Yikes the snoan is really coming down outside the train. I know you’re thinking what is snoan, it is my new name of the weather conditions in eastern Holland at present. It was raining in Amsterdam and as the train heads east the rain is progressively turning to snow. I know you are thinking “stupid Clare that’s called sleet”- trust me I know sleet and this isn’t it, there are individual snowflakes and rain drops falling simultaneously, it is very weird.
OK rewind three days. Here we go <<<<<
I arrived in Amsterdam at around 6.30 at night and was faced with a moment of confusion, where were the ticket machine for the trams? Would I actually have to talk to someone?!? Turns out Amsterdam (and from what I can ascertain much of the Netherlands) works on an oyster card system much like London except that they are called “Public Transport Chip Cards” (I think London wins on the name front). Unlike London, you cannot buy a normal ticket for a single trip- the smallest allocation is 1 hour on a chip card. I ultimately picked up a 48 hour city card which at a cost of 48 euros included all public transport, free entry to most of the museums, a canal boat ride, and discounts at the museums that weren’t free with the card and at numerous restaurants (the only museum not included at all was Anne Frank’s House as the proceeds go to charity). I recommend one to anyone spending a few days in Amsterdam as I didn’t use it as much as I could but still got well over 50 euros value out of the card- I left the voucher book that comes with the card with some American girls in my dorm so they’ll surely get even more value out of it. Having sorted the public transport, I hopped on my tram to the hostel. Hopping off the tram, I quickly got my first lesson in Amsterdam transport. I already knew that the cars drove on the wrong side of the road (from an Australian perspective) and that tonnes of people use bikes instead of driving, what I didn’t know was that the bikes got their own lane which is sometimes separated slightly from the main road. I mistook one for a footpath and enraged many a cyclist as well as risking my own life in face of speeding metal famed death. I know you are thinking come on a bicycle hitting you wouldn’t kill you no matter how fast they are going. Well firstly you don’t know how fast and crazy these guys go on their bikes, and secondly and more importantly the bike lanes wasn’t just for bicycles, it is also for scooters and motorbikes, and, as I found out just before almost getting hit by one, overly small cars (I don’t know that this is actually permitted but that is where the guy was driving). Crossing road in continental Europe is difficult enough- what with driving on the wrong side of the road, not having pedestrian push buttons, drivers not stopped for pedestrians regardless of the lights and pedestrians just crossing whenever they feel like it- without the addition of the scary Dutch bike lane. The other dangerous thing about the bikes is how they are “parked”. I use the term “parked” loosely as they were often just stacked in random piles on the side of the road and you have to watch where you are walking in order not to trip over them. I feel I missed something of the “proper” Amsterdam experience by not cycling but next time I’ll definitely be jumping on a bicycle (of yes I'll definitely be revisiting Amsterdam- it's my new 3rd favourite city after London and Sydney, it is pretty close to stealing the number 2 slot).
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| Bike "parking" |
Thankfully I got to the hostel without being killed or injured when crossing the bike lane. I was staying the hostel which is near the Holland Casino and a couple of blocks from the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum. It was a good central location, very cheap, breakfast included, cheap bike hire, food and alcohol (if you wanted it) and, because I’d been moved from another hostel, I scored a free glass of wine on arrival. On the first night, a French girl in my dorm stole the bed of a Spanish woman because she couldn’t be bothered asking reception why there appeared to be someone in hers (supposedly this was the case when she came to the dorm but there wasn’t anyone in her assigned bed when I got there)- the resulting argument in fractured English with some French and Spanish thrown in along the way was quite funny especially as neither party really understood English- thankfully the French girl moved, and she and her friend left the next day. Actually with that exception and the presence of drunk Australian blokes in the bar (surely the patron saints of bogan tourism), the people at the hostel were a cheery crew- there was the girl from Brisvegas in my dorm who was in Amsterdam for the first time having lived in another part of the Netherlands a few years ago (she was travelling on her own too so we compared notes of where to go each day) , the Australian family whose son was questing after his HSC results (odd time for a family hostelling trip overseas if you ask me but they were lovely people), and the American girls in my dorm, who arrived on my last night, who were visiting Europe after a spending a semester on exchange in Oxford (they spent their first night sitting the dorm watching season 2 Grey’s Anatomy on a laptop which was a little strange but then again when I was in the UK a few years ago, I spend my one night in Bournemouth watching Torchwood so maybe I’m strange too- at least I had the excuse that it wasn’t on telly back home at the time). The other thing about people in Amsterdam...they speak ENGLISH and in most cases very good English (some of the businesses even have signs in English) so you don’t need to worry about not speaking Dutch (that said if you speak any German, it’s not too hard to pick up a little Dutch as they are quite similar).
The next morning and I was museum bound again. Everyone who had ever been to Amsterdam or lived in the Netherlands kept telling me to go to the Rijksmuseum and see Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. So off I went (even though in my mind, the Van Gogh Museum seemed more exciting) and was ultimately very thankful that it was included in my card as part of it was closed. That said, The Night Watch was on display and it is a pretty spectacular painting- as are some of the others on display (there is a brilliant Rembrandt called The Jewish Couple of which Van Gogh said he would live on only bread and water if he could sit in front of it and study it for a fortnight (or something like that, my memory of the audio guide is getting hazy)). The other good thing about the Rijksmuseum is that the entry ticket gives you 15% off at nearby cafe which is quite good (another discount for Clare...score! That said after Zürich everything already felt like it was on sale). Then I was off to the museum I was much more excited about the Van Gogh museum. I’ve been somewhat in love with Vincent van Gogh’s art for many a year and the collection at the Van Gogh museum is spectacular (it includes one of the sunflower paintings, a couple of the self portraits and his last painting, Crows Flying over Haystacks (or at least what is believed to be his last painting)). Personally I’d say go to the Van Gogh Museum before the Rijksmuseum but it really is a matter of taste. Both museums have some of the craziest security I’ve ever seen- metal detectors at both and an x-ray machine for your bags (like at an airport) at the Rijksmuseum- what I would be hiding in my tiny bag, I don’t know. Then I was off on a canal boat trip. The captain was a useless guide but the audio track (in four languages- Dutch, English, German and French) was quite interesting and it really is one of the best ways to see Amsterdam so I recommend it. I’d also strongly recommend you eat some Indonesian food while in Amsterdam. Someone I know who is Dutch recommended it to me and I was sceptical to say the least, but turns out the Dutch (or more accurately the Indonesians living in Amsterdam) make brilliant food- I’m still a little concerned that there was fried bananas with my savoury food but somehow they worked.
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| Canals at sunset |
I’m going to actually mess with time here and talk about my second afternoon in Amsterdam before I talk about the morning. That afternoon, I was off to the Willet Holthuysen museum which is quite an interesting restoration of one of the richer canal houses (that said the museum takes about 15 minutes to see, so if you don’t have a pass which lets you in for free, I wouldn’t bother) and the Handbag Museum (less interesting more because it was just down the road from the Willet Holthuysen museum and I had thought the first one would take longer). Then off to the Hermitage, Amsterdam to see my own bit of St Petersburg. The Amsterdam version of the Hermitage exhibits stuff that is on loan from the Russian one- the current exhibit is on Alexander the Great and was quite good. After that I was off for an early Italian dinner with one of my discount cards. It was cheap though not good but the lecture I got from the Egyptian waiter was worth it. He asked me why I was in Amsterdam and what I’d been doing, and I said I was travelling and that I’d been visiting museums. He told me that museums were boring and then proceeded to tell me that most tourists come for the Ice Bar, the coffee shops that give you pot with your coffee (this technically is now illegal but the cops turn a blind eye to it) and the red light district (which he called “Red Light Town”). I said that I liked museums and that I had no interest in the above (we have an ice bar in Sydney, I don’t want pot or hookers, and also what woman travelling on her own REALLY wants to go into the Red Light District at night). He refused to believe me and continued to tell me exactly here I needed to go and that the Red Light District was only a few blocks away. Needless to say, I didn’t visit the Ice Bar, any of the dodgy coffee shops, or the Red Light District that night (or at all), instead I walked back to the hostel along the well lit (without a hint of red) main streets grabbing some poffertjes (tasty Dutch mini pancakes for those not in know) at a Christmas market on the way.
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| Anne Frank statue |
So why delay talking about that morning? I try to keep my blog posts largely happy with a hint of my kind of humour and that morning was not a morning for happiness. The morning of my second day in Amsterdam I went to the tourist sites related to the Dutch (in particular the Amsterdam) Jewish community. I completed an entire history degree that was largely focused on Jewish History but not until I stood in Anne Frank’s House and watched a video of a woman who had known her (they went to school together and were in different section of the same concentration camp) that it really hit home. Though I read Anne Frank’s Diary when I was about 13 and I know her story very well, I was fighting back tears as I listened to this video and to another one of Anne Frank’s father made after the war. This girl was so young and, if her writing is anything to go by, smart beyond her years, and it just makes you think what would make someone so sadistic that they would want to kill innocent children. After Anne Frank’s House, I went to the Jewish Historical Museum which is housed in a rebuilt sector of the old synagogue (all the synagogues in Amsterdam but one were destroyed during WW2, and those that were destroyed have not been rebuilt as synagogues). The museum showed that the Jewish community (both religious and secular) in the Netherlands had been, even in its poorer sections, a strong and vital community but only 35 000 of a community of around 150 000 survived the Holocaust (that’s less than a quarter of the population). The thing that hit me hardest, aside from the despair and the horror, was the idea of hope. Anne Frank’s friend on the video said that she believed Anne had only died because she gave up hope after the death of her sister (not knowing at the time that her father was still alive), and it struck me that that is a long way to fall especially at such a young age, and that hope, or the lack there of, can be key to human survival. The Jewish Historical Museum is a testament to the gradually renewing of hope in the Amsterdam Jewish Community and the statements by Otto Frank that you hear at the end of the tour of Anne Frank’s house are astounding. Here is a man where lost his entire family, his community and his livelihood to the Holocaust and yet he has found hope. He planned Anne Frank’s House not only as a memorial to his daughter but more as statement against prejudice and an attempt to get those who visit to think about injustice. The final section of the Anne Frank’s House is an interactive section where people can listen to and vote on different injustices in the world today. Of everything I have seen thus far, Anne Frank’s House is the one thing that I would say everyone must visit (also, if you never have, read her diary)- in order to see not just the horror that humans can inflict but also that eventually hope can come out of despair and that we must be mindful of the emergence of injustice however subtly it starts.
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