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.

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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.