Paris holds the key to your heart!

If you have seen the movie Anastasia, you know what I'm referring to with the title of this blog.   Between when we had finally booked everything and while in Paris, this song was on repeat in my head.  Just in case you need a refresher, here is the song, courtesy of YouTube:

Paris Holds the Key to Your Heart

Paris was the first stop on mine and Jane's week-long holiday from our "studies."  Our overall plan went like this:

Friday after class: get to Paris

Saturday-Monday afternoon: see Paris and Versailles

Monday evening: catch a flight to Barcelona

Tuesday-early Thursday morning: see Barcelona

Thursday morning (6:15am): fly to Sevilla 

Thursday-Sunday morning: chill in Sevilla and see the sites 

Sunday morning: return to de Nederlands 

I have never tried to plan a trip before and nor had Jane, so this was our first big attempt and we probably could have done something a little easier...but it was lots of fun and a learning experience, to say the least.  We also had our fair share of misadventures, which was inevitable because I was traveling.      

Originally, we were going to take a high speed train from Amsterdam to Paris.  We booked those tickets and were good to go...until our instructor told us we should go from Rotterdam to Paris because it would save us time.  We were going to re-book our tickets until we found out that one of our French friends, Pauline, would be willing to drive us to near Paris (she was going home) and we could take a train from there.  Jane looked up information about our tickets and figured we would be able to get a refund on them (we also tried calling the customer service number multiple times, to no avail).  We also wouldn't have to worry about when our class finished on Friday because the French girls (Pauline was also driving Laure, another one of our friends) would wait for us.  

Me, Lauri, Herbie, Kim and Solene
Awesome group with an awesome poster!

Just a little tip about packing: if you don't have a clothes dryer, don't do your laundry the day before you need to leave on your trip.  You can't pack anything wet (well, you could, but it wouldn't be the best idea) and thus last minute packing ensues.  Not a good idea when after your class, there are free drinks and snacks, which make you even more late.  Oops. 

We were able to begin our road trip to France around 6:00 pm or so and shortly thereafter I fell asleep.  After a week of lab work and a 3 hour exam that morning, I needed some decent (ish) sleep.  It was also dark outside, which made the trip a little less exciting.  

Herbie, ready to rock n' roll!

Soon after crossing into Belgium, we passed a car that was pulled over by a policeman on a motorcycle.  No big deal, right? No big deal until he (or another one) put his lights on and got in front of us, signaling for us to continue following him.  Jane and I were completely confused because Pauline wasn't speeding, but Pauline and Laure said that French cars traveling through Belgium often get pulled over to do a drug check.  Yes, a drug check.  

Apparently, the French are fond of driving to the Netherlands, picking up drugs in Amsterdam or elsewhere and then driving back to France with said drugs.  Thus, the Belgians try to stop this from happening by stopping cars with French license plates.  Prejudice? Maybe, but it happens.  So, we follow the policeman to the exit and towards an area full of police vehicles (vans, cars and the like), police persons and a drug dog.  When we came to a stop, flashlights were shown into the back seat, where Jane and I were sitting, and Pauline rolled her window down.  We all handed over our passports, and it was probably kind of suspicious that there were two French and two American passports. 

A man asked me if I spoke English, to which I answered yes.  He then proceeded to ask if we had been in any coffee shops in the Netherlands (I thought of Amsterdam but decided not to complicate things) and I answered no.  He also asked if we had any cannabis, marijuana or other drugs.  That was also a negative.  Lastly, he asked if we were hitchhiking.  This question made me laugh a little, which I had to quickly suppress.  That also was a no.  The same (or similar) questions were asked of the French girls and all their answers were, obviously, the same.  

My failed picture attempt--you can still sort of see the people

I guess we weren't all that suspicious, because they let us carry on with our journey after the inquisition.  It was all kind of ridiculous and funny, really.  It also makes for a pretty good story. I tried taking a picture as we were leaving the area, but it kind of failed due to the moving car and it being dark outside. 

We finally made it to Pauline and Laure's college, where Laure's dad picked her, Jane and I up to go to her town and take a train to Paris.  Unfortunately, it was about midnight (we also got detoured in Belgium and made it into France on some random back roads) and we were going to miss the train.  It was also probably a bad idea to try to get to a city you're completely unfamiliar with around 2 am on a Saturday morning.  Thankfully, Laure's family offered to have Jane and I spend the night so we could take a train in the morning.   

First night @ Laure's house

This was the first place we lost money on our trip: we had reserved our hostel for Friday night in addition to Saturday and Sunday because we thought we would be there.  Whoops. 

Where Hemingway wrote The Sun Also Rises

We made it to Paris on the train and to our hostel just fine (with the directions of Laure and her father).  One thing that I've come to really appreciate is the fact that the metro in Paris and Barcelona is very efficient and it's not a big deal if you miss one train because another will come in 2-5 minutes.  It does suck a lot when you want to go out at night (and it's not a weekend) because the metro shuts down at 12:30 am.  

The Egyptians figured that the French didn't know how to build an
Obelisk...so they included instructions.

Jason Bourne, anyone?

That afternoon (Saturday), we did a "free" walking tour of the city.  The tour is technically free, but the tour guides get paid based on tips.  Our tour guide's name was Daniel, and he was actually from Amsterdam.   He was pretty awesome--he showed us the bookstore where Hemingway wrote his book The Sun Also Rises.  We also saw Notre Dame (and got to go inside for a bit), Pont Neuf (the oldest bridge in Paris), the Louvre, the Musee d'Orsay, the Obelisk, the building that was in one of the Jason Bourne movies, the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower (from afar), two palaces built for the World Fair, and many other things.  I was surprised to learn that Paris was saved by a Nazi general in WWII.  Hitler knew that he was going to lose the war and made a call to this general telling him that if he (Hitler) couldn't have Paris, no one could (Hitler lurved Paris).  However, this Nazi general also really liked Paris and didn't want to actually blow it up, so he made a plan to make it seem like Paris was on fire to satisfy Hitler.  By bombing only one area of the city and making one of the palaces for the World Fair on fire, he was able to make it seem like Paris was burning and thus satisfy Hitler.

Pont Neuf: the faces are the result of a night of carousing with the King
(maybe)

After the tour, Daniel offered to take whomever was interested to a cafe for some delicious french onion soup.  It was really cold outside and being outdoors for 3 1/2- 4 hours will make
you want anything delicious and warm.  I got hot wine (like a red wine with spices and oranges in it, delicious!) as well as the french onion soup (a little salty, but also delicious).  We had made friends with two Brazilian girls, and after eating, we all walked to the Eiffel Tower to take pictures and see the light show.  It was really awesome to realize that I was in Paris and right next to the Eiffel Tower, as well as near the myriad of other historical places.  

Arc de Triomphe!

Once we made it back to the hostel, we talked with the other girls in our room (it was a 10 bed room) and realized that there was a girl who had graduated from UW-Madison last May staying there, too.  Her name was Hannah and she had been teaching French in Marseilles (in the south of France) for the past several months.  She was very cool and had some excellent stories about her students (they're all in elementary school).  

We ended up just going down to the hostel bar and met a bunch of other Brazilians as well as an Australian.  That was the cool thing about staying in a hostel--we got to meet people from all over the world.  Our hostel was also really nice, and as it was our first hostel experience, we were kind of spoiled.  

First glimpse of the Chateau at Versailles

Sunday, we went to Versailles.  For your reference, Versailles is closed on Tuesdays and it is also basically a day trip.  There is the Chateau that Louis XIV made into the Chateau (it was a originally a hunting lodge built by Louis XIII) because he wanted all the focus of everyone to be on him, so he picked up and moved from Paris to Versailles.  And took everyone (important) with him.  The Chateau is HUGE. HUGE as in enormous.  When you get off the train, you follow the signs to get to the Chateau (and the hordes of people) and it is at the end of a really wide street.  Although I was really far away from it, it just blew me away.  The entire thing is just so extravagant and elaborate and ornate and all things luxurious.  The sun was out for the first time in a while, and Louis the XIV really liked gold.  This is important because a lot of the front of the palace has gold gilding and when the sun was shining on it, it made sense that Louis XIV was known as the Sun King.  Everything glowed.  It was pretty awesome.  

Entrance to the Chateau

More awesome (sort of) was the fact that Jane and I got in for free with our visas.  That's the thing with Paris and other cities that have historical places that charge to get into; if you have a long stay visa and proof you're a student, you generally can get in for free or at a reduced rate.  (Also, you generally have to be under the age of 26).  

You do a lot of looking up when you're in the fancy rooms--a lot of the ceilings are painted and have very elaborate decoration.

We spent about 3 hours in the Chateau, and going through all the rooms was really cool, but after seeing the King and Queen's rooms and then seeing the dauphin's apartments, it was obvious who was more important.  Also, the French are very into where all the furniture came from and who designed it and blah blah blah--basically stuff that isn't terribly interesting about the furniture and such.  

One of the coolest places is the Hall of Mirrors.  Back in the day, mirrors were super duper expensive, and King Louis XIV had an entire hall of them.  There are chandeliers and giant candlestick things everywhere--very impressive.

Hall of Mirrors

Looking out on the main garden area

There are also very expansive gardens (and when I say expansive, I mean you probably couldn't see them all in a few hours).  While we were walking around, I couldn't help but to think how people would probably ride a horse around the grounds and enjoy the days....it's just so much fun to think about how things were when old places were actually being used.  

Ain't nobody getting up these stairs

Also on the grounds is Le Petit Trianon--it was a gift to Marie Antoinette from her husband, Louis XVI. It wasn't anything too special, just her own space so she could not intrude on Louis's space (as it is rumored she did) and get away from everything else at Versailles.  It was originally the king's but after giving it to Marie, she had some renovations done.  She also had a little English hamlet built so she could pretend to be a peasant and milk cows and such--this was especially cute.  We kind of stumbled upon it because we were walking around the garden area and heard something that sounded like a dying cow.  Well, it wasn't a dying cow, it was a perfectly live one but it still sounded horrid.  We just followed the noise and there it was: cows, ducks, geese, chickens, grape vines and thatched roofs included.

English hamlet area

Paris basically shuts down on Sunday--Hannah said that though the French don't go to church really, everything still shuts down.  If anyone has any ideas what it is the French do on Sundays, let me know.  We wanted to go out, but due to the fact that it was Sunday evening when we got back, that didn't end up happening.  Instead, we resorted to the hostel bar again.  It was Jane, Hannah, our friend Ana (Brazilian), Gabriel (Brazilian) and then two Australians joined us.  

Voltaire!

Is it weird to take pictures next to people's
tombs?
(Marie and Pierre Curie pictured here)

Monday, Hannah, Gabriel, Jane and myself went to the Pantheon to see the tombs of famous dead people such as Voltaire (I thought his heart was there, but nope, just his body. and a statue.), Marie and Pierre Curie and Louis Braille, among others.  As a forewarning: I suppose it can be kind of, really expensive to heat a massive stone building in the winter, so apparently the Pantheon isn't heated.  It was quite chilly all throughout it and so it wasn't really much a reprieve from the outside, besides the fact that it shelters you from the wind.  

The Pantheon

After this, we all got delicious hot dog things from right outside the Louvre.  They were pastry-like things with hot dog-type sausages in the middle and bread stuff and cheese and horseradish sauce on them.  They were AWESOME. And then we went to the Louvre. 

Smiling with your eyes = unattractive

Jane and I didn't have much time to see the Louvre due to the need to: return to our hostel and pick up our baggage, take a train to a bus and then take that bus to the airport to catch our flight.  We saw the Mona Lisa (of course)--she's quite small and they have put her on this giant wall, thus making her appear even smaller.  We decided that the Mona Lisa is smiling with her eyes, so I got a picture of myself "smiling with my eyes." As you can see, it's kind of scary. 

Something you shouldn't miss if you go to the Louvre is the excellent photo opportunity that this painting provides, for obvious reasons.  No one knows why the girl is getting her nipple pinched (the girl is actually a queen or duchess, I believe), but a proposed idea is that she is pregnant, so her sister is doing it to show that she's fertile.  All I know is that this is a weird painting, and that's all there is to it.



Now we come to what was the most nerve wracking part of the day, for me at least: getting to the airport.  Our flight was at 7:40 pm out of Paris-Beauvais Airport.  If you look up where Beauvais is on a map of France, you will see that it is located a significant distance from Paris itself.  This is what you get for flying with Ryanair.  Ryanair is an Irish airline known for its low-cost fares and stringent policies regarding carry-on luggage and flight check-in.  In order for us to make our flight, we should have been at the bus station place to take us to the airport 3 hours and 15 minutes before our flight.  Hopefully I'm not the only one that thinks that seems a little excessive.  However, as Jane and I found out the hard way, it's really not.

Why the locks?  Your lover puts a lock on this bridge with both their a
and your initials on it and your love is supposed to last forever. Or until the Parisian
police come around and cut locks off, which happens monthly.

If we wouldn't have been so putzy at the hostel getting our baggage and what not, we might have been a little better off.  It still took a little while on the trains to get to the bus stop, and then once at the bus stop we had to wait for the bus to fill up in order to leave (we got there right as one filled and left).  This is a Monday afternoon in a major city.  What happens on any weekday afternoon in a major city?  Rush hour, that's what. First, we got delayed going out of the parking lot due to some construction work and second, we got delayed on the way to the airport due to the general traffic congestion.  I went to sleep because I was getting so stressed out and there wasn't anything I could do once I was on the bus (except hope and pray we got to the airport in enough time to get on our flight).

Herbie being naughty in the Chateau

Ryanair closes baggage check-in 40 minutes prior to flight take off and closes the gate 30 minutes prior to take off.  The deadline we needed to meet was 7:00 being at the airport (6:55 in the best situation).  We got off the bus at 7:11.  When we got to the check-in place, the lady wouldn't let us check in and we went to talk to the information lady.  Our options?  Pay 100 euro to get on the next flight to Barcelona (but it was going to Barcelona-Reus Airport...1 - 1 1/2 hours away from Barcelona itself) which left at 9:20 or find a hostel, buy tickets for the earliest flight out the next day (9 am), and return to the airport the next day.  Jane and I decided to (unwillingly) dole out the 100 euro to have our tickets switched to the flight leaving at 9:20 pm to Barcelona-Reus.  All in all, it probably would have cost just as much to wait until the next day.  For the record, the Paris-Beauvais airport is super sketch.  There are about 3 doors that lead to the outside and you have to walk to your airplane (kind of like the President, but without all the prestige).  It's very small and I was glad to leave it behind.

Herbie waiting (patiently) next to Jane's candy at the
Paris-Beauvais airport....

Once arriving at the Barcelona-Reus airport, we had to wait for/take a bus to Barcelona.  That dropped us off at a bus station thing and then we took a taxi to Jane's friend Joanna's apartment.  If you go to Spain, it's probably a good idea to know some Spanish.  Despite the fact that the Spanish you learn in the States isn't Castellano (Spain Spanish), it will at least allow you to, at a basic level, communicate with the locals.  Such as when you have to take a taxi.  In Barcelona (and other near parts of Spain), the main language that is spoken is Catalan. Catalan is a crazy Spanish-French-ish mixed language.  People in Barcelona also will refuse to speak Spanish to you if you speak in Spanish to them because, although they know it, they feel they are above it.  Frustrating, to say the least.

Finally, around 2 am on Tuesday, we were in Barcelona and at our temporary home for the next couple of days.  Adventures and misadventures in Barcelona and Sevilla are next to come!

Love it.

Chateau by night--we're looking at the Hall of Mirrors

Picturesque Versailles

Sweet fountain at Versailles

Fun at the Louvre (Herbie is in my hand)

This is what I was trying to mimic

Un, deux, trois, quatre!
Jane, Hannah and I at the Louvre

RIP Albert Heijn

Now that's it's officially been two weeks (and then some) since I visited Amsterdam, I suppose I should let you all know what I've been up to since then.  I can go with the excuse that I've been super busy, blah blah blah and though that's true, it's lame.  We'll just ignore the fact that I've been kind of lazy in addition to busy :-) 

The weekend of the 15th there was an excursion organized by ESN, the Erasmus Student Network, to the nearby city of Arnhem.  There was a group of a little over twenty that went to an Open air museum.  You might say, "What exactly is an "open air museum"? Besides being outside?" and the answer to that would be...well, it's basically self explanatory.  If you have ever been to a fort in the U.S. or any historical place that is re-done to be like the time it was when it was in use, that is pretty much what this open air museum was.  Except it was quite a lot bigger.  

Due to the fact that it is still winter, we weren't able to see as many things as in the summer, but we still got a pretty good tour from our tour guide, Heijn (like heintz but just hein), like the Dutch grocery store, Albert Heijn.  The first thing our tour group found out when we began the tour was that the grandson of the founder of the Albert Heijn stores (also named Albert Heijn) had died.  It was a great start to the tour, to say the least. 

We learned a decent amount about Dutch history and life from Heijn, of which I could tell you all about and you might find it interesting, but I feel that hitting the highlights might be a better idea. 

Dutch House with anti-Devil protection

There were many (original) Dutch buildings brought to the open air museum and re-built; thus making them look better than when they were in their original location.  One of the buildings we saw is pictured here and you’ll notice the blue line about a foot from the ground.  It doesn’t really add anything to the design of the building, but it definitely adds some protection.  According to the Dutch, the devil is the reason that cheese goes bad.  The devil is warded off by anything that has something to do with God, however, and seeing as God resides in heaven, up in the sky, the blue line is a representation of God.  The devil comes up from the ground to get into the house, but when he hits that blue line… needless to say, whoever makes cheese in this house can make it knowing that it will not go bad. 

Wind paper mill 

What is a Dutch museum without windmills?  Not a Dutch museum, that's for sure.  There were roughly 4 different windmills onsite and not only did they grind flour, but they also cut wood!  I was quite impressed by the Dutch version of a paper mill considering the more technical one we have back in Mosinee doesn't really utilize the wind...at all.  

Nick (right) helping Simone skate

I have two favorite parts of this trip: one was skating on the ice rink that was outside and the other was finding the random patch of gnomes whilst wandering about the grounds.  I haven't been ice skating in I don't know how long, so getting to ice skate in Europe and outdoors was a pretty fun experience.  Not to mention, Simone (See-moan-aye), the Italian, had never been skating before and thus was all over the rink (he stayed mostly upright with our help).  All in all,  I felt like it was Christmas again. 

Gnomes, gnomes, everywhere!

The gnome patch: Bekah and I are walking along "the Dark Path" (don't ask) and there are a bunch of random buildings with historical things as well as this super sweet maze-y thing. Suddenly, we see them: GNOMES.  I tried looking for a sign to explain them, but I couldn't find one.  It was pretty ridiculous. I was very sad that I had forgotten Herbie the Traveling Gnome because he could not meet his brethren.

Typical Dutch trees

Lastly, a mystery was unraveled for me.  The Dutch have a favorite way of training their trees called "espalier" (see picture) that you see everywhere.  It's pretty intense for just home gardening.  I had never seen it except at Olbrich in the Herb Garden with the pear trees, but here the majority of the trees in yards are done this way.  According to Wikipedia, it is the "horticultural and ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning and tying branches so that they grow in relatively flat planes, frequently in formal patterns, against a structure such as a wall, fence, or trellis..."  The secret? Tying branches to pieces of straight wood so they follow it when they grow.  Genius! 

The Secret

It was a pretty eventful, fun and informative day.  My plans were to go to Utrecht in the evening to meet up with some of my other friends that were spending the night, but then the hostel was difficult to find, we would have gotten there late, etc., etc.  Instead, Jane and I went and joined the potluck with the people I had been hanging out with during the day (they all live in the same place) and had ice cream time!  MMMMM ice cream with chocolate sprinkles, of course! 

This is my last week of class for this period (thank goodness!), and next week is the "re-exam" week for people who failed any of their previous exams.  Students are allowed to take an exam 3 times before they outright have to re-do the class.  It might sound like an awesome system (and I suppose it is) but the exams can also be more difficult.  Seeing as I don't plan on failing this class and have no other classes that I could potentially take exams for, I have made plans to travel! 

I will be going to Paris from Friday to Monday, flying to Barcelona Monday and then flying to Seville on Thursday to visit some fellow Badgers and my awesome cousin, Amber! Hopefully we will be able to get back in time to see the Super Bowl, seeing as the Packers are in it and I plan to cheer them on.  

Poffertjes:  mini Dutch pancakes that are DELICIOUS!

Sunday during the NFC Championship game, my friends Wendy and Blake from U of I and thus Illinois and I tried to watch the game online but gave up and found a sports bar in town that got Fox.  We then proceeded to watch the game on a huge projection screen that was probably bigger than anything we would have seen it on in the U.S.   Unfortunately, the bar closed at midnight and we only stayed until the 3rd quarter because it was kind of a let down....however, when I got home and started watching the rest online, it definitely got more exciting! You had to love Raji's touchdown dance... trying to explain it to my European classmates (talking about American football linebackers and BJ's weight in pounds) was interesting and funny because the more I explained, the less it really meant to them.  

I will definitely be posting once more before I leave, with more details about what I do during the week and not just what goes on during the weekends! 

plants and love forever,

Mackenzie

The gang!
Front: Liz and Brian
Back: Nick, Bekah, Linda, Liz, Pauline, Jelena, Simone and I

Gnome Josh and I :-) 

Ahoy matey! The Dutch know how to topiary like no other

Traditional Dutch women's style....
no idea why they have little satellites coming off their heads...

Ice rink from the outside

Awesome maze thing

XXX: Part 2 ("Shoot me!")

 Where I left off:  I had just arrived in Amsterdam and seen the beginning sights.

Little do you know, the swans were snorting

To begin with, our goal was to get to the Red Light District area and find some place to eat.  Yes, it was 11 am, but we probably weren't really ready for the full Red Light experience, anyway.  What is nice about Amsterdam is that nothing is really all that far away from anything else--you do want to bring a good pair of walking shoes, however.  Some of you might say, "Duh, Mackenzie, if you know you'll be walking all day you should probably bring a comfortable pair of shoes!" but if you know me at all, I tend to think everything will be fine...until the end of the day when my feet hurt. A lot.

The Red Light District is also Amsterdam's Chinatown area, and one thing I've noticed is that there is no escaping Asian cuisine thus far in the Netherlands.  I don't really think this is necessarily good or bad, just interesting.  We ended up walking right through the heart of the Red Light District and into an area called Nieumarkt.  You might wonder how the heck we missed the most famous part of Amsterdam, but the truth is that there aren't really any signs saying "Red Light District: THIS WAY!," though once you know you're in the area, it's not hard to recognize it.

Red Light District: day time

In the Nieumarkt area, we discovered a nice little organic farmer's market going on (it was a Saturday morning) as well as stumbled upon the Waag.  This building (built in 1488) used to function as the city's gate and would close at night to keep out all the bandits (because I'm sure they couldn't find any other way in...).  It was also the first place in the Netherlands where public autopsies were performed, but only in the winter, for obvious reasons.  

De Waag  (backside) 

 Of course it was raining again (the rain continued on and off all day) so we decided to find some place to sit down and eat a little lunch.  The Waag building has been transformed into a nice little dining place, so we ate our first Amsterdam meal there.  The dining area spreads throughout the ground floor and everything is lit by candlelight (there windows, too).  Something you don't see everyday were the chandeliers that must have been original, or made to be original because even they were fully decked out with lit candles.

Herbie the Traveling Gnome next to the mustard

I'm pretty sure my favorite thing about the whole dining experience was the fact that our waiter, when he was ready to take our order, said "Shoot me!"    Needless to say, I was slightly confused and laughed a little, as did Ada.  He also talked us into these things that are called croquette (kroket is the Dutchified French word) balls.  They are breaded on the outside and have some sort of meat/cheese/other? combination on the inside.  We got them served with (spicy) mustard, and they were actually pretty good, if you could get over the weird consistency in the middle.  Also, each one had a little Dutch flag stuck in it--which made me think "Tourist food much?"

Sam, Myself, Wendy, Blake, Jane, Ada
Note the small Dutch flags in the kroket balls

We had something similar, called "bitterbals," the other evening at the student drink.  They are not bitter, but apparently were originally supposed to be eaten with a drink called "bittertje," which is sort of similar to gin.  The kroket balls are definitely a little higher quality than the bitterbal bar food.

After lunch, we divided into two groups: myself, Ada and Jane wanted to go to the Hash Marijuana Hemp Museum and Blake, Wendy and Sam went to wander about.  The museum was interesting because although you might think it would be full of bongs, it definitely emphasized the usefulness of hemp as a fiber throughout history.  After all, it was used to make rope and ropes are crucial to ships in a port town like Amsterdam.  There was a contraption called the "Volcano," which can be used to get the effects of THC from marijuana without all of the other chemicals.   It apparently vaporizes the THC into this balloon-like thing and you inhale the vapor from the balloon/bag.  Because it doesn't have many of the other chemicals, it's a softer way of using marijuana and more potent.

Add caption

Here is a picture of the guy that was running the machine (you could inhale as many bags as you wanted).  Ada, Jane and I were talking to him and when we asked where he was from, were surprised to hear he was from Ohio.  He's lived in Amsterdam for 12 years, and I think he was happy to talk to us because we were all from near his home state.

Not surprisingly, the museum was on the same main drag as the Red Light District.  Obviously, we couldn't see the infamous lights, but there were enough red curtains in windows that we figured it was about equivalent.  Even though it was mid-afternoon, we did see some ladies advertising in the windows.  

Question: What do you do if you're a "lady of the night" during they day, trying to sell yourself?  Well, the answer is slowly rotate back and forth in the window, mimicking a robot.  Granted, I don't know what I would do, but it was kind of entertaining.

One of the main places we all wanted to get to was the Anne Frank Huis (House).  I really hope you know her story, but if you don't (or you need a refresher):  Anne Frank and her family fled to Amsterdam from Germany when anti-Jewish sentiments were starting, and eventually things were getting strict enough on the Jews that Otto, Anne's dad, decided their family (Otto, Edith, Margot and Anne) should go into hiding.  They lived in the Secret Annex, the back area of the house that Otto's company was housed in. Only a few, very trusted, employees knew about the Franks living there and helped them while in hiding.  Later, the van Pels (Hermann, Auguste and their son, Peter) and Fritz Pfeffer, a dentist, joined them.  It's still unknown who betrayed them all, but a phone call was made to the German Sicherheitsdienst (Security Police) and everyone was deported to various work and concentration camps.  Otto Frank was the only one who survived and he had been at Auschwitz extermination camp. Anne kept a diary and wrote in notebooks throughout the two years in hiding, and this is what many students (myself included) read in middle school.

Blake demonstrating proper back pack-wearing technique in the museum

Having read her story was the impetus for my desire to see the place where she was in hiding for those two long years.  Luckily for us, the line wasn't all that long (it can get very long in the summer) and it moved pretty quickly.  You're not allowed to take pictures inside, but you do get a guide that includes commentary and relevant pictures as you go through the house.

This was probably one of the saddest "museums" I have gone to.  Being there where Anne wrote her diary and had to sneak around with 7 other people for such a long time, all for naught (sort of) made me feel like I had much more of a connection with the whole story.  It was also kind of eerie; everything is dark and dimly lit and thinking about what happened there just adds to the ambiance and experience.

The house doesn't have any furniture in it--the Nazis hauled it all away after it was raided.  It was Otto's desire, when the museum was getting designed, for furniture to remain absent.  Throughout the museum there are passages that tell about artifacts from the annex-dwellers as well as videos from some of the people that knew/helped the Franks (Miep Gies and Hannoli, Anne's friend who saw Anne through the fence at Bergen-Belsen) and Otto himself.  After Otto had gotten back to Amsterdam, he cut out the wall paper in Anne's former room that she had decorated with glued pictures from magazines.  This is back up on the wall, surrounded by glass.  Her diaries and notebooks are also on display.

All of these things make the exhibit a very powerful experience, and I really encourage everyone who gets to Amsterdam to see it.  Read the book first, though.

To conclude our day, we wandered around for an hour or so, sort of lost.  My feet were really starting to feel the pain from my 4-P footwear choice.  We did manage to re-orient ourselves, and then made our way to a place to sit down for dinner and check out the Red Light District once more before leaving (and when it was finally dark).  Wendy, Jane and I all got fries on the way to dinner--I had mine the traditional Dutch way with mayo.  Yes, this sounds disgusting and it sort of is, but it's really not all that bad.  Their mayo is also a little different than in the States, so that makes it better as well.

Red Light District: night time 

Dinner was at a random little Italian restaurant (salami pizza, anyone?) and then we ventured into a coffee shop.  Last important Amsterdam facts:  Coffee shop = smoking marijuana, Coffee house = drinking caffeine and the Dutch don't really smoke marijuana all that much, it's more of a tourist thing.  I DIDN'T smoke anything, for the record (nor did anyone else).  The menu was very interesting--one one side was drinks (the place we went squeezed their own orange juice...) and on the other side was all the choices for marijuana.  You could apparently buy different cultivars and roll them into a joint yourself or buy "special" cake, hash, a joint, and general marijuana.

To be completely honest, on the train ride home, although my feet were killing me, I felt that the day had been a success and was rather proud of my navigational skills.  It's definitely in the plans to return and finish seeing the rest of the city (seeing as we didn't venture very far from the center), but Saturday was a great start, especially for having only being in the country for a week.

This weekend I'm looking forward to an excursion with the Erasmus Students Network to Arnhem (a larger city than Wageningen) and the open air museum there.  Probably not as exciting as Amsterdam, but still another place to see.  I'll let you know how it goes!

Amsterdam was built on a marsh, so it's slowly sinking--
making the buildings crooked.