Winter Break Adventures Part Tre

Amsterdam

Our flight arrived in Amsterdam late in the evening on Tuesday, January 4th. We took a train to the city center, and got pizza in the train station for dinner. It was from a place called "New York Pizza" and it was American style pizza--the first time I've had that since I came to Europe! It was good. (This company's slogan was pretty funny, too. It was --Matt and Laura, don't read this part-- "Damn Tasty". We were amused. You can get away with a bit more in Europe, I suppose. And of course we then made jokes about "Amster-dam Tasty"). After that, we went to our hostel. It took us longer than it should have to find it...also, there was snow on the ground! It was the first time I had walked through it all year. There were four other archies staying in the same hostel who had arrived a day earlier, so we saw them when we got there, talked for a bit, and went to bed.

In the morning we went to Anne Frank's house--where she and her family hid for two years before being discovered by the Nazis. It's a museum now, and a very good one. It was informative and had an easy to follow sequence. And it was very powerful. With the subject matter it'd be hard not to be, but I still think it was done exceptionally well. First you walk through the downstairs rooms, where her father's store was, and eventually make your way up to the annex, the hiding place. There's no furniture, because it was confiscated during the raid on the house. Otto Frank, Anne's father, was the only survivor from the family. He was the one who pushed for Anne's diary to be published, and he set up the museum, and didn't want any of the furniture put back. But there are still little reminders of the family. The newspapers clippings and pictures that Anne pasted on her walls are still there, and there are pencil lines on the wall marking the children's growth during the years they were there. At the end, there's a short video clip of Otto talking about how he felt when he read the diary for the first time, and why he set up the museum there--he wants people to learn from their story, and not let anything like that happen ever again. Like I said, it was powerful. Here's the outside of the house:


The annex is behind there but of course you can't see it from the front.

In the afternoon, we went to a Van Gogh museum. It was a bit overpriced, but cool. Unfortunately, Starry Night, which is one of the few Van Gogh paintings I would actually recognize, was NOT there. But oh well. That was basically all the sightseeing we did that day...it was cool to be with the other archies, though. They all left early the next morning, but Katie and I were there all day again.

In the morning we took a tram a little outside the city center to the De Dageraad housing, which of course is something we learned about in history last year. It's just a bunch of residential buildings, mostly, but the brickwork is really cool--there are some unusual shapes and curves and things.

In the afternoon, we went on a free walking tour of the city. It was very cool--literally. In fact, it started snowing pretty hard right at the end of the tour. So when it was over, we went to a cafe and had hot chocolate to warm up:-) We also found a really neat little restaurant for dinner that night. We had delicious burgers and french fries with mayo. And, there was a 33% student discount! Huge.

We left early the next morning to start a pretty long day of traveling. Our final destination was Berlin, but for some reason (probably cheaper prices), we flew first through...

Geneva

Which of course, is in Switzerland. We had about a 4 hour layover, so we decided to go into town for bit. The Alps made a dramatic backdrop for the city. We walked around for a little while and tried to find lunch, but unfortunately none of the shops we went to accepted credit cards. Switzerland is on the Franc, not the Euro, so we couldn't use our regular money, and we didn't want to withdraw a bunch of Francs that we wouldn't use. So eventually we ended up just going back to the airport and getting food there, where they DID take credit cards. But I'm still glad we went to the city--if nothing else, it was nice to get some fresh air and exercise to break up the long periods of sitting on a plane.


Switzerland!

Our second flight, to Berlin, went smoothly as scheduled, luckily. A bunch of other flights on the same airline were actually canceled that day, due to what we think was some sort of strike. But ours wasn't affected at all....

Berlin

When we got to Berlin, we found the train station at the airport just fine, and we knew what street we had to get to and everything...but for some reason, when we first looked at the Berlin metro map, it completely mystified us. I don't know what it was--maybe just seeing so many words and street names in German. Anyway, we must have looked seriously lost and confused, because the guy behind us in line asked if we needed help. We said "sure," and explained our situation. It turned out that this guy's friend happened to be going to the exact same street, and kindly offered to show us the way. It ALSO turned out that both of these guys were on the Berlin volleyball team, coming back from some sort of tournament in Switzerland (they won their match). They were extremely generous in offering their assistance and making sure we got exactly where we needed to go, and I'm pretty sure they've gained a lifelong team supporter:-)

After we checked in to our hostel, we headed out to find dinner (searching for food is a very common, and sort of time consuming, traveling activity). We ended up at a place that was sort of like the Applebees of Berlin, I think. They had lots of different types of food--Italian, Mexican, even American. I got a quesadilla; it was amazing! It was pretty darn cold in Berlin, so we walked straight back to the hostel afterwards and relaxed for the rest of the night.

We woke up early and went to the Checkpoint Charlie museum. We spent a really long time there, because there were tons of things to look at and read. Large parts of the museum were dedicated to different stories of how people escaped from the East side of the Wall to the West side. They ranged from hiding in cars, to digging tunnels, even to building hot air balloons. The creativity and determination of people on both sides of the Wall to fight for freedom was pretty evident, and pretty inspiring.


This is a replica of the actual checkpoint--I took the picture from one of the museum windows, which is why it's an aerial view.

We went on another free walking tour that afternoon. On the way from the museum to where it started we discovered a sweet grocery store where we were able to get huge cheap sandwiches for lunch, and we bought some German chocolate too:-)

The tour started at the Brandenburg gate:



The tour was really long, about 4 hours altogether...because there's so much to see in Berlin. There's all the WWII stuff, of course. We saw a Holocaust memorial, right in the center of the city. Our tour guide was excellent, and pointed that that's a pretty impressive thing for Berlin to do--they have a monument about one of the things they're most ashamed about as a city. Usually monuments celebrate proud moments...but not this one. We also saw the site of Hitler's bunker. It's under a parking lot, and only marked with one small sign. They don't want to give him any more credit than he deserves.

One of other main things that the tour focused on was, of course, the Wall. Here's a picture of one of the longest remaining sections:


There were actually two walls--the inner wall and the outer wall. The space between them was called the "death zone", because it was completely empty, and the border guards were told to shoot to kill.

Being in Berlin was really fascinating because all the history is so recent. People who are just a few years older than me would remember when the Wall was still standing, and then when it fell and all that. That's pretty incredible to think about. And it's evident that the city is definitely still recovering from everything that's happened to it. For one thing, everything there is pretty cheap--good for us tourists, but kind of sad because it means the city in general is poor right now. And there are huge holes in the urban fabric of the city where buildings are missing because they were bombed. But I think I have faith in the Berliners to be able to accomplish this rebuilding--they're strong. They've been through alot. They united to help bring down the Wall, and they'll unite to make their city great again. Somehow in the short time I was there I think I managed to develop a sense of attachment and fondness for the city and the people who live in it...it was definitely one of my favorite places.

After the tour we had another delicious dinner, including trying a German beer. It was alright...but not as good as Belgian beer. We then went back to the hostel and packed up for the last time, because the next morning we had an early flight back to Rome! As I mentioned at the very beginning of all this blogging, it was really good to get back. It was an amazing trip overall, though. We packed quite a lot into those two weeks, and I think I doubled the number of countries I've been to in my life. And believe it or not, even after all that, I'm not done traveling for the break just yet...in fact, I'm leaving for Egypt tomorrow morning! There's a group of 11 of us going, and hopefully it will be just as awesome as this last trip was! And of course, I'll blog when I get back. Pray for continued safe travels for all of us!