Day 1: Amsterdam

I'm really glad that I got to go to Amsterdam the weekend before we went as a group because when we got there the weather was miserable. I barely have any pictures because i spent the majority of my time trying to keep my umbrella from going inside-out.

We travelled by bus from Bonn to Amsterdam and got there at around noon. We checked in at the hotel and then were given some free time before we were told to meet up at the central station so that we could take a canal cruise located nearby. It was kind of worthless because it was raining so all of the windows were shut and no one could really take good pictures but we were tired and wet so we were happy to be in a place that was dry and where we could sit and rest.

After the canal cruise we walked to a little cafe where we had chocolate, coffee, and tea to warm us up. Then we went to the Anne Frank House where we were given the history by one of the novices. Personally I really enjoyed the museum. I remember reading the biography over and over when I was younger and it was incredibly surreal being inside the building where the events of the biography actually took place. An interesting thing about the museum is that it is barely furnished. There are only pictures on the walls to indicate what the rooms looked like at the time the families were living there in hiding. I thought that this created so much more of a presence than having the furniture actually inside the museum. It was so stark, so vacant. Sort of like a prison cell, which is most likely what the Frank family felt they were in as they hid from the Gestapo. The museum also had a cool exhibit on civil rights. On a big screen they projected highly controversial current events and questioned whether or not our "inalienable" rights should ever be surrendered in a given situation and then they had the audience privately vote. It was interesting to see the results of the group and I was quite surprised by some of the results as well. I found these questions really important to ask and thought that the Anne Frank House was a really relevant place to hold this exhibit.

After the Anne Frank House we split up and I decided to go back to the hotel so that I could chill for a little bit before dinner. Dinner in a word was uitstekend (excellent in Dutch). We went to this little restaurant where the walls were covered in pictures of mothers (I think it had something to do with the restaurant's name)
The food was amazing. The best part was they kept bringing more and more out. There was potatoes and meat and apple sauce and cooked pears and sweet potato fries and I could go on and on but I'm getting hungry right now just thinking about it. The funny thing about it was that it tasted almost exactly like the way my mom prepares meat (last time I checked she isn't Dutch? I could be wrong though). So basically I felt like I was getting a home cooked meal. We didn't do too much after dinner because we were tired and it was wet and the next day we had to leave for Brussels in the morning.