[Insider 52] Week 3 from Europe
all the sights plus a chance to win a FREE drawing!
Dear Insider,
This week I met many wonderful people and saw many wonderful things. I am now in my final week of vacation. In today’s post, scenes from meetups and a chance to win a free drawing!
The SneakyArt Post is a publication about secretly drawn art. Every week I share beautiful sights from my world - featuring ordinary people, found in ordinary places, on ordinary days, doing ordinary things. SneakyArt is about finding extraordinary beauty produced in the flux of everyday human life.
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I biked to the Rijksmuseum and sat in the shade of trees lining Museumplein. Facing the Van Gogh museum, I watched the people in the park.
Some sat on the soft grass in the company of friends. Smoke and conversation wafted in the air.
Others posed for social media. At the press of a button, they shot hashtags and filters up to satellites high in the sky. This data was packaged and reflected back to earth immediately, for anyone else that may care to see it.
A lone saxophonist played to an indifferent audience. Even with the wind rustling through the trees, I could hear the strains of his instrument in the far distance. Can you see him in the drawing below?
Afterwards I sat in the middle of the park to draw the front of the Rijksmuseum. I was joined by a tourist who saw me drawing. He introduced himself as Bangladeshi, and we immediately bonded over our geographic proximity. My home city of Kolkata is, after all, just a couple of hours from the Bangladesh border.
I forget his name now, but he is a soldier in the Bangladesh army, working with the UN Peacekeeping forces in South Sudan. This was the start of his solo vacation through Europe. We spoke in Bengali about movies and food, and I learned also about the extreme deprivations in Sudan. We should be thankful, he said, for what we have, not only in the West but also in India and Bangladesh. So many people have absolutely nothing.
This week I also spent time in the company of old friends. Surely it is a privilege to have friendships that endure over time and distance.