I had the fortune of visiting Amsterdam in the spring last year for my buddy Stevo's bachelor party. Yeah, a bachelor party... It was pretty epic. Alexandra had never been, so she insisted that we make it one of our stops on our trip. There was plenty that I hadn't seen and wanted to, particularly the Anne Frank House, so I was all for it.
Visiting the Anne Frank House would bring our trip full circle in a way, in terms of the WWII and Nazi history that we sought to see and experience on our trip. Having had some time away from the heaviness of Auschwitz and other war-torn sites on our Central Europe tour several weeks earlier, we were in a good place to appreciate the experience when we arrived in Amsterdam.
On our first day, the lines for the museum were pretty short, so we decided to make it happen. Having had a busy travel day from Eindhoven with no plans to visit the museum that day, we didn't really have any time to prepare for the experience -- not there's anything in particular we could have done -- but maybe that was a good thing. We entered the museum with pure anticipation and curiosity.
It was quite an experience. There are so many unbelievable facts about what happened in that House. So many people. No noise. Rationed food. One toilet.
Walking up the stairway behind the original bookcase that hid the stairway and the living quarters gave me goosebumps. And her journals... It is baffling to me that such a young girl had such powerful and meaningful thoughts, and that she was able to articulate them as well as she did.
For the first time on our trip, I felt ready to go home when we exited the Anne Frank House. For me, we had completed all of the substantial experiences we wanted to have on the trip, and I was ready to go home.
Over the next couple days, as we tried our best to stay warm and dry, highlights included eating good Asian food for the first time in awhile, a drizzly boat tour of the canals, a great craft beer bar, the Van Gogh Museum, Stroopwafels!, and of course, grabbing brunch, riding bikes and checking out a local brewery with my high school friend Natalie (who had, appropriately, dyed her hair hot pink) and her boyfriend Alex. Thanks again for showing us around guys!
