The Amsterdam meetings were also blessedly short.  When we scheduled them, our Dutch counterpart had forgotten that it was a holiday.  He was gracious enough not to cancel the meeting, given that we’d made the effort to fly to Amsterdam specifically to see him, but he also recognized that all of us might be interested in having a free afternoon.  So we covered the key points that would benefit the most from in-person discussions, and then we split.  

I began by dragging my colleague to the Van Gogh museum.  He’s from Texas and this was his first time in Europe.  Before the trip he had told me that he had no interest in exploring the towns, eating delicious food, or seeing art (one hour in a museum is all he could handle).  Obviously my job was to bring this benighted soul into the fold, and I figured that Van Gogh would be a good way to do that:  It’s a small museum and focuses on telling the story of Van Gogh.  You really can see a range of the artist’s work and evolution over time.  The exhibitions do a good job situating Van Gogh in art history, and I was able to add more commentary to help Steven connect.  And the great thing is that he got it!  He paid attention and started noticing things (“That harvest scene looks like where I went to school in Kansas”), then started having opinions (“I don’t really like that outlining as much as when there’s no outlining”), then asking questions (“But why is this important as art?”), and then finally making his own interpretations (“These paintings from late in life seem to show lots of sunsets, as if he knew he was on his way out”).  When we left the museum he turned to me and thanked me for taking him; he said he had no idea art could be so interesting and cool.  Warmed the cockles of my heart.

After that we parted ways.  He wanted to find a windmill and some tulip fields; I wanted more art and food and city exploration.