A Year In Braunschweig: I AMsterdam

The Avanti

A week ago, Derek and I went to Amsterdam for the weekend. While the weather may have been a little disappointing and raining, the things and museums we saw were pretty cool. Our hostel was just a tiny bit different from the others I've stayed at. It was a boat! It was really nice on the inside, but the rooms were kind of small. I guess that was part of the charm.

Since it rained so much the first day, Derek and I spent most of our time in museums. We started at the Amsterdam Historical Museum which told us the story of the city. The legend goes that the city was founded by 2 fisherman and a dog who made a promise to God that they would found a village where they landed if he let them survive the horrible storm they were caught in. They washed ashore in what is now Amsterdam and obviously kept their promise.

We also went to the Rijksmuseum which houses treasures from the Golden Age of Dutch history and the Van Gogh Museum which houses some of his most famous paintings. The Bedroom was my favorite.

Anne Frank's House

Our final stop of the day was the Anne Frank House. Anne Frank's Diary has been translated into 70 different languages, second only to the Bible, and tells the story of a young Jewish German girl and her family who went into hiding when the Nazis conquered the Netherlands. We took a tour of the house where they hid. They called their place the "Secret Annex," the entrance to which was hidden in Otto Frank's warehouse behind a bookcase. They were able to hide there for 2 years before an anonymous tip exposed them. The family was then sent to different concentration camps. Anne and her sister Margot were sent to Bergen Belsen concentration camp and died there of typhus only one month before the camps liberation. Their father Otto was the only one to survive the war. He found his daughter's diary upon returning to Amsterdam, and read that her dream was to become a published author. He found a publisher and made her dreams come true.