Day 15 Back to Amsterdam, Coming Home Tomorrow! June 30, 2008

5 hours, hotel to hotel, that's what it takes to change cities around here.
I took the train this morning from Brugges to Amsterdam, and it was much less stressful than when I went from Utrecht to Brugges! I only had to change trains once in Antwerp, and I'd been to the very cool 4-level Antwerp station on the way in, so I understood the layout.

My hotel is a real jewel. My room is up 85 steep, narrow stairs (yes, I actually counted them.) It's on the top floor and the toilet is in a little room down the hall; same with the shower. It's super tiny and very plain, but it has a lovely leafy view out the window, and it's only two blocks from the Anne Frank House, right in downtown Amsterdam, and it's cheap and clean. This is the street with my hotel.

15 minutes after I checked in, I was back out and on the way to the Rijksmuseum. Two heavenly hours I spent exploring only the best of the best of their collection, because the rest is closed for renovation and not on view. This is definitely the way to see a museum! Don't waste time on the lesser masterpieces, just go for the gold. In fact, for one of their new acquisitions they spent a cool 12 million euros! The main painters I studied were Vermeer, Jan Steen, and Rembrandt. It was really fun, and Angela can be jealous all day for me!

I knew that the Anne Frank house is open until 9:00, and the lines are gone in the evening, so I did that after the Rijksmuseum closed. The building you see at left is actually her father's business. There was another building hidden behind, which couldn't be seen from the street. So they hid behind the warehouse.

On the way I stopped into a supermarket, looking for both supper and breakfast, and came out with a nectarine, 2 rolls, lots of chocolate (your souvenirs) and something labeled "luchtige" yoghurt. The cognate is "light" so I thought that meant lo-cal. OK. But it really meant "airy," like whipped. So I had airy yoghurt, and it was great!

Some of you may remember when we took you to the Anne Frank House about 1990. Well, they've changed it a lot since then! They bought 2 buildings next to it, to give you a better visitor's center-type introduction to what you will see. They also have blacked out most of the windows, so it will seem more like when the Frank family hid there. I was very involved. In fact, when I realized I'd finished the house and was returning to the visitor's center, I walked backwards against the flow to see it all again before I left. The only entrance to the house was behind the cupboard you see below. The church steeple at the top of this post is what she could see from her attic window.

It is amazing to me how one bright teenager could express so well what she felt and what happened to her. She actually became the voice for millions of others who had no voice. She taught us the horror of the Holocaust, by personalizing it for us.

Otto Frank (her dad) did not read the diary until after he came back from the concentration camp. All his family was gone. Miep (one who had helped them hide) presented the diary to him, but he faound it too painful to read for awhile. When he finally did read, he was amazed. They had had a very good relationship, but he never knew she had such deep thoughts and feelings. He felt like she was an entirely different person than the daughter he knew. He concluded that most parents don't really know their own children. Is that possible? I have thought a lot about that, and I think he's right.

I kind of didn't want to let go of the moment, so I just sat down on a bench with my back to the canal and ate my yoghurt and nectarine and looked up at the old warehouse with the secret annex in back. I guess I don't have any desire to check out the famous Amsterdam nightlife!

The picture just above is the neighborhood, and the picture to the left is the warehouse from across the canal. It's right beside the red awning. The next 2 doors to the right are the visitor's center.

P.S. on Day 2 Corrie Ten Boom's House; June 17, 2008

Day 2, first night in Haarlem, we got a wonderful surprise! Just by accident, we happened upon the house of Corrie Ten Boom. She wrote The Hiding Place. She and her family hid Jews from the Nazis. We came back for a free tour an hour later, and it was the best! This is the very house over the family clock shop from which she rode her bicycle all over town, bringing Jews home to be hidden until they could be passed to another location. It was very moving.
Our tour guide was a volunteer. Both her parents had been in the Dutch Resistance. She has been a guide at the Corrie Ten Boom house for 20 years, since one month after it opened. She got choked up at some things, and you can tell she is very religious, just like Corrie Ten Boom and her family. She repeated very sincerely Corrie's question, "Are you His child?" It was an emotional experience for both Shelley and me.
In this picture you can see the closet where they hid. It's only about 2 feet deep and 8 feet long. Shel is sitting in the hole made recently so that people can see into the closet. Their actual entrance was through a panel in the bottom of the cupboard next to her.

Day 3 Amsterdam; June 18, 2008

The train from Haarlem to Amsterdam sped through the countryside and in 20 minutes we were right in the center of Amsterdam. Trains are quick and cheap--cost us €6.80 for a round-trip ticket. It's amazing to me how much countryside there is here. There really are no suburbs. I guess that's because everybody lives in apartments, and nobody has a house and a yard and a 2-car garage! All the countryside is flat polderland, which means it was reclaimed from the sea. There are small canals everywhere, still providing drainage.
Amsterdam is called "The Venice of the North" because it has hundreds of canals, which circle the city in concentric rings. We walked down the main streets and over the canal bridges, sharing the road with streetcars and a few autos. There's every kind of shop you can imagine, from Esprit and H & M to coffee shops which sell legal marijuana. (We didn't buy any.)
Then we found a cool little place almost like a hidden convent, called the Beguinnenhof(sp?). It's not really a convent because the women have never taken vows, but the ladies have been known for their good works. It's been a residence for widows and poor women for hundreds of years. It has lovely apartments surrounding a central courtyard, the city's oldest wooden house, a Catholic church and a Protestant church. The pilgrims who came to America on the Mayflower actually stopped here on their way and prayed ïn the Protestant church, because they were in such a hurry to flee persecutions in England.
We wandered for hours, with Shelley leading the way, since she was here last year. You see we found the flower market, of course!
We took a lovely canal boat ride that circled the inner city on the Herrengracht (one of the main canals) and then out toward the harbor and back. The weather held, though skies were grey. It was quite a pleasant rest for our feet!
After awhile we stopped at the Leidesplein, which is a big town square lined with restaurants and shops, and sat at an outdoor table. Of course, here came the waiter asking what we wanted to order. You can't just sit at their tables without ordering! So we each had a soda and another rest for the tired feet. I remembered how I used to really like European orange Fanta, so I had one. It looks like lemonade and is quite mild. Delicious!
I wanted to see the Van Gogh Museum, so we walked there too and got in for the last 45 minutes it was open. I was really thrilled to see so many originals I have seen before in books.
By 6:00 we were really tired from walking all day. We took take the tram back to the Centraal Station, (yes that is the correct Dutch spelling) and in a few minutes we were boarding the train, and 20 minutes later we were back in our town of Haarlem. Then came the walk back to the hotel on the main square, which is about 1/2 a mile away. We got back to the room and just crashed for a few minutes.
We are still chasing problems with our VISA cards. Seems they are set up here to take money from our savings, not our checking accounts.
Tonight there is a huge concert in the square outside our hotel. They've been setting up for 2 days. There's a big canopy over a large stage and a huge sound system. It looks like a rock concert, but when we were just there, someone was playing country music on the stage and only a few people were standing around. It looks really strange to me, because the rock concert is set up in the middle of the medieval square, surrounded by 500-year-old buildings! It's still early, only about 8:00. Last night it didn't get dark until almost 11:00, because we are so far north. I think they expect a lot more people, from the bathrooms they brought in on a truck!

SLC to Amsterdam & Haarlem, Day 1 & 2; June 16 & 17, 2008

Hello, Everybody!
Here I am in the Netherlands with Shelley!
My plane was over 2 hours late leaving Newark, so I just waited at Shelley's gate to find her at the airport in Amsterdam. Lots easier than expected!
We had to find a red bus #300 to take us out to the town of Haarlem where our hotel was. We had only a 50 euro note to pay the bus fare, so the driver let us ride for free! It was a lovely ride through the countryside and lots of modern metal-and glass towns and the sun was shining and it was glorious! I kept hoping the inspectors would not get on the bus, because we were actually illegal because we did not pay for a ticket and I'm sure the driver would deny ever having spoken to us!
In Haarlem, we got off the bus at the central train station, and Shelley found the street to take us to the center of the old town, where our hotel is. Dragging our suitcases over the cobbled walks, we arrived at the market square after about ten minutes. It is so quaint and cute! Most of the buildings date to before the 1600's when Haarlem used to be a big commerce center for the tulip trade and wool. It has a huge old meat market building with carvings of bulls on the facade and they made leather on the second story.
Our hotel is right on the old market square. It's on the upper stories of an old building. Like all my other hotels, it is cheap and central and nothing special except for the location. It has a view over the red tile rooftops and you can see the church tower lit up at night. The church is huge and old and Flamboyant Gothic, probably dating from the 1500's.
Last night the Netherlands played soccer for the quarter finals in the European cup. All the bars were decorated in orange and full of people watching big-screen TV and shouting and cheering and smoking and drinking. Shelley and I walked around to several and enjoyed the hype.
Today we are taking the train into Amsterdam to take a walking tour. I chose the hotel in Haarlem instead of Amsterdam because I wanted a wholesome atmosphere. This town is quiet and quaint, not like free-wheeling Amsterdam!