Friday July 4th
So, Friday morning we woke up early determined to beat the hoards of tourists we’d heard about crowding the Anne Frank house. After a quick ‘breakfast’ at the hostel (deli meat, cheese and poor quality bread with pseudo apple juice), we hopped on a tram uptown towards the house. We arrived to find a small line just as the museum was opening. I’d heard and read online about being shoulder-to-shoulder with sweat drenched foreigners dampening the experience, but we were lucky enough to avoid this. It was quite an incredible experience (I know, we’ve used this term a lot on our trip). As a child, I attended Anne Frank elementary school and remember reading her diary as early as maybe second or third grade. I recall my sister Marissa’s bat mitzvah speech mentioning the new generation of young Jewish women who are able to have thier bat mitzvah’s and feeling like they do it with the souls of people like Anne Frank who were unable to have thier own at the time. Walking through the house, again, neither of us felt it was necessary to take any pictures. At the front, there is a pamphlet with information about each room, each of the Jews in hiding, and quotes from Anne’s diary. We walked through Otto Frank’s offices downstairs and they had video clips of his infamous assistant Miep and various bits of information written on the walls, again alongside quotes from the diary. Eventually, we came to the infamous room with the bookcase which hid the entrance to the Secret Annex. I cannot begin to explain what it felt like to duck down and step up into the world which I’ve so long heard so much about. We walked through each of the bedrooms and bathrooms of all the members in hiding. In the last two rooms there were videos playing of Otto Frank speaking about his daughter, and one of a woman who was a childhood friend of Anna’s. Sarah and I were actually lucky enough to hear the woman speak in person last winter when we went to Israel and visited Yad V’shem, the Holocaust Museum. Finally, downstairs they had a facsimile of the diary for viewing (claiming the original was being restored and the room was under construction for climate control) and copies of the diary which have been published around the world in dozens of languages! I don’t even think we bought a postcard with pictures from this place. It’s truly another place everyone must expereience on thier own. Between all of the museums, memorials, and this place, my words here have surely not done justice to the will of those who lived in the annex for years, those who helped, and those who survived and perished in the Second World War.
Whew. I know. Heavy business for me too. After that, we decided since it was finally lovely weather outside, that we were in dire need of a relaxing (and romantic, oo-ooh!) picnic.We stopped by a coffeshop and the ‘Simon Meyssen Broodbakker’ bakery to get the necessary supplies, then headed to a spot in front of a beautiful lake in the middle of Vondelpark for lunch. For dessert, we walked to a cake shop and shared a hazelnut crostata before heading back to the hostel for an afternoon nap.
Later on, around 4, I met up with a friend of mine who had been studying in Israel for the past seven months. Ryan, or Hutty as most people know him, (the son of Aaron from the late Aarons Eatz in San Diego) and I just hung out in Vondelpark, and walked around the city chatting and catching each other up on our lives. We parted ways after a couple of hours so that Sarah and I could make it to Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum. Again, another really neat and interesting museum experience. It was full of ‘Dutch loot’ as Sarah likes to put it, as well as some incredible paintings by artists like Titian and Rembrandt.
Afterwards, we visited the nearest coffeshop and went to an Israeli falafel chain Moes for what was probably the best schwarma (or shawarma or shoarma depending on which country you are in) from the whole trip! The rest of the evening was spent low-key checking emails and ambling around town, untill hunger set in again (dinner was too small, fourthmeal time!) and we spent some time in Vondelpark before heading to a nearby Irish dinner pub. I introduced Sarah to the wonderful world of BBQ spare-ribs (I’ve seen my brother eat an entire rack from what was probably a prize-winning bull and still be hungry for more) and after a glass of wine we headed back to the hostel, signed up for the morning airport shuttle and went to bed.
- Jamie
