking a lot about having to get on a bike and I really struggle to take off and stop. Once I'm going it's ok, but I can't stop the bike without basically falling off. I think the seat is too high. Apparently this is not true. ALSO my shoes keep falling off when I ride which is pretty embarrassing. I'm sure I'll get used to it. I really should.

Here are some pictures of things.

This is a photo I took from Joris' Boat. 

 Sitting on the side of the canal

View from the public library. 

Trying to cross the road with cars and bikes and trams all over the place and on the wrong side of the road. it's far out.