Hallo Goedemorgen, Amsterdam!

Ciao! My latest European adventure was spending our post-midterms four-day weekend in Amsterdam, Holland! Wow, what a neat city Amsterdam is! It sort of reminds me of a kind of Scandinavian Venice with its canals and bridges and such. Every canal with its row houses and trees is so picturesque!

Amsterdam is probably the most bike-friendly city in the world, no joke. EVERYONE rides bikes and you're constantly having to dodge pedestrians on foot, bikes on their bike paths, cars, and these above ground trams that run through the city at all hours. We flew in to the Netherlands in Eindhoven, a town an hour and half's train ride south of Amsterdam. Along the train ride to the city we got a glimpse of what the Dutch countryside looks like and it is amazing. I had heard that the Netherlands was one of the cleanest places in the world and I believe it must be true. There are diary farms everywhere, lush green pastures dotted with cows and autumnal trees lining bike paths--it's absolutely gorgeous. The city was quite cold (it is very norhtern Europe after all) but the skies were crisply blue. And the people I encountered in Holland were the nicest Europeans yet! They would go out of their way to be courteous and friendly to everyone.

So since the city of Amsterdam has basically been built for bike riders, of course we rented bikes! We rode EVERYWHERE in the city, which is quite small actually, but we didn't really fit in as locals since they could tell we were foreigners by they way we rode. A few times we faced the wrong direction on a bus path or didn't see where the paths connected and were on the pedestrian sidewalks and such....but we got the hang of it the end and it was quite pleasant--I had been craving a bike ride for so long! It felt invigorating to ride over the scenic canals, with the yellow leaves falling from the trees with the wheels rolling briskly accross smooth pavement. It was simply wonderful. Besides city riding, we rode in Vondel Park which is Amsterdam's version of Central Park, a park that the Dutch are proud to call their own! And it deserves it because it is gorgeous with a lack in the center, long winding, wide bike paths.

We (and by we I mean Tara, Nancy, Mike, Devin & I) also got a chance to see the Van Gogh museum. I had always like Van Gogh's impressionism and thought it was nice, pretty art, but seeing the paintings in person made me look at Van Gogh in a whole new way: as a bonafide genius. This museum in particular holds the largest collection of Van Gogh's work in the world, even though it's not even half of the paintings he produced during his lifetime. Most of it is his early work (since Amsterdam was where he did most of it). I had never realized what a deeply religious man Van Gogh was (he was a pastor's son as well) and how his heart went out to the peasantry, which explains why he longed to leave the hectic and congested city to be out in the rural countryside, painting the lives of peasants and the poor. His use of color of course is well known, but seeing the paintings that I've seen prints of many times before look completely new and vibrant when seen in person. He somehow uses the same multicolors in his subject as he does in the background yet somehow, it works. It was a beautiful gallery and I will never forget the experience.

We also had a chance to view the contents of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum which is their National Gallery and holds most of Rembrandt's work which is quite impressive. Rembrandt's control of light in his paintings as it appears over his subjects is absolutely masterful. There was also a Hirst exhibit in the gallery (Hirst is a modern artist who we discussed in my art history class and does some pretty wild stuff, you should check him out). The Hirst piece was titled "For the Love of God" becuase that's what his mother told him when he informed her what exactly he was going to do with this piece. You enter into a pitch black room and in the center of the room is a glass box encasing a real human skull (the person is unidentified) with thousands of diamonds encrested into the skull and it shines brilliantly in the center of the dark room. That's all it is. Apparently Hirst is trying ot make some statement about life and death, the soul and the afterlife. Oh modern art.

Another amazing thing I had the chance to experience in Amsterdam was seeing the house of Anne Frank. I remember reading the diary of Anne Frank in middle school, but seeing the hosue and walking through it in person was incredible. The museum itself was very well organized with artifacts (including possessions in the house, the family's concentration camp cards, etc.) and short video clips with interviews of various people such as Anne Frank's childhood friend and her father, Otto Frank. The house and museum also displays exerpts from the diary and you progress through and it makes the whole experience very, very powerful. The mood of the entire museum is solumn and serious. You walk behind the moving bookcase (teh secret entrance Anne describes in her diary) that leads to the secret living space of Anne and her 7 other family members that hid from the Nazis during WWII. There are no furnishings in the living quarters (Otto Frank had asked for it to remain unfurnished) however Otto described where things were placed in the house and the museum has dollhouse-like model displays showing what the rooms looked like at the time thery were being lived in. After walking through the two floors that the family occupied, you enter into the last room which holds the actual physical diary that belonged to Anne Frank and it is opened inside a glass case. It's a cute little girl's diray with a pink cover and gold lock. Also in this room is a final message from Otto Frank in a video clip where we confesses that he never knew at the time what Anne's internal thoughts were during their time in hiding, and that it wasn't until reading the diray after her death in the concentration camp (just a month before liberation) that he realized what deep, profound feelings and mature thoughts she had about her lonliness, their situation, fear, her longings for freedom, and her courageousness in facing adversity. Otto's final statement is that, "parents never truly can know who their children are" which seems strange but true and I think children can have much more profound and deeper understanding and insights into life than we realize.

And I knwo what you're all thinking: "Yeah Dani this all sounds great...but what about Amsterdam's famous red light district and coffee houses we hear so much about???" Yes, it's true, it's a big deal there and the Dutch people are very "open" in general but really they just don't like conflict so they tend to just allow things. But this culture of Amsterdam is not really the real Amsterdam--not according to the people. The red light district and the coffee hosues are concentrated in one area of town, right next to Central Station and the Financial district, and yes it is seedy, but not nearly as intense as I think people make it out to me. Canabis products (marijuana) is technically illegal in the country of Holland yet Coffee Shops (f.y.i. they're not the same as Starbucks, folks!) still sell drugs and people do them openly in the streets (even though the rules technically are that the drugs must be used or smoked in an indicated room indoors). Coffee Shops typically sell joints and brownies, special milkshakes, but Smartshops are where people can purchase shrooms and other hallucinagenic products. The red light district was not as intense as I had imagined it to be, but it is appauling to see the women standing behind the glass windows skantally clad. When curtains are closed so that all you see is the red light shining through means that they're with a client. This area of town, though seedy, is pretty safe since so many tourists are around. Though one night I was offered ecstacy and cocaine. good times. Some of the population in Amsterdam is making efforts to change things and eventually with the rules that are in place, the drug culture will probably die out. There is a law that when a coffee shop owner dies, the shop dies with them, meaning that never again can a coffee shop be there and it can't be resold or anythig--so eventually it may die out. Amsterdam is quite the unique city--it's like Berkeley on steroids in ways.

Well that sums up some of the things I saw and experienced inthe beutiful city of Amsterdam! Next time I visit though I want to explore more outside the city and maybe take a day trip to where the tulip fields are.

Next weekend....I am traveling through Eastern Europe for a third time. This adventure will bring me to Bratislava, Vienna, and Budapest! It is bound to be crazy, we have quite the itinerary.

Ciao ciao my friends, hope all is well back in the States or where ever in the world you are reading this from! I have 6 weeks left in Europe--I can't believe it's already november!

pace & amore!