I am a good 4 days behind on blogging - mea culpa. We landed in Charleroi Brussels Airport just shy of 11pm on the 21st and took an hour bus ride to Brussels. Checked into the hotel at 1am and immediately clocked out.
We were in Brussels for fewer than 12 hours but I can tell you from the drive, walking around to find breakfast in the morning that it looks JUST like Boston. It was uncanny. The buildings, the underground tunnels (a la Big Dig style) - there were triple decker houses. It made me homesick just a bit; especially this close to Christmas.
We took the 3 hour train from Brussels to Amsterdam on the afternoon of the 22nd. Arrived at the train station and our hotel was within walking distance... if my luggage had not broken. It was awful. Poor Jonathan had to schlep his bags and mine all the way down Damrak in the middle of the afternoon with Christmas shoppers, tourists and workers heading home and hitting him/bags every 3rd person. I bet you all can imagine what a good mood he was in :)
After checking into the hotel, we went out and bought a new bag. Priorities right? I went to update our blog and it would have cost us $75USD for internet for two days - hence our internet silence! We left the hotel and walked around the main part of Amsterdam, Damrak Circle, Old Keurke and New Keurke - and of course the red light district! You have to go; and it was not exactly what I thought it would be. I was expecting people that resemble those in the Russian mob, smoking cigarettes outside the windows and bullying people into "visiting" with the girls. It wasn't like that - it was a lot of guys window shopping and enjoying themselves. Such a different world... while we were talking about this on the way to dinner, we were hit with a big wave of what was unquestionably... reefer. Once I started paying attention - I noticed it a lot. Dinner was actually at the hotel; steak for Jonathan, rack of lamb for me and Potatoes Au Gratin. Yum.
Now we're at the morning of the 23rd and we headed to Rijksmuseum (Rembrandt's Museum.) Unfortunately a good part of the museum was closed for renovations but the sales clerk assured us the "good stuff" was on display. We both were commenting on how surreal it is to study such incredible works of art in school - and then to see them in real life. In fact a few of the paintings were part of a class Jonathan took last semester so he had tons of good info on them.
We left there, grabbed a hot dog and got back on the Tram for Anne Frank's House. The house has been reconstructed to look as it did during World War II - and the building next door was purchased and combined with the original house for a museum/gift shop. I did a good job of not crying for most of the tour. Different rooms had different parts of her diary carved into a marble wall... there were also videos with interviews with friends of the Frank family playing on a loop for people to watch. The rooms that 8 people were in were fairly larger than I expected them to be - but to learn and be reminded that they spent over 2 years in confinement being unable to see outside was such a heavy thought. The last two parts of the tour did make me cry. There was a video interview of Otto Frank (Anne Frank's Dad) in 1967. He survived Auschwitz and was released from the concentration camp 3 months before Bergen-Belsen (where Anne & Margot Frank were) was liberated. In the interview, he talks about being handed the diary and reading it after finally learning his daughter was dead. The last part of the interview he said - 'I was very close with my daughter - but I did not know she had these thoughts. It made me realize that no parent ever really knows their child.' Video ends, and you walk down the last flight of stairs bringing you to the main floor - and in the middle of the room is her actual diary. The pages were yellowed but there it was; a little girls handwriting describing the plight of Europe and the persecution of millions of people. It always astounded me how an innocent child's perspective could make adults actions seem so foolish.
"I keep my ideals, because in spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart."
- Anne Frank
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