Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
From Berlin, we caught a coach to Amsterdam. A coach will never be our first choice for transportation but, as no airline flew this route and the train cost about a €100 each, at only €91 for the both of us a coach is what we could best afford. However, we did not enjoy ourselves; from 7.30pm until 5.30am, we slept about three hours total. We arrived outside Amsterdam and had to organise how to get to our hotel. After waiting 45 minutes, catching a tube, and walking in the dark, in the rain for 500m in the wrong direction before turning around and walking a 1km in the right direction, we finally arrived. The receptionist, who was not a polite German, then informed us we would not be able to check in until 1pm. It was 7am.
We left our bags and went for a walk into the city centre. Amsterdam is an unusual place. The city is beautiful with original 17th Century-ish, very narrow, brick houses – the Government use to tax people on how much street frontage their house took up – and winding, cobblestone roads, all built around a series of canals. Amsterdam really is a city of a million bicycles, all padlocked with massive chains to stop the junkies stealing them.
After seeing the beauty of the architecture, you then notice the sex, drugs and tulips. Sex is in the Red Light District, obviously, but sex-themed anything is everywhere. Amsterdam has its ‘Coffee Shops’ where café owners sell ‘special cakes’ and marijuana. Though, again, marijuana-themed products are everywhere from t-shirts to lollypops in all the tourist shops. Then you get the tulips, real ones in the flower markets, and wood ones to take home and plastic ones disguised as umbrellas in the tourist shops.
The sex, drugs and tulips seem to be for the British. Amongst the sex shops, coffee shops, flower markets and the tourist shops is an English sports pub on every corner and a yobbo nearby to inhabit it. The Lonely Planet says almost half of all ‘users’ of the Red Light District are British men. Amsterdam is close to England and everybody speaks English – we heard so little of other languages I sometimes forgot we were not in an English speaking country.
The other main feature of Amsterdam we noticed is spit. The people of Amsterdam have covered their pavements in globs of slimy, green, bubbly spit and it looks disgusting. Amsterdam has an annual city vote on the ‘Minor Annoyances in Amsterdam’. Usually dog poo wins, previously though, ‘wild pissing’ has won. On this occasion, they installed ‘pee deflectors’ outside buildings, metal sheets angled to spray back at the perpetrator. They also introduced an electrified bit of steel that when peed on electrocutes the person peeing; these have since been banned. However, my vote would be for the spit, which is everywhere.
On our second day in Amsterdam, we did another free walking tour; I will not link the picture because it did not work in my last entry. On the tour, we visited the Red Light District, stood on Amsterdam’s highest point, a whopping 1.5m above sea level. We saw Amsterdam’s narrowest house, 1.8m wide, with the current owner being taller than this, therefore, he cannot lie down width ways in his own house. We saw the coffee shop George Clooney and Brad Pitt visited in Ocean’s Twelve. Someone also, finally, explained why Amsterdam is covered in XXX. XXX represents three St Andrew’s Crosses and appears on the Coat of Arms of the Netherlands as well as city property including some phallic-looking street barriers - http://journals.worldnomads.com/sophieollie/gallery/8339/225217.aspx. Apparently, no one can prove or disprove whether the XXX of the pornography world originated in Amsterdam or not.
While in Amsterdam, we also visited Anne Frank’s house. The museum has kept the house as true to its original state as possible. You walk through the bookshelf hiding the secret annex of the house, the wallpaper is original with the posters Anne stuck to it still up. Her original diary is also on display. Film footage of interviews tell her story and how, after being taken from the house by the Gestapo, she ends up at Bergen-Belsen and dies of illness just before the camp’s liberation. It was a sad museum visit.
We also visited the Rijskmuseum, which has a number of Rembrandt paintings including his most famous, Night Watch, and a number of works by his pupils. Amsterdam, though, is one of the worst cities for museum prices with most entrance fees set at €10 per person and ‘No Student Discount’ plastered everywhere in giant text. Therefore, we did not visit too many of the museums and, unfortunately, there is not much else to in Amsterdam in the rain.
We spent much of the rest of the time looking round the shops and trying to avoid the rain. Amsterdam had good markets selling second hand clothing and shoes, and many pornographic DVDs. After three nights we felt ready to move on from Amsterdam and its rain to catch another uncomfortable, overnight coach to Paris…
From Ollie and Sophie
(who have now bought tickets home and will be arriving back in NZ on the 27th of February.)
