Today. Was. AWESOME. We finally went to Amsterdam! We finally rode a train! We finally rode in boats down canals! We finally went to the Anne Frank house! It was so fun! I have to add Amsterdam to my list of Top Five Favorite Cities, that's how cool it was.
We started the day at 8 in the morning (which is relatively early for those of us from halfway around the time zones) and, for the first time in our lives, we rode the train. It's a lot like how I thought it would be, yet at same time very different. For one, the whole "riding across half the country by train" was a lot smaller deal than I would have expected. Also, I was expecting everything to be in dark tunnels underground like, I don't know, maybe London? So I was surprised when we came out of the short tunnel in the train station to be greeted by lots of light and actually getting to watch the city pass by (we likened it to the scene in the Hunger Games when Katniss's train comes out of the tunnel and into the awe-inspiring Capitol. Granted, we're not going to our potential deaths, but the Capitol analogy stands). Along the way, we saw a wide variety of what the Netherlands had to offer including various cities, farms, cows, and Delusional Dutch.
After being on the train for about an hour and a half, we finally reached the esteemed "Venice of the North" (although if it were up to me I would nickname Venice "Amsterdam of the South," Amsterdam being one of my new favorite cities). The city is arranged in less of a traditional city block grid formation and more in a way that suggests the citizens just added buildings, bridges, and canals when and where they were needed. Every street has a bike path and a canal running parallel, almost like the road system, the bike paths, and the canals are identical layered maps that've been shifted slightly. Then, the tram system runs using the roads, like another map that hasn't (i) been shifted. As you can tell, the got a lot of different transportation options.
Our first order of business was a quick canal tour of various sites in Amsterdam (or as some people call it, A'dam). We cruised by a lot of different historic and otherwise buildings like the house where the mayor traditionally lives, old merchant mansions, a replica of an old merchant ship, three-door wide average houses, houseboats, etc. Pictures taken from the canal boat:
The average Amsterdammer's house. Up at the top of the buildings you can see little projections with hooks at the end. These are furniture hooks. The average house's doors are too small and stairs are too skinny and steep for moving furniture, so instead people have to use ropes and hooks to pull their furniture to the upper floors.
One of the many canal-spanning bridges.
After the canal tour, we hopped onto another form of transportation (trams) and rode over to the Anne Frank House (or in Dutch, Anne Frank Huis). Unfortunately, an anonymous forgetful grandfather accidentaly left Grammy's iPad on the tram. While Grandpa heroically jumped on the next tram in pursuit of the device, the rest of us went to stand in line at the Anne Frank House. After about 45 minutes of standing in line, Carolyn, Jean, and I were finally allowed in while Grammy waited outside for Grandpa, having already been twice.
Inside, there were sadly no cameras allowed, so I don't have any pictures to show you. Which is a big disappointment, especially since there were so many cool things! The museum section separate from the actual house had as many relics of Anne and her fellow hidden people that remained, including her sister Margot's Latin lessons, her father Otto's map tracking the Allied invasion, her mother's prayer book, her friend Peter's monopoly set, and so on. Having just finished the book days ago, it was interesting to see the objects that Anne had written about roughly 70 years ago.
Eventually, we got into the actual Secret Annex, complete with the original bookcase (she was correct in writing about how they all hit their heads on the door. Mine almost hit before I remembered). Inside, all of the rooms were smaller than I expected. While Anne never made it sound like they lived in a mansion I had thought still that they would have been bigger. Anne's room was barely bigger than a walk-in closet, and I can hardly imagine that one person and their belongings would fit, let alone two. The main room (containing the kitchen, Mr. and Mrs. Van Pels' bedroom, and the living room), was made out to be at least a slightly-larger-than-average room, whereas it was actually closer to the size of my bedroom.
Scattered throughout the museum were televisions, playing different interviews on a loop. One of the ones I found most interesting was that from Hanneli Goslar, a fellow Jew and friend of Anne's that she thinks of when in some of her darker times in the Annex. In "Hanne"'s interview, we learned a fraction of what happened to Anne after her arrest. Although Hanneli and her family managed to avoid arrest for some time by changing their nationality to that of a Nazi ally, after some time they were put into the more privileged section of a concentration camp. Months later, Hanne discovered that her best friend Anne was in the less privileged section, just on the other side of the fence. They reunited, and Anne told Hanneli that her sister just died and she had nothing to live for. Hanne gathered some extra bread and socks from her section of the camp before passing them to Anne. They never saw each other again, and Anne died days later. I found this story intriguing, having wondered what happened after the book, but also immensely sad knowing that Hanneli was likely the last person from Anne's old life to see her before she died.
Which brings me to another intruiging yet sad point: the death count book. I'd never even heard of this nook before reading The Fault In Our Stars, *minor TFIOS spoilers* in which the main character notices that beneath Anne in the book (who's full name was Annelise Frank) there were FOUR Aron Franks *end spoiler*. I thought it was sad that not only was the entire Anne Frank family on there, but also an entire PAGE of other Franks that possibly spilled onto the next. If there's an entire page for ONE LAST NAME, imagine how many people died for an entire BOOK.
It's late now, and I have to wrap up the post with a quick summary of the later events. Basically, we went through the rest of the museum where they had stuff like food coupons and Jan Gies' identity card. Outside, Grandpa had tracked down the iPad (yay!) and we visited Amsterdam's central block. There was a historic church that we quickly popped into which was cool, but it didn't have quite as much history as some of the other churches we've visited. By then we were tired, so we hopped back on the train and headed home. I'm off to get some sleep now. Tomorrow we're going biking again!
Update: Yay! The Netherlands World Cup team just had what is possible their biggest win ever (5-1) against last World Cup's winners Spain. There were so many good plays! My favorite was the goal where a player (I don't remember who) did a header into the goal before going into a penguin slide with a look of shock on his face. Priceless.
Update 2 from June 14: You would not BELIEVE how many orange flags we saw today. Between walking through Rotterdam and biking around some of the places by Jean's house. We saw so many enthusiastic fan decorations!
You continue to educate me and broaden our horizons, Mikaela. Good work! You know, if I didn't know better, I would think that this blog is being written by an adult (rather than my precocious granddaughter).
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