Amsterdam, Netherlands
I’m writing to you from a train headed to Warsaw, Poland. We don’t have internet on this train, so I suppose I will post this later. This is all based on the assumption that this train actually stops in Prague – something neither Josh nor I are completely sure of. But, I’ll say more about that later.
We woke up around 5 am yesterday morning. Our Paris hotel owner was nice enough to have breakfast sent up the night before, so we didn’t have to leave on empty stomachs. We caught the metro to the train station, which wasn’t nearly as bad that early in the morning. From the train station we caught a high-speed train to Amsterdam, Netherlands. The ride was about 3.5 hours and made a few stops in Belgium along the way.
Worse than any crying baby are Irish college students on their way to Amsterdam. We were unfortunate enough to be sitting directly behind such a gem and his girlfriend. This guy was so loud! It was especially difficult to get used to after 6 days in Paris where everyone is VERY quiet – even the loudspeakers on trains are soft. And it wasn’t just that he was so loud, he was extremely vulgar and kept passing gas and fanning it behind him.
Needless to say, we once again did not get any sleep on the train. Even more unfortunate than that, was the fact that while Amsterdam was beautiful and the townspeople were very nice, most of the tourists (and the city was full of them) were a lot like our Irish friend on the train. Amsterdam is certainly a party city.
We arrived at about 10:45 am and walked about 15 minutes to the Anne Frank Museum, which was not what we expected. I feel a little guilty saying that about the museum, but it was really quite bad for anyone who has ever been to another holocaust museum or had any extensive knowledge of Anne Frank before coming.
The first bad thing was the fact that they had no coat check so we were forced to carry around our huge backpacks with everything in them throughout the whole museum. Not only that, but they wouldn’t allow us to wear them on our backs. We had to carry them in front of us and that was really hard considering we had to climb 3 or 4 sets of stairs that were basically ladders.
The museum was small and hot and crowded and people moved so slowly through the exhibits that you were waiting 5 minutes between each wall display. There was no furniture left in the museum. Only the sink and part of a stove. Very few things were there from the actual house, most of it was just quotes from the book and postcards or photos or letters. We did get to walk through the actual house, but like I said, there was so many people, it was hard to have any type of thoughtful or reflective experience about that.
There was some of Anne Frank’s photos that she posted on the wall and the actual diary, but I had seen parts of both at other museums in more polished displays than this. Over all, we weren’t even there for a full hour and we skipped several things just because out backpacks were too big and heavy to shove through the crowds. I’m still glad I went, but honestly the 360 tour that the museum website offers is 100 times better than the museum itself.
After that we walked another 15 minutes or so to the city center. I am still amazed at Josh’s navigation skills because all he did was look at a map of Amsterdam for a few minutes the night before and we didn’t get lost once. Anyway, we met up with the free city tour people we’ve been doing tours with in each city. The Amsterdam tour was the worst one we had been on, but it still wasn’t bad. It was a larger group of abut 40 people and definitely geared more for the crowd coming there for the weed and prostitutes – which fit most of the rest of our group.
The tour was about 50% drugs (where to get it, what to use/what not to use, places people used to do heroin, places to smoke weed now, drug laws, etc…), about 30% sex (where to find a sex worker, how their businesses work, how much they charge, where to find a decent one, laws about sex work, monuments to sex work, etc…), and about 20% history of the city.
You can guess which part Josh and I liked best. That’s right, the drugs. Haha. Just kidding! Although, we may have picked up a contact high from the number of people in our tour group walking around smoking.
The basic theme of our tour guide’s tour was that Amsterdam is a city built on tolerance and money. Some of the more negative parts of their WWII participation was smoothed over, but for the most part, it was interesting to see him tie those themes to the history of the country.
It was actually a very beautiful city and everyone rode bikes around, so it was relatively free from cars honking and screeching. The houses and the canals made up for the lack of statues and monuments. Most everyone spoke English and we really felt more at home here than anywhere else we’ve been so far.
After the tour we went to dinner with the tour group at some pub. The Amsterdam pubs were described as being the perfect mix between a British pub and French cafe. Having been to both now, I would say that is very accurate.
We both ordered a traditional Dutch dish called Stampot. We were both pretty sure we had eaten some version of it back home. It was basically a huge serving of mashed potatoes with mixed-in carrots and cabbage paired with a huge meatball and topped with a little gravy. The meatball tasted like meatloaf without the tomato sauce and was luke warm (though that may have been unintentional). The potatoes were great, though. Definitely the most hearty meal we’ve had here.
After dinner we strolled around the city on our way back to the train station. We learned on our tour that Dutch people leave their curtains open at night. Originally, it was so everyone could see how well off they were. Now, for most, it’s just habit. Either way, we looked into a lot of Dutch apartments last night on our way to the station.
We arrived at the station about an hour before our night train from Amsterdam to Prague was set to depart at 7 pm. We couldn’t find it listed on any of the departure or arrival boards. We weren’t too concerned at that point, but at 6:30 when we still had no idea where to go we started to get worried.We went to the information desk and showed the our tickets. The guy told us to go to departure gate 5b. So we did and nothing came up on the screen. Finally at 15 till 7 the screen at 5b lit up and said Warsaw, Poland.
It was the correct departure time, but not our train-line and not our city of arrival. We went back the desk and the guy – now annoyed – told us to go back to 5b. So we did. And we got on the train.
We are supposed to arrive in Prague at 9:30 am. It is 8:30 now. Wherever we are, there is snow on the ground and it is beautiful outside the train window. So, even if this is Poland – I’m not too mad.
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