Amster Amster

About a month ago, other students started talking about wanting to go to Amsterdam (for the reason any college student wants to go to Amsterdam). My friend Melissa and I started talking about going somewhere. Since we did not want to take part in the legal substances Amsterdam offers, we had no interest in traveling with the other groups. We looked at traveling other places, but we every place I wanted to go, she had already been to (and vice versa). We both agreed that we wanted to go see Amsterdam and neither of us had been there. So we decided we´d go and be sober sisters.


We left from Barcelona. Got on a plane at noon Thursday and to Dutch country.

My travel partner Melissa and the babiest of Colgates

Cleaning out her purse on the plane. Turns out Melissa is a candy hoarder. Really she is a hoarder of all things snack related. I can't tell you how many Oreos this girl pulled out of her back pack over the weekend. Love a girl with snacks!

It was 4:20 p.m. when bought our train tickets into the city. We had an address for our hostel and that was about it. When we got off the train from the airport, we had no idea where to go. We found a map.

Stared at it for a while. All the streets are impossible for us to say. And it is difficult to find one street because several streets will share almost the exact same name...but with tiny differences. For example: Our hostel was on Nieuwendijk St. But on the map there was Nieuwenzijds, Nieuwe Spieselstraat, Nieuwe Looiepsstr, and other Nieuwe streets. Luckily, a man came along and pointed out the key at the bottom of the map. Thanks.

Finally we found the Flying Pig Hostel, right in the middle of the red light district. Back when we started searching for hostels, we found that many of the hostels and hotels were full. So, we had to settle for a 32 bedroom hostel at the Pig. That´s right. We shared one room with 30 people. 30 other people had a key to the room where we slept. We immediately purchased a lock for our luggage cabinet.

The reception of the hotel was a bar. Behind the bar room was the SMOKING ROOM...Not only for cigarettes.

Our bedroom....our 32-bed bedroom

Looks like a day care center


We threw our stuff in the cabinet, talked to some nice girls in our room, then went out to find food. Walking down the sidewalk with a canal to our right and apartments to the left, we all of a sudden passed by an apartment with a lady in the window. She was wearing her lingerie and standing right up next to the window like a mannequin in at Macy's. Lacey black panties and tube top. This lady was at least in her fifties.
Melissa: "Ummm what was that."
Me: "I have no idea why that lady was basically nakey in her window! What did we just see! What is this place."

Melissa was slightly more bothered than me over this spectacle. When I got back to Valencia and talked to my mom, one of the first questions she asked me was, ¨Did you see the window prostitutes?¨ Oh. That´s what that lady was. Well, I had assumed that's what she was anyways (why else do you stand in a window in your knickers -confirmed those are panties by the way)...but I did not know that was a thing to see in Amsterdam.

After the window ho, we got turned around and confused several times figuring out the map. All the Liechengract and Pisengract streets... so confusing. Frustrated and exhausted, we finally found a place to eat, where we could figure out what exactly we were going to do in Amsterdam.
Melissa had a typical Dutch dish...some chicken with this peanutty sauce. It was tasty. Bout the only Dutch thing I tried all weekend I think.

We felt better after eating and making a rough plan for the next day and half. We left the restaurant and headed to Anne Frank.

What will forever spring to mind when I think of Amsterdam?

Windmills?

Weed?

Wooden shoes?

No.

The only thing that says Amsterdam to me now is BIKES.

Bikes on a bridge

Bikes along the canal

More canal photos. House boats everywhere... almost as many house boats as bikes. Almost.


You don´t exaclty take cheesy tourists pictures in front of this tourist attraction.
Here is the outside



The museum takes you through the whole building where the Franks lived. The downstairs office rooms where Otto and the other employees worked. Then you get to the staircase behind the secret bookcase entrance. As you can imagine, it is an intense journey through the annex. It is hard to believe you are actually standing where they lived for 2 years.


Anne's room...just as she had it. The furniture in all the room was taken out soon after the family was removed. And I believe Otto wanted it to stay empty, but there is a tiny model of each furnished room you can look at. But the pictures on the walls are just like Anne had them.


Kitchen


A board game that Peter got for his birthday


Peter's room

The best I can describe the whole thing is like this:
After going to the Holocaust museum in D.C., I was left with an overwhelming feeling of sadness over the Holocaust´s magnitude...the numbers and numbers of people. The Anne Frank house leaves you with the same deep sadness, but it is a more intimate sadness. Instead of being overwhelmed by the sheer size of this wretched historical event, you are overwhelmed by the personal story you've lived in for an hour. That's all I can really say about it... I am glad I went.

The closest I will ever be to an Oscar. The lady who played Margot in the movie won the award then donated it to the museum a few years later.


Melissa and I were glad to have done Anne´s house first. Maybe it wasn´t the most chipper way to start off our Amsterdam adventure, but we figured it was better than ending on such a somber note. But still, we went to a bar afterwards to shake it off. We stayed out and listened to a live band (something I hadn't experienced a lot since America...maybe once here in Valencia) then we called it quits a little after midnight.

Walking home



Bikes at night


We got back to the hostel to find some of the beds with people now in them and some still empty. Using ipods and cell phones as lights, we got ready for bed (oh yeah, I had found my cell phone when I was leaving London...in some random pocket of my backpack...but at this point it didn´t help. Our Spanish phones didn´t work in Amsterdam)..but at least we could use it as a flash light.

This was the first hostel I stayed in that had double beds. Double bunk beds. So Melissa and I were snuggle buddies for the night on the top bunk.. I don´t know what happens if you´re alone and the hostel room is full. Do you have to sleep with a stranger? And just because we booked the room together, that doesn´t mean that everyone who books a hostel together is comfortable sleeping in the same bed with each other. Luckily, Melissa and I were ok with it.

We had been asleep for a few hours when we both wake up to a baritone chorus of snoring. And it came with surround sound. Snoring from across the room and snoring from the man RIGHT UNDER OUR BED. I couldn´t find my ear plugs. It was awful. At some point, Melissa swung her pillow down and tried to hit the snoring man. But that didn´t work. She basically got no sleep, and I somehow managed a little bit...but only a very little bit.

So far, Amsterdam was not our favorite place.