Angry tweeting and general laughter
This year the PhDs of the institute had their traditional day out (uitje) to The Hague. The last two years they had stayed in Leiden, so The Hague already seemed like quite the adventure. Indeed, it seems almost that as time progresses and more and more archives become digitized, history PhDs slowly turn into hermit-like armchair scientists. The organizing committee this year consisted of Chris Engberts, Byapti Sur, and Joris van den Tol.
Get your nerd on
The day consisted of three activities. The first was a trip to the Mauritshuis. This newly renovated museum, that was originally built in the seventeenth century by Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen, hosts one of the most impressive collections of sixteenth to eighteenth century paintings in the world. Two museum guides – one in English, and one in Dutch – showed the almost thirty participants around. It was called a ‘highlight tour’, but it included almost all the art works; from portraits by Antonio Moro to impressionist-like paintings of the late Rembrandt, and from the bull by Paulus Potter to Fabritius’ Goldfinch, and Vermeers’ Girl with the pearl earring.
The second activity of the day was a pub quiz in Café de Hoppzak. The pub quiz was of course very heavy on history and was called Het grote Chris Quiz spel because Chris Engberts was one of the organizers. It included questions such as ‘on this day, which country in Africa celebrates forty years of independence from the Portuguese yoke?’, and ‘who commissioned the Mauritshuis’? The music round consisted completely of pop songs that either in the title of the song, or the artist contained a historical figure. In other words, the five team had ample opportunity to geek out as historians, and to get their nerd on. Team two, also known as Ariel and the Imperialists, won the pub quiz with 47,5 points, two more points than team one. In their victory Kate Ekama, Ariel Lopez, Tristan Mostert, and Stefan Penders combined knowledge of ancient history (what is a vomitorium?), early modern history (who fought the 335 year’s war?), general knowledge (what is the tallest mountain?), and art history (put these paintings in chronological order).
To end the day the group sat down in a restaurant that served pizza, pasta and salads. In general everybody left the place satisfied, but there were two people who could not get a dessert because they were out. Not hindered by any social norms, this led to some angry tweeting and general laughter. This concluded the official program, and this reporter firmly claims not to know at what time the last participants crawled out of some local pub that featured clowns on the ceiling.