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Ending in Amsterdam
Entry 44 of 55 | show all | print this entry |
Firstly - I've added a few photo's to my previous entries from Holland, so if you're interested go back and have a look.
Anyway, Amsterdam, where to begin?! In many respects Amsterdam fitted my criteria for a perfect city with fantastic streets and alley ways to get lost in and a vibrant hearty centre. The labyrinth of canals add to the appeal and the café's are fantastic.
Last Friday was remembrance day for the survivors from WWll, Saturday was a Holland Independence remembrance type day. Unlike in NZ where we have ANZAC day and Waitangi day for these type occasions, the Dutch don't take public holidays but the celebrate WWll remembrance with a silent period at 8pm on the day of remembrance, the Queen makes a speech etc. So, it was a nice few days to be in Holland, lots of social things happening within the Dutch community.
Amsterdam also seemed to be full of empty minds and empty lives, where some I think have taken the mickey out of liberal privileges by taking things to the extreme. I spent a lot of time just chatting to people in Amsterdam, whether it be in café's or shops, or on the street; on asking a woman of my age who was running a nice jewellery shop what she thought of living in Amsterdam her response was unsurprising really. She told me that she's been born in the city, lived there all of her life and loved it but on the contrary she found that the transient population of junkies, tourists and those that have generally decided to opt make it a lonely city. It struck me as strange that freedom to be oneself seems to be the key to society in Amsterdam and yet it may also make for an isolated society. I guess this is the same in any big city but for some reason everything in Amsterdam seems to be emphasised that little bit more. Hmmm enough on that.
Anyway, I as I say I did really love Amsterdam - great café's (hmm good coffee!), lovely parks on the outskirts of the city and fantastic museums. The Van Gogh museum was fantastic as it housed around 200 of his paintings. What I really liked about it was that the paintings were arranged in chronological order of his life, so you could learn a lot about his life as well as the paintings. This appealed to me personally, because unless paintings are put into some kind of context I do seem to glaze over a bit! I was also amazed at how his paintings really come to life in the flesh - he used sooo much paint, they are all really textured and the prints that you see in books just don't capture that at all.
The Anne Frank house (museum) was also very touching. This museum is in the house that Anne lived in with her family during the time that they were hiding out in the war. The museum was well worth a visit, although the crowds were ridiculous and they seem to let too many people into the house at the one time, so you're constantly stalled and it feels a bit claustrophobic. Despite the clutter of people, the museum was definitely worth a visit and I would recommend it.
So, that's it - Holland is lovely and the people are friendly, helpful and accommodating. This was affirmed when I flew out of Schipnol airport with my bike. The airline had the exact same rules in Amsterdam as at Gatwick, but in Holland nothing is a problem and this amounted to me spending 25 hassle free and stress free minutes checking all of my goods in - a far cry from the experience that I had at Gatwick.
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