Amsterdam
Trip Start
Apr 01, 1990
1
29
53
Trip End
Aug 21, 2002
Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Wednesday, August 18, 1999
We were up at 6am and arranged for the hotel to get us a taxi, however when it arrived we had a total language problem with the driver and no better with the hotel doorman. Even pointing to the address did not help as the bus was leaving from an outer Paris area and he did not recognize the address. We eventually had him drive in the right direction, then ask directions when we drew closer, fortunately this worked and at just over 100 FF was reasonable.
Finally we were on the bus and on our way to Amsterdam. The bus driver seemed a nice fellow (Scottish) and our tour guide also was very friendly
01 Busabout Bus and our Scottish Driver
. We were to go to Calais, then through Belgium to Amsterdam, but to our surprise the bus driver announced that given we were well on schedule he would detour into Vimmy Ridge. Getting to see the Vimmy Ridge memorial was quite a bonus as it stakes a big claim as one of the more important WW1 battles. The memorial is owned by Canada as they were principally the Allies involved and over 60,000 died. The memorial lists all those that lost their lives and also has a series of reconstructed tunnels and fox holes. Shell craters are also still in evidence in the memorial area. It is amazing to see how close the opposing sides trenches and tunnels were, it certainly was a different style of war to now.We then moved on to Calais where we changed buses, then to Brugge in Belgium to drop off and pick up passengers, finally arriving in Amsterdam about 8pm. We were taken as close as possible to our hostel but had to walk a km or so, we opted to wheel our backpacks and they were quite noisy bouncing over the cobble stones. Our hostel was the Hans Brinker and talk about a baptism of fire, our first night out and we were allocated a four bed dorm. We rocked up to our room to find the four beds were in fact two double bunks crammed into a tiny room, to make matters worse two lads were in residence and each had claimed one bed from each bunk. We started to negotiate for them to have one and us the other when we hit another snag, they spoke no English only Italian, and were obviously a bit peeved at being lumbered with a couple of olds their parents age
02 Vimmy Ridge Memorial in Northern France
. Eventually sign language prevailed and we managed to sort of claim our half of the precious space, although we had also discovered the remaining locker did not lock as it should. As it turned out it was not too bad as the Italian Stallions (so dubbed because of the dubious literature, that one did not need to know the language to recognize its nature, left lying around the room) went out most of the night while we were in and in most of the day while we were out. The second evening in town we decided, in our minds anyway, to be totally outrageous and see one of the Red Light Districts adult shows. When we got inside we did register that half the room was cordoned off but did not take a lot of notice. We had watched a bit of the show and thinking it was pretty 'off the planet', when a heap of giggling girls and awestruck noisy boys streamed into the cordoned off area, and before long were volunteering to take part (limited) in the show. It was then that with total amazement it became obvious that this was Kontiki, these were mostly Aussie kids.
While in Amsterdam we decided to visit Anne Frank House which is now a museum (shrine?) in her memory. 'The Diary of Anne Frank' is a very moving story, and is a book that made a substantial lifelong impression on us both
03 Vimmy Ridge Trenches
. The story will be well known to most but in brief Anne and her family went into hiding in July 1942, in a secret alcove built in her fathers business premises, to escape capture from the Nazi's. They remained in hiding until 4th August 1944 when as a result of a betrayal, they were captured by the Gestapo. Anne spent time in Westerbork then Auschwitz concentration camps but died in the Bergen-Belsen camp in early March 1945. She died of a combination of typhus and the shock of the death of her sister a few days earlier. Her father Otto Frank miraculously was the only family member who survived the ordeal.On Friday we packed up and waited to catch our bus as booked, to head off to Germany, unfortunately we waited and waited, until eventually checking with hostel reception we learnt the bus was not due for another two days. Bugger, we could not afford another two days in Amsterdam and the Busabout office was not yet open. Heather did a quick re plan and decided it would be best to head back to Paris where we could pick up a bus in the morning and by reversing some of our proposed itinerary still fit in everything we wanted, so we made a beeline to the train station. Once there Heather placed a call to busabout and explained our predicament and they authorized us to take the express train (bullet) back to Paris and they would refund the cost, fantastic. The trip back was very quick and enjoyable, but getting off the train in Paris and finding our way to the campground, where the mornings bus was to leave from, was looking a right challenge not being able to read French. Luckily a Frenchman with no English saw us looking confused and approached to help, we pointed where we were going on the map and he in turn pointed to the platform we needed, but also indicated we would again need to change trains. So we again alighted looking confused and a French lady with quite good English came to our rescue, explaining we had better hurry to our platform as the next train was the last for the evening.
So we made it to the campsite, awesome, only to discover the only vacancy was half a permanent tent with no blankets or pillows and it was coming in cold. We had a miserable night, but this was slightly softened by the bottle of red wine we purchased from the camp store, and drunk from plastic glasses Avan fashioned from some cool drink bottles.
