Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry.

After my day in Aachen I took a short train ride to Maastrict and spent most of a day there. It's odd, insomuch as it's a Dutch city with hills... it has some interesting historical churches, city walls, etc., and was generally nice to wander through as the temperature had dropped from the >35C of recent times to the mid-20s.

I took a tour of the "caves" - actually old limestone mines - a couple of km out of town. It turns out there is a huge network of these tunnels - thousands of miles in total - that extend not just under a hill outside Maastrict but all the way under the border to Belgium. They've been used for smuggling people or things under the border at various times in history - apparnetly the Belgian resistance made especially good use. Looking at the map, it mostly made me think of the Tombs of Atuan.



I posted some more phonecam photos over on Pixelfed: 1 2

Heading home now after a couple of days with Dutch-resident friends; I'm writing this from the Aberdeen->Kirkwall ferry.

HOT

But aside from that, partly in search of a/c, I went to the Royal Academy summer exhibition. Mostly it was stuff that did nothing for me, but clearly thought very worthy. That’s OK, art is about personal taste. THe things I liked were generally £15000 or more, but that's also OK, as I didn't go in with the intention of buying anything - I know that buying art at the Royal Academy isn't for the likes of me.

Except, right at the end, there was a screenprint of wind turbines that spoke to me; it really captured the amount of energy in the air in a way that photos of a wind farm can’t. I bought a limited edition print for a just-about affordable amount.

The next day I met up with friend L and we went to see the musical of Benjamin Button. I was a little sceptical of this, but it won me over: An intimate show in a small theatre, and not a typical West End show. Musically it's folky, trying (and succeeding) to be anchored in Cornwall. There is no orchestra per se. The actors all play instruments - usually more than one - and switch between singing, acting, and playing, fluidly, sometimes within a line of a song. Must have been a nightmare to cast for. If I have a criticism it's that the lyrics don't have great depth, but that doesn't really matter. It's good music, it's good storytelling with impact and humour, it's nicely lit, and most of all it is really well directed - with the exception of the titular character it's an ensemble piece where the audience’s attention has to be guided slickly around the stage, and it accomplishes this with ease.
Worth a visit if this appeals to you. Act 2 is a tearjerker...