Going to Amsterdam

On Saturday I had my first trip to Amsterdam (I flew into the Schipol airport, but didn't really see anything when I was there). I was meeting my friend Matt, who is studying in Spain, but first I had to take the train from Den Bosch. It takes about 15 minutes to drive to the station from home, and I was nervous about the interstate and the traffic circles in the middle. My host mom ended up taking me so she could go shopping with Marie-Louise in the same area.

I took the train without any issues (it takes about an hour to get to Amsterdam, and I didn't have to make any connections) and then Matt and I wandered around the Amsterdam Centraal Station trying to find each other. The machines don't take American cards sometimes, so we had trouble getting him a ticket to come back with me. The lockers were easy to figure out, so he didn't have to take his backpack with us. Then we were off in the rain to find the Anne Frank Huis.

I have no idea how to use busses. I know I can work out trains, and I'm not afraid of metro or tube stations, but everything is busses in Amsterdam and those still intimidate me. Realistically the Anne Frank Huis was only a 20 minute walk, but I still don't have a phone and I didn't want to get lost without a map when we only had a short time to be in the city. I decided the most fun way to travel would be to get hop on hop off tickets for the canal tours, and that way we would travel out of the rain but see more than if we were on a bus (and I didn't have to figure out how to use the bus). All that turned out to work just fine.

We went to the Anne Frank Huis and waited in line for around 2 hours to get in, which I felt inspired by. I didn't end up going to the red light district, but I know there isn't a line to get in. Having to wait because so many other people wanted to hear her story and remember what happened didn't bother me. The house itself is a fairly cheap tour, pretty short to get through, and very well organized. It's pretty emotional (although Saturday also marks the first day without any tears, so there's an exciting development!) but I think having been to a concentration camp this was more a place of hope than anything. At the end, they had an exhibit called "All her Would Haves are Our Possibilities" and there was a loop of video clips from famous people talking about the museum or the history. My favorite was John Green (duh) reading an excerpt from The Fault in Our Stars (about the book with a list of names of Jewish people taken from Holland):

“The book was turned to the page with Anne Frank's name, but what got me about it was the fact that right beneath her name there were four Aron Franks. FOUR. Four Aron Franks without museums, without historical markers, without anyone to mourn them. I silently resolved to remember and pray for the four Aron Franks as long as I was around.” 

      After that, we just walked around the city-- I was just there to get a taste of what to come back for, so I wanted to make sure Matt saw everything he wanted to. We came back to Oirschot together and he got to meet my family, then we had schwarma (which was delicious) and watched the game (which took forever, but we won!). The next morning Vanessa and I took him back to the train station, and I got a chance to look around Den Bosch-- it will really be worth it to learn to drive there, it's so nice. There are lots of cute cafes and shops and the train station will get you anywhere. This week I am driving into town to pick the girls up from school and hopefully also driving to Boxtel, but Thursday we're going back to Den Bosch to shop so I'll be paying very close attention. It's time to start going places, I think.