Amsterdam

Amsterdam

After returning to Berlin from Prague, we left again early the next morning to fly to Amsterdam to spend our next two nights there. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Easyjet is the way to travel quickly and cheaply while in Europe. We had a one hour flight from Berlin to Amsterdam, and were there by 9am, giving us the whole day to explore the city. It was fantastic.

None of us had ever been to Amsterdam before either, and this time we didn't have friends who were already there, so we checked into our hotel and then went out and grabbed some lunch while looking over our little travel guide that we had with us. I'd also bought a basic "learn how to speak Dutch" book that I kept flipping through. As a language, it seems like a mix of both English and German. Because of this, I had a fairly easy time understanding it, which was pretty neat.

The first thing I noticed as we began to walk through the city was how cozy everything felt. The buildings lean down on every street, and it felt as if they were eavesdropping on our conversations or trying to tell us secrets. I wondered why they were all so tilted, and came to learn that it's because of how furniture needs to be moved in and out of them. Apparently, the houses in Amsterdam are so narrow that it's nearly impossible to move furniture through the doors and then up the stairs. Because of this, there are giant furniture hooks on the top of each building (you can see them in the picture below, particularly on the left side) that are used as leverage points with rope to pull all of the furniture up into the air, and safely swing it through the windows of the upper floors. Since this is the only way that furniture can get into these dwellings, there is also a great risk that comes with the process: the furniture could swing just a bit too far to the side and break through the windows of the neighboring buildings. This is the reason that they are leaning a bit forward. The slight lean decreases the the likelihood of such an accident by quite a bit.

Amsterdam

After lunch, the sun started shining, and we decided that we would go on a boat ride through all of the canals that run through the city. Seeing and learning about the city from the water was a really neat way to do things. Many people in Amsterdam now live in house boats along the canals, which were a lot of fun to buzz by and imagine what it might be like to live there. If you go, I would suggest a boat tour. I'm happy that we did it.

In the evening, we had a reservation for a tour of the Anne Frank Huis (Anne Frank House), which was not far from our hotel. As we made our way over, I could feel my heart begin to sink. Growing up, I'd read The Diary of Anne Frank several times, and when I moved to college a few years ago, I found it on my childhood bookshelf yet again. I sat down and read the entire thing in one afternoon, gawking at it's distant familiarity (since I hadn't read it in years) and amazed that such a young girl could have had such a piquant view of her unique situation and the world around her. (It also occurs to me often that Anne Frank's is only one of many stories surrounding the persecution of Jews and others in the era of National Socialism. There are millions of stories that were not left behind neatly in notebooks. There are millions of stories that were never told, and never will be.)

I thought that the museum itself was very well set up and put together. Otto Frank, Anne's father, did a great job of setting guidelines for the use of the space, and those guidelines have been fairly interpreted. It was interesting getting to see the space where the Frank family (and others) lived for years during the Nazi reign, and especially getting to walk through the false bookcase/door that lead up the steep and narrow stairs to "the secret annexe". If you're in Amsterdam and haven't seen it, it's worth a trip. Visiting this museum feels like one of those things that you just have to do when you're in a particular city - but I hope that you'll be pleasantly surprised.

As the night grew dark, we walked along the beautifully lit up canals to find somewhere for dinner. We ended up stumbling upon a great little restaurant near our hotel where I got the most amazing rabbit dish. We all thoroughly enjoyed our dinners, and then walked around a bit before heading back to the hotel for the night.

Amsterdam canals at night

My delicious leg of rabbit with potatoes and spinach

The next morning, we got up and grabbed some sandwiches and salads quickly at a small deli before heading over to Mike's Bikes for our planned bicycle tour of the countryside around Amsterdam. If you're going to visit the city and are looking for a bike tour, I'd highly recommend Mike's - they do all different types of tours, but we chose the countryside one which involved biking out to see some windmills and visit a farm where wooden clogs and cheese are hand-made.

It was a bit rainy, but the sun came out and the weather warmed up just as we were pedaling out of the city. Our guide, who was named Mike, but wasn't the Mike of Mike's Bikes, was fantastic and we had great fun on our tour. We stopped at an old windmill and learned a lot about it, and then came up on the small farm where we parked our bikes and were greeted by an adorable farm dog, who was more than excited to get a scratch behind the ears. I've been pretty pet deprived while living in Germany, and was excited to get to bond with a canine, if even for a second. After saying hi to him, we walked inside.

Dog friend from the cheese/clog farm in Amsterdam

The second the door opened, I smelled the cheese. And after I took a few more steps into the cellar, I saw it too. We were greeted by a couple who own and fully operate the farm there, and they explained to us how they make their cheese. It's an interesting process that involves a lot of steps and a lot of patience. We also got free samples, which maybe was the best part.

The aging cheese at the farm lined all of the walls from floor to ceiling

Where the cheese is made

After the cheese demonstration, we continued into another room in the farm house where we were met with what must have been hundreds upon hundreds of both finished and unfinished wooden clogs. We were shown exactly how they were made and then learned what the different styles of painting on them mean. It was quite impressive, and though I was tempted to maybe buy some, I realized pretty quickly that wooden clogs would be one of those thing that seemed like a good idea at the time but that just end up being a pain in the butt to have in the future. Nonetheless, it was really neat to get to learn about them and their history.

One of the piles of wooden clogs waiting to be sanded and painted

After eating lunch at the farm and giving the farm dog one last good petting, we hopped back on our bikes and rode for several hours through the beautiful countryside before finally arriving back in the city. We walked down to the tulip market after that and looked at all the different kinds of bulbs, seeds, and plants, and then decided to head back to the hotel for dinner since we were all exhausted from biking all day.

On our way home, though, it started absolutely pouring, and we wanted to find shelter somewhere. We found a restaurant called Pancakes! near our hotel that we had heard supposedly served gluten free pancakes, and ducked inside. It was a cute little place, and they did, in fact, have gluten free pancakes. I got a buckwheat pancake with bananas, bacon, and chili peppers in it. It was delicious! The only thing that was missing was some dark chocolate...

My banana, bacon, and chili gluten free pancake

After braving the rain once more, we went back to the hotel and then ventured out for dinner. We found a cute little cafe that offered shelter from the storm, and decided to try all of the traditional foods that Amsterdam is famous for. This included "Bitter Balls", sausage made from raw beef, and brown cheese. We didn't find Kippers (even though it would make sense for the Kippermans to eat Kippers), which was okay because though Dad and Alice hadn't tried them before, I had. And I really didn't like them all that much.

Bitter Balls - breaded, deep-fried balls that are made of a
mixture of a bunch of kinds of meat. We're still not really sure...

After heading back home for the night, we got up early in the morning again and headed back to Berlin where we spent the remainder of their time in Europe. It was a fantastic adventure to get to go to Prague and Amsterdam, and I'm very thankful for the opportunity. It was also really nice to see Dad and Alice, and to have a little bit of back home be brought to Berlin.

As they were leaving to go back to the US, I was gearing up to go on yet another few excursions with the Hampshire in Berlin group to Dresden and Weimar...