Before going to Amsterdam, we debated about whether or not it would be better to drive to the city and park, or pay a little extra and take the train. I’m glad we talked E into the train idea, because when we got there, it was immediately apparent that driving around in the city would be a horrible, horrible idea. Construction seemingly everywhere, hordes of cyclists zipping past, trams and buses zooming along. It was a challenge enough for us as pedestrians; we were at the bottom of the totem pole here as far as right of way was concerned.

Tried to get a photo that captures the chaos of Amsterdam traffic, but it was hard to do while in the midst of it (try taking a picture when there are three or four large objects trying to run you over!). Had to settle for this quieter one.

One of the many trash-filled (yet still somehow lovely) canals in the city.

Wherein the day before was spent in communion with nature, and other such hippie nonsense, this day was full of tourists, bus noise, lights, and general commotion. Amsterdam, as you can imagine, is a highly cosmopolitan city, attracting people from everywhere. There were even quite a few Vietnamese “loempia” stands, which serve Dutch egg rolls. If I hadn’t been so stuffed from lunch I would have ventured to try a loempia, but we had made the mistake of ordering a rice table from Sari Citra, one of the many Indonesian restaurants in the city. The food was excellent, to be sure, but way too much for two people. A rice table for two at this place, approximately 28 euros, could actually feed four.

The first thing we did when we got there, naturally, was to visit the cat museum - the KattenKabinet, the existence of which I discovered while doing research on Amsterdam previously. (yes, it was definitely my idea to go. E still had a good time. I think.) The KattenKabinet was chock full of delightful crazy cat art, and staffed by a woman who looked like she belonged at a European Renaissance Faire. She was crocheting some sort of silver tinsel onto some stockings when we came in.

One of the three feline residents of the KattenKabinet.

This cat has seen better days.

Modern art kat.

A hallway in the KattenKabinet.

Hands down, the most awesome painting, ever.

Afterwards, we wandered around some open air markets: the Flower Market, as well as the enormous Albert Cuypstraat Market.

Wooden tulips at the Flower Market.

Some of the most adorable graffiti I’ve seen.

Albert Cuypstraat Market is one of the biggest open air markets in Europe.

This market is full of all of one’s needs: cheap socks, clothes, Playboy swag (seriously, there was a lot of this. Are middle aged Dutch women really that into Playboy, or do they just think the bunny is cute?), meat and cheese, fish, VCRs and vacuum parts. And, most importantly to me, cheap scarves (I got three for 1.50 euro!).

Another triangular plane. This is where all the cool Dutch kids hang out.

(I left my camera at the hotel at this point. No use in getting it pickpocketed!)

Now, E’s mother had given me a museum pass that gets you into most of the major museums for free. She lent it to me so I could use it. We went to the Rijksmuseum, the museum of the Dutch masters (Rembrandt, Vermeer, etc)., and just as I was handing my pass to the man at the counter, I noticed an important oversight - her birthdate was on it! I tried to be sly and hand it to the man with my thumb over the date, but of course, when he scanned it he looked at me and smirked. “Born in 1950, eh?” He let me through anyways, red-faced and chagrined.

Afterwards, I didn’t really want to risk using the museum pass at the Van Gogh museum, so we went ahead to the Anne Frank House (which doesn’t take the pass anyways). I would highly recommend to anyone going to Amsterdam, if you see nothing else, to go ahead and go here. Honestly, I have to admit that I hadn’t much interest in going here, beyond it being a tourist attraction. I’d read Anne Frank’s diary in middle school and remember it as a really good read, but I wasn’t exactly super excited about a history and morality lesson.

But the Anne Frank House is one of the better museums I’ve been to, as they have done a terrific job integrating the building with its history. Oddly enough, the outside facade is this weird modernistic steel and glass construction (E: “how did the Nazis miss this?”), but it actually provided a stark contrast between modern times and the historical part, I suppose. It was incredibly moving, much more so than expected, to actually stand in the space where Anne lived for those three years. It’s very dark inside, as they obviously had to keep the shades down, and though the space didn’t seem bad enough at first (the annex is probably bigger than an averagely priced New York apartment), being trapped in those few rooms for three straight years would be unimaginable for me.

Strolling through the annex and reading the accounts of how they passed their time, brought home the surreal horror of the Holocaust. They would cook each other elaborate meals out of the scraps they had (canned beans, potatoes, some lard). Anne would paste photos and clippings of movie stars on her wall to make the place look cheery. They were perfectly pleasant, ordinary people. Why did this happen?

I think it affected E much more strongly than I, though he’d had less interest in going, as he had just been tagging along on my touristy forays. E’s half German, and his grandfather had actually been stationed on the Russian front. His job was, the story goes, to run under the cars and light them so that they would start. He’d been shot four times, and after the war ended, he walked all the way back home from the Russian front, surprising E’s grandmother in a field. Really, quite the romantic story, and worthy of a sappy blockbuster movie ending - if you discount the fact that the protagonists were, more or less, fighting for the Nazis. For us in the U.S., WWII is a distant thing; in Europe, all the wounds and scars are still plainly visible.

We left the Anne Frank House and returned to the normal touristy world of Amsterdam. We stopped to get some coffee, of course, and I’ll just leave it at that. Also, because I was morbidly curious, we peeked into the red light district. Now E had been to Amsterdam before and said he found the red light district pretty depressing, as many of the workers are from third world countries, and are likelier than not, victims of economic exploitation and circumstance. I had my misgivings as well, but since I don’t know if I’ll ever come back here, figured I should at least see what all the fuss was about.

And as it turns out, not much. Tons of lights and weird display areas where the bored women stand naked in the windows. One woman even chatted on her cell phone; we figured she was probably trying to make more money by working as a phone sex operator. A lot of the girls looked like average girls one might find on the street, or behind the counter at a cafe. This was very different from my observation when staying in Honolulu and seeing prostitutes for the first time - I had looked at a woman standing by the street, and it just clicked in my head: “that woman is a hooker.” I’m not sure what makes a person look prostitute-y or not; maybe it’s roughly correlated to the amount of makeup.

Amsterdam, in general, was a very confusing city for us to navigate (perhaps it had something to do with the, uh, coffee). After awhile we just decided to walk home; we probably stumbled through the same flashy, blinky street carnival about eight times as we were trying to find our way around.

Exhausted, we went to bed early; the next day we were to head back to Nijmegen, by way of a tulip garden.