A couple of random impressions:
1. Dutch sounds like English! Seriously, it's how I imagine English must sound to non-English speakers, except for the hard "ch". It's so easy to see how it is the middle ground between German and English. Between my familiarity with both I was able to understand about 80-90% of all written Dutch. Spoken is a different matter, but their intonations and rhythms are so similar that I kept thinking I was hearing someone speak English. (And maybe that's partly why their English is generally so good. Seriously, I met so many native Dutch speakers who spoke English without any foreign accent at all!)
2. The red light district is gross. Not because of the pervasiveness of sex; it's more in-your-face than American culture allows, but I'm used to it from all of my time in Germany. No, it's just GROSS. Crowded, trash all over the streets, puddles of water/whoknowswhatelse... I actually just found myself subconsciously making a thizz face as I remembered it. I accidentally walked through on my first day and then purposefully avoided the center old city for the rest of my time there.
My Amsterdam experience might've lacked some of the things some people would consider typical, but that's because I love wandering the streets of a city as much as anything else. I might've skipped the most famous museums and the coffee shops, but I still think I got the flavor of this one-of-a-kind place. So without further ado...
I obviously can't take a city weekend trip without my travel guru.
Just a couple of what I'm sure are thousands of leaning buildings. Apparently it was sometimes done on purpose, so people could haul goods up to higher floors through the windows without hitting the lower levels.
Pretty canals. I have so many pictures that are just like this, because each time I was convinced it was a different/better view than the one I had just passed 10 minutes before.
Royal Palace on Dam Square. Formerly the City Hall, became the Royal Palace when Napoleon came along and made his brother king. Today it's one of four residences of the Family of Orange (Steves, 2014). Also, it was constructed on 13,000 wooden pilings. Wow.
Selfies when I travel solo.
De Papegaai Hidden Church. Catholics were persecuted for centuries in Holland and Catholicism was technically illegal from c. 1500 to 1750, but as long as they worshipped quietly it was tolerated. This one is tucked away on the largest pedestrian shopping zone in modern Amsterdam. (Steves, 2014)
The facade of the church.
Oldest wooden house in Amsterdam, built in 1477. It survived two massive city fires. (Steves, 2014)
Sold at the flower market. Casual.
Tulip bulbs. The ones that clear customs in Canada and the U.S. are specially labeled.
Like Prague, Amsterdam understands that it couldn't survive without tourism. Every effort is therefore made to keep the city aesthetically appealing. These flowers are part of the effort, and they make everything so pretty!
A solid life policy.
The famous Rijksmuseum. I know it contains some of the most well-recognized Dutch artists in history, and if I were in the city for a week I probably would've gone. But as it was, I didn't want to spend a whole day inside pretending I like staring at paintings (when, really, I really don't).
So I just took a picture in front of it. Does this count?!
A really interesting aspect of Amsterdam is the collision of the historical and the ultra modern. This is a perfect example: a world-famous art museum, constructed in the Renaissance and Gothic styles, with a neon sign flashing on the front.
Day 2: This was the view from my hostel at breakfast.
The morning of day two was devoted to the Anne Frank Huis (pronounced "house". The "ui" combo is exactly like the "ou" combo in English and the "au" combo in German and once you figure that out, just about every word with "ui" in it is a perfect combination of English and German. For example, "exit" in German is "ausgang", pronounced "ouss-gahng", and "exit" in Dutch is "uitgang", pronounced "out-gahng". It's one step closer on the way to "out". But I digress.)
If you want to see the Anne Frank Huis, buy your tickets beforehand. You can reserve a time slot online, but you have to reserve it about two weeks beforehand during the peak season (i.e. May to September). I tried to get there right when it opened and still ended up waiting two hours. But I think it was worth it. I've been to the Museum of Tolerance, The Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., Neuengamme Concentration Camp, and Dachau Concentration Camp, but this museum was able to add a different perspective to WWII and the Holocaust. For one thing, it was much more personal and actually being in the home made it easy to put yourself in their position. The windows were all blacked out like how it would've actually been, and the rooms were really small: it was hard to imagine staying in such a tiny place for two years. And it also provided a lot of information about the people who helped the family while they were hiding, which I found both informative and inspiring. It's great to hear about the ordinary acts of bravery that people are capable of in oppressive times.
Pictures aren't allowed in the Anne Frank Huis, so you'll just have to go yourself. :)
And since I don't have any pictures of the museum, here's another one of a canal!
After the museum I wandered through what is called the "9 Little Streets", which is basically a progression of - you guessed it - nine streets full of unique and adorable boutiques. I saw things like...
A thrift store with a room dedicated entirely to fur coats,
A store that only sold giant bolts of silk,
A store full of big bulky awesome jewelry,
A store whose entire window display was pink,
And a store "for, about, and with cats"
I also passed by a houseboat museum and I've always wondered what they look like inside, so I climbed aboard!
Super tiny sleeping quarters for the skipper and fam, before the modern family houseboat.
See? Tiny.
But the rest is surprisingly spacious. This is just the living area. The kitchen was completely separate, there was a full bathroom with shower, and the back had room for a separate bedroom.
I want to live in a houseboat...
Oh look! Some for sale!
And it's not just weird recluses that live in them. There are all sorts of people who live in houseboats.
I had a blast people-watching at one of the canal intersections. There were many tourists in paddle boats whose driving skills left something to be desired, and when they encountered a canal tour boat, it was always a good laugh.
Watching the different people float by was also good fun. I saw some guys who had all dyed their hair the same shade of green, others who looked like they had way overloaded the capacity of the boat, and countless people sipping wine as they floated along. If I lived in Amsterdam I would choose a tiny apartment and save money to get a boat. It's the way to live.
If I hadn't been traveling alone, I definitely would've tried to catch a ride with some Dutch people. I think that could've been a blast.
This is one of the iconic pictures of Amsterdam that you'll see on postcards on Google Images. I'll save you the several hours you would spend checking out every intersection from all angles (I mean, not that I did that or anything...) and tell you now that it is at the corner of Keizersgracht and Leidsegracht
The first person I asked to take this picture, while a very friendly British man, cut off half of the houses in the background. So I waited for a girl with a DSLR to come along, and she snapped the perfect shot. Always look for the tourist with the nice camera.
Forgive the picture of food, but this was a delicious Indian spread that I had ALL. TO. MY. SELF. I figured, The Dutch East India Trading Company was a thing, so Indian food was appropriate, right?
Sunday morning I went to the Dutch Resistance Museum with a Canadian girl I met at my hostel, and it was well worth it. I highly recommend it. Unlike so many other WWII-related things, this was inspiring, rather than depressing. The Anne Frank Huis gave a small sample of what ordinary people did to resist Nazi oppression, and this was a whole museum dedicated to it. Really, from the moment the Nazis took over in 1940 to the complete liberation in 1945, the Dutch people were a persistent thorn in the side of the regime, from falsifying papers to organizing railroad strikes, from making homemade radios to distributing illegal newspapers. It's quite impressive. (Also, I almost just made a Harry Potter reference. But I kind of wonder if JK Rowling took some examples from the Dutch when writing about the Voldemort resistance... Ok I'm done.)
I just had to document this lunch, because it was a random corner cafe that we found that didn't look too touristy. I paid a whopping 6 euros for this, and look how fancy it is! Goat cheese and roasted veggies on brown bread with pine nuts and a honey drizzle. So fancy.
As per my usual habit, I had to get a bird's eye view of the city. Unfortunately, I think the view from one of the church steeples probably would've been much better than this one from the library. But at least the clouds were cool. And this view, unlike the church steeples, was free.
Proof that it was me.
How is it that each canal was picture-perfect? I have soooo many more pictures and selfies that I'm sparing you from. Only the best pictures here.
And the sunset. Another Canadian girl (considering there are only 30 million Canadian citizens, I do seem to meet a lot of them when I travel) insisted we go check it out because apparently the one on Saturday was exceptional. This one was definitely still pretty, but we gave her a hard time because it was pretty damn cold out there while we waited for the colors to change.
And on my last trek back to the train station, I had to capture some cloud porn for you. You're welcome.
Centraal Station heading out.
And now, at the risk of being completely cliche, I give you a quote from The Fault in Our Stars (by John Green, in case you live under a rock and don't know).
"Cyclists pedaled past - well-dressed men and women on their way home from work, improbably attractive blond girls riding sidesaddle on the back of a friend's bike, tiny helmetless kids bouncing around in plastic seats behind their parents... Little boats were moored at the brick banks, half full of rainwater, some of them near sinking. A bit farther down the canal, I could see houseboats floating on pontoons, and in the middle of the canal, an open-air, flat-bottomed boat decked out with lawn chairs and a portable stereo idled toward us."
John Green is much more poetic than I am, and that description, though idealized, is spot-on.
