19 June to 24 June 2015
I was writing a review the other day for the hostel we stayed at in Amsterdam (Meininger Hotel, if you want to look it up!), and I essentially gushed about how great the city is, so I figured it would make sense to turn that review into a (rather late) post about one of my favourite places we've visited so far.
First up, the hostel. Meininger was super modern, very clean, and had the best wifi connection of any place we've stayed. We shared a 4 bed room with rotating roommates over the course of 5 days, but it was a HUGE room. It even had its own bathroom, which was also huge, and a novelty to us since we've been using dorm-style shared bathrooms this whole time. The beds were comfy, the whole place was pretty quiet, and it was definitely the nicest place we have stayed at.
We didn't think it was ideally located at first (ie. not in the city centre), but as it turns out, Amsterdam's public transit is impeccable and far, far better than what we're used to in Vancouver. Meininger is right beside Sloterdijk station, which is one train stop from Centraal station. But as train tickets are only sold as single or return tickets and not as daily passes, we decided to go with the bus/metro/tram 4-day pass. This allowed us to use any bus, metro, or tram an unlimited amount of times in a 96-hour period for only €21. Everyday, we took bus 48 to Centraal station, which takes less than 20 minutes!
I don't want to gush on and on about how great I think Amsterdam is, so I'll just use a list to pick out the main points.
Everyone I know who's given us advice about what to do in Amsterdam told us two very important things: eat frites and try rijsstaffel, an Indonesian dish that literally translates to "rice table". Fair enough, I thought, I'll eat pretty much anything. Even Megan, who's a fairly picky eater, was definitely game for the frites (potatoes are one of her main food groups) and was willing to try Indonesian.
SO, the frites: holy crap. They're so, so, SO sinfully delicious. It's hard to pinpoint why, though. I mean, they are literally French fries with mayo...how are they so much better than what we've got back home?! It's either got to be the fact that they don't mass produce to the level that we do at home, or the oil they use...either way, BEST fries we have ever had. Who knew they could be so good?
Rijsstaffel, on the other hand, was a whole other experience. I had heard from a few people that we should try to make t to a particular restaurant, Blauw, for this culinary dish. Apparently local food bloggers rave about it, so of course we wanted to get in on that. We had to make a reservation to ensure we were able to make it in, so we blundered around their website to do so, attempting to translate from Dutch as we went along.
The restaurant was away from the city centre in a nice, sort of residential neighbourhood (ie. It was quiet and peaceful). It was a fairly fancy place (they took our jackets?!) so we felt the need to order wine with our shared rijsstaffel. So? Essentially, rijsstaffel is a bunch of mini side plates accompanying two larger rice dishes (white and fried). We chose to have the vegetarian rijsstaffel, and some of the mini dishes included steamed veggies with peanut sauce, sweetened toasted coconut, pickled cucumber salad, tofu in curry sauce, and fried banana. In total, we had about 10-12 mini dishes, all of which were delicious. I'd never had anything like this before - an experience for sure! Megan even liked it, which automatically makes the meal a success. I would definitely go back again!
2. Bikes - the stereotype is TRUE!
Thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of bicycles are both on and off the streets, whizzing by or locked up on the pavement while their riders run errands. Seriously, don't try to drive a car here! The few cars we DID see moved very slowly and cautiously so as to avoid knocking a cyclist off their bike. The bicycle seems to be the family vehicle, as well. Seats attached at the back and behind the handlebars allow for 2 more small passengers, while an interesting contraption that looks like a wheelbarrow on the front end is often used to cart goods or more children around. A favoured way to move oneself and a friend appeared to simply be one person perched on the back as the other pedalled away down the street. We really wanted to rent bikes and travel how the locals do, but as we aren't entirely comfortable biking at home yet, you can imagine how cautious we were about a foreign city! It looked like fun, though, so maybe next time! Even so, Amsterdam is an incredibly walkable place and its public transit is really good.
3. Things we did and things we found
Since Amsterdam is so walkable, we did a lot of wandering. And by wandering, we stumbled upon some cool things! We were actually looking for something called the Begijnhof (a former convent) when we came across the Amsterdam Museum, tucked away behind a seemingly small entranceway that gives way to two large courtyards connected by a small corridor. We didn't go inside, but we enjoyed wandering the courtyards and the teaser displays outside. The main display was on one end of the first courtyard and took up the whole wall with two floors of info cards explaining what was inside the boxes in the wall, former lockers of the children who used to live there. On the first floor, the lockers were filled with memorabilia from the days when the museum served as an orphanage in the city. The lockers explained how orphans came to the place, their activities, how they were educated, and daily life within the orphanage walls. In fact, the two courtyards were the play/outside areas for orphan boys and girls respectively back then. This was enough to make me want to go inside, but alas we were on a fairly strict budget. I guess the thing about that is that you get to earmark loads of new things to do next time?! The upper floor was more about the other properties in the city that the museum owns and curates, namely the former homes and personal collections of well-known nobles/aristocrats of Amsterdam who donated their estates. Somewhat less interesting than the orphanage story, but still an interesting part of the city's history!
My personal favourite in Amsterdam was the Anne Frank House. Whether you think it's a tourist trap is up to you, but for me it was a humbling experience.
We waited in line for an hour and forty minutes, though mind you we probably would have made it in within an hour had we lined up when we first passed the place earlier in the day instead of deciding we'd "wait 'til it dies down". Indeed, the line had not died down, and had instead grown longer...but we decided to bite the bullet and suffer through the line because it was a site we really, really wanted to see. Once inside the entryway, we paid our €9 each and entered the museum. What I had expected to find, I'm not really sure, but I was certainly very surprised and deeply touched.
The museum has a set route you must take. First, you enter into the building (from the side, as the museum bought the buildings next to the actual house to serve as additional exhibition space) where you find the office and storage space of Otto Frank's jam ingredient business. There is little in the room, save for videos of the secretary talking about the family and her role in hiding them and some financial account books. There are a few other rooms like this, rooms that were used for business purposes, all laid out similarly to the first. Then, you reach the bookcase. It was here that I first felt the gravity and significance of where I was standing - in the building, in Amsterdam, and in the world. If you're familiar with Anne Frank's story, then you might know what I mean. Sure, being in the building comes with its own hefty weight, but being at the movable bookcase, about to step through into the space where the Frank and van Hermann families (and Fritz Pfeffer) hid for two years, was something else entirely.
Just as soon as we had reached the bookcase, I was stepping through. It felt as though the air was thicker, but I know it wasn't. The first room inside the annex was the sitting room/study/Anne's parents' room. It was here that the 8 people in hiding met to discuss, well, everything, and where Anne and Margot did their homework, reading, or writing.
Then, you get to the room Anne shared with Fritz Pfeffer, a friend of her father's who joined them in the annex after they had moved in. The pictures that Anne pasted on the walls to make the room more homely still remain - photos of movie stars, from magazines, and old postcards she had collected in her childhood. Through this room is the single bathroom in the annex that the occupants used only at night, to avoid being detected by the warehouse employees who didn't know the building housed Jews.
Upstairs there is the van Hermanns' room and the kitchen as well as their son Peter's small room, which leads to the attic above where both e and Anne would frequently go to escape the tensions of living in a confined space with so many people.
This is all for the actual house, which is situated at 263 Prinsengracht. There is more to the museum, but I want to put the most focus here. I have offered scant few details of the annex because, in all honesty, there is literally NOTHING to see. Nothing but a book here and there that an occupant read at the time or various other trinkets, with quotes pulled from Anne's diary printed onto the walls. There ARE scale models in each room, showing how they would have looked at the time, with furniture and everything, made from the memory of Otto Frank, the sole survivor of the 8.
So if there's nothing to see, why wait so long and pay money to go in? Because it's not about filling the place to the brim with artifacts from Anne's life; in all likelihood, there is probably little left from that time after the families were found out, arrested, and deported to concentration camps. Instead, it's about the SPACE, significance of what transpired behind that movable bookcase, and what it represents that matters. Otto Frank requested that the rooms remain empty, unfurnished, and unadorned to symbolize "the void left behind by the millions of people who were deported and never returned", and to me this is such a powerful point. I wrote in my journal, "it's like my heart is heavy with knowledge of the depth of history, anguish, fear, and a million other emotions that the Secret Annex holds. It's eerie to see the rooms, where the families slept, ate, talked, and existed, so empty of life, of joy, of anything when we've read about Anne's experience. And I think that's the point of that decision [to leave the rooms empty], for it to be striking, jarring in its contrast".
But maybe the most important part of visiting the museum was a video at the end showing what people say about Anne Frank and her story. She is praised for her bravery and hope, raised up as a symbol of warning to the dangers of hate, and seen simply as a girl, not a mythologized saint. We all believe in her bravery and her innocence, and I think this has led many to revere her. But, to reference the ever popular novel The Fault in Our Stars, we need to remember the millions of other victims who don't have museums or foundations, whose stories are not remembered. Something to think about, and something that I haven't stopped thinking about since then, and it's been over 2 weeks!
That was a super long post and I'm sorry if I bored anyone, but I feel so strongly about that last bit that I couldn't shorten it any more. Still a few posts behind, but slowly getting there I hope! Be well, and until next time.
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