Betten, Badwannen, Hard Rock Café, and Subway….

This past weekend we went to Amsterdam. I was picturing this ugly, industrial city that was full of potheads and Rastafarians, but I was pleasantly surprised! Amsterdam is absolutely beautiful! Holland is below sea level and Amsterdam is full of canals and waterways. It is also right on the water. Apparently Amsterdam has more canals than Venice does. The buildings are absolutely beautiful too! They are very old and historic and are very charming!To get there we took an overnight train from Munich (which is a 2 hour train ride from Innsbruck). We had a 6 person couchette and I was really worries that we weren’t going to be able to move at all, but I slept like a baby! Luckily there were 6 of us travelling together so we didn’t have any randos in our car. We got there and we checked in to the Marriott which, after sleeping in the Rossl and on the train, was heaven on earth. The beds were fluffy and amazing! There was also a bathtub!!!! I have truly come to appreciate the small things in life.
We walked around the city for about half the day just looking at everything and getting our bearings. We eventually found the Heineken museum and we went on the Heineken Experience. Dad, you will be proud to know that I tried the beer and I can now appreciate the taste… kinda.
After the Heineken Museum, we grabbed some dinner and went to the Anne Frank House. Having experienced Dachau last weekend, I have to say that Anne Frank impacted me so much more on a personal level. I grew up reading her diary and there it was, right in front of me—the actual pages she wrote on, where she wrote it, and where she hid. It was so much smaller and darker that I could have imagined it to be. And from the outside it is just so unsuspecting... The part that really got to me was in the museum there was a video of an interview with Otto Frank (her dad—he was the only one of the whole group that was hiding that survived the concentration camps). He was talking about how he and Anne had had a really good relationship and they talked a lot, but it wasn’t until he read her diary that he realized what deep thoughts she actually had and how self-critical she was. That was not the daughter he knew, and he made the point that how parents can never really ever know their children. For some reason, that was when I started balling…

After that we ventured to the Red Light District to have a look around. Wow, that was one of the more interesting nights of my life. Needless to say it was very uncomfortable, eye opening, and, ummm, weird… I didn’t smoke anything while I was in Amsterdam, but if I was going to it probably would have been best to do it then. I guess I’m just an uptight, prude American. Lol…

The next day we went on a bike tour of the Dutch country side! Even though it was raining we still had lots of fun!! We saw a big windmill that they use to keep the ground from being flooded. A man lives in the windmill to make sure things are always working. We also went to a small, family owned cheese and clog factory. We got to meet and feed the cows whose milk was used to make the cheese, and then he told us all about how the cheese is made! They don’t pasteurize the milk, which is a little gross, but hey, the cheese was really good!!! The guy also showed us how they make the wooden clogs! I got a small pair that they made there. Too bad I didn’t get some to wear… I feel like I could start a wooden clog trend! After the factory we rode through a big park and just around the city!

Since the intense shock I had the night before didn’t kill me, the universe thought it necessary for me to have two near death experience on the bike tour. (I’m exaggerating but just go with it…) The first… I mentioned it was raining and I was wearing flip flops… My foot slipped from the peddle and hit the ground basically making me crash to the ground and thoroughly scraping my leg from my ankle to my knee. Its looking a lot better now, but it hurt really bad then! The second… There aren’t buses in Amsterdam, but trams that run on railway tracks throughout the city. We were waiting to cross the street and I literally can 2 inches from being flattened on the front of one! SCARY!!!After the bike tour we went on a canal cruise on a boat. Thomas, one of the guys in our group, was dead set on getting on a boat while we were there… and he succeeded! It was lots of fun. Our tour guide told us all about the city and the water ways. Maybe even more entertaining was the bachelor party going on in the back of the boat! They would holler at people on the sides of the canal as we passed, as we were passing through the Red Light District, a very large, old woman decided to respond to the hollering by flashing the whole boat… Oh Amsterdam..

After the boat ride the group was going to head back to the Red Light District, but I decided that a veggie burger from Hard Rock, a long bath, and sleeping in those huge beds was much more attractive to me!

There was a casualty of the trip though. My camera case went missing on the way back, and the general consensus is that I was pickpocketed. The irony is that I thought my camera case was safer than my wallet against pickpocketers, so I had put my driver’s license and credit card in there. Great… But everything has been remedied… It is just stressful!

I am back in Innsbruck now. This week is midterms so every one is trying to be a little more studious. We went to a lake yesterday and tried to get some studying done there, but we failed!