EAVP 2016 at Haarlem’s Teylers Museum (1)

After all the recent photogrammetry posts it is high time to get away from “stuff that somehow has to do with dinosaurs a little bit” and finally write again about dinosaurs themselves. Which is why I now will write about something that has nothing much to do with dinosaurs at all: 2016’s EAVP (European Association of Vertebrate Palaeontologists) conference, which took place in the wonderful Teylers Museum in the wonderful town of Haarlem (wikipedia). But fear not – dinosaurs will feature in a post later this week 😉

The trip to EAVP 2016 wasn’t my first visit to Haarlem. I went there a few years ago when I applied for a job at Teylers Museum. A job I didn’t get, in the end. Back then I was quite disappointed, because it would have been a very cool job to do in some regards – you’ll see why, when I get around to describing the museum. On the other hand, it would have meant some pretty radical changes to my family’s plans and a pay cut. In the end, I guess I would have been happy there, but I am also happy where I am now.

When I went to Haarlem the first time, for the job interview, it was February, and grey cold weather. I arrived in the early evening, by train, and walked to my hotel – and already I had fallen in love with the city! It is very much cliché: canals, small brick houses built wall-to-wall, cobblestone roads in the city center. And a windmill! Which I promptly photographed the next morning.

Here are some more views of the town, both during the day and in the evening. I am posting them here, although they have no relevance whatsoever to dinosaurs or palaeontology, because the town has quite a relevance for the way a visitor will experience Teylers Museum: the museum is special due to its history and the state it is preserved in (intentional choice of words here), and it fits into the town in a way other museum of natural history don’t. So bear with me, get to know Haarlem a bit.

Lots of small shops, cafés, and most certainly a huge number of bicycles! Well, it’s Holland, so what should one expect? This road is obviously one of the more picturesque ones, but there are plenty of them in the old downtown of Haarlem. It is an old town, having gained city rights in 1245 A.D., which doesn’t make it very old compared to many other places in Western Europe, but does mean – given the lack of WWII carpet bombing and other devastation – that it has an old, grown city center.

Haarlem is – what a surprise! – full of canals. On the smaller canals – wait one, let’s clear up terminology first: a canal is called a gracht in Dutch if there are roads on both sides and it is in a town, a singel if it is or used to be a moat surrounding a city, even it the city has grown to include it and it now looks like a gracht, a kanaal if it is in the countryside and mostly for drainage, or a vaart if it is in the countryside and mainly a transportation route. This out of the way, let me say that there are a lot of small boats, but also sometimes bigger ones that, for example, which for example may serve as flower shops.

The big river of Haarlem, the Spaarne, which runs right past hte city center and has quite a lot of ship traffic going on, is virtually indistinguishable from any other gracht but for its width and runs by Teylers Museum, with its quite overboardingly decorated facade.

Here’s a closer view.

But I am getting ahead of myself, as I wanted to show you the town before I show you the museum building, which then is to be followed by the museum’s content. And then soem words on the EAVP meeting. So, here’s another view of that windmill, this time with the sun out:

Also, some views of the city hall and the Grote Kerk St. Bavo (“Great church”, i.e. cathedral), which both (and a bunch of nice restaurants) are located on Grote Markt (I guess there is no need to translate this name).

The Grote Markt is still being used as a market square, Monday and Saturday, and has not only a large number of stalls selling all kinds of things, but also a bunch of theropod ne’er-do-wells hanging around.

All this sounds quite quaint, and there is much more to like about Haarlem that makes it appear more like a country village than a bustling town. For example, although most roads are narrow and the sidewalks narrow, with little to no room for anything green, there are still a lot of flowers in view as soon as you leave the (indeed bustling) shopping streets of downtown, and walk into the residential areas of the owl town. Aside from balcony flower boxes, quite a lot of houses have Alceas (wikipedia) growing in front, not in flower beds or pots, but simply between the pavement stones.

Compared to Germany, a lot of Haarlem looks very British to me, considering the bricks, doorframes styles, window styles, door styles and so on, but the huge Alceas combined with the plethora of bikes somehow dispel that notion and make the place distinctly un-British.

Many shops in the city enter are still small and non-chain, and have individual signs hanging out in front.

And, obviously, a lot of grachts mean a lot of bridges. Many of these are drawbridges that will be pulled up for larger ships, and quite many are pedestrian/bike only. Overall, the narrow streets and the no-car bridges make Haarlem a very nice town to walk in.

Now let me close up this post with a few sunny daytime views, both of the Grote Kerk, seen from a nice restaurant we had lunch at during the conference, and of Teylers Museum seen from across the Spaarne river

Enough for today! It is time I introduce you to Teylers Museum and a few bits about its history in the next post.