"I amsterdam" letters
Sinterklaas and Zwarte Piet
Park near the museums
Some of the girls in the letters
WWII monument near the old Dam
The Crew at the Comedy club 
Trolly and streets of Amsterdam
Leidseplein ice skating rink outside the Comedy Club
Up on stage
Canals of Amsterdam 
Streetside view
The sign outside the Anne Frank Huis, we weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum
Tim, Emily, Morgan on giant tiger swing in the park
I amsterdam
Me ontop of an "a" 
Canal view
What happens when you date a photo minor for 2 years
Canal view
Momo inspired 
The narrow staircase of our hotel
West Kerk
Weekend of 11/13 – 11/16
As we strolled out of Hotel Nadia, the morning mist rose steadily off of the canal – starting a hazy battle with the sunshine trying to fight its way through the clouds. The overcast was a fitting touch to the emotions that were running through my mind as the group meandered across the bridge and through the churchyard of the West Kerk. The walk from our hotel to the Anne Frank house was short, but it seemed even shorter because my mind was racing the entire time.
In the seventh grade, I had read a book for my English class called The Diary of Anne Frank, not knowing what I was getting myself in to. I remember distinctly staying up late at night pouring over the pages trying to make sense of what I was a reading. From my basic memory of the readings, all I remembered was how unfair it was that a teenage/pre-teen girl, trapped in hiding during WWII, was forced to live the way she did. I remembered the black and white pictures in the book of the “secret annex” – the bookshelf that concealed the doorway. The stories of her father’s impatience with the Allied forces and the idea that he still played a part in the factory business even after he went into hiding. I remember her stories about the boy named Peter, whom she loved, and her fights with her sister Margot and her mother Edith. However, what I never realized was the profound philosophical thoughts she had reflected at such a young age – she was just a girl.
“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion, and love – April 9, 1944.” This excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary is scrawled across the wall next to three consecutive black and white photos of Anne laughing, in what is now the atrium to the modern museum. In 1944, it was in the basement of the building adjacent to her father’s factory. Anne wrote in her diary, almost daily, with ambitions of being a professional journalist and novelist after the war. She even planned on publishing a book called “My Secret Annex,” once the war was finished. As I wandered through the first floor of the museum, those thoughts bounced around my brain.
It hit me when I saw the bookcase. The bookcase was what I had a distinct visual of from my memories of the diary. Black and white in my mind, that same bookcase jumped to life – as most of my memories from the diary did – when I saw it firsthand. Who would have thought that such a simple bookcase could hide two families for so long?
I climbed through the hole behind the bookcase – and ascended the narrow, steep staircase into what was once the bedroom of Otto, Edith, and Margot in the “secret annex.” As my feet creaked across the floor boards, I was struck by the paranoia that those types of creaks and cracks must have caused 60 years before – the incessant anxiety that followed even the slightest bump, or the smallest bang. The rooms were coated in a dark green wall paper, but otherwise bare. On one wall there was a small pocket map where Otto Frank, Anne’s father, tracked the progress the allies were making across Europe. In Anne’s room there were newspaper and magazine clippings which she had pasted to the wall in order to make it “much more cheerful.”
Otherwise, they were empty, furniture removed and scraped to the bone. They appeared this way intentionally – Otto Frank, the only survivor from the family – wanted the rooms to appear the same way the Nazi’s left them after the family was taken (it was a common custom for them to divide the belongings of Jews among the officers in the group). The story of the Frank family is truly tragic. Having survived in hiding for almost 2 years, they were taken just weeks before the Allies broke through the lines and into Amsterdam. Then, having survived the concentration camp for a little over six months, Anne and Margot, both died of Typhus, just days before it was liberated in 1945.
The final and perhaps the most moving room in the museum lies in the top floor of the building adjacent to the annex. In a video designed specifically for the museum, Otto Frank discusses his hard fought decision making process in deciding whether or not to publish Anne’s diary. After having read through the pages slowly, which took Otto a number of years, he decided that the best way to honor his family’s memory, support his daughter’s wishes (Anne had always wanted to be a famous writer after the war) and to tell the story of the sufferings of Jews in WWII, was to have the diary published in its entirety. After having read through the diary he was surprised at the profound thoughts his daughter had. He had always had a loving relationship with Anne and he assumed he knew her well. Otto explained his decision making process in the video footage, and in the final scene, with tears in his eyes exclaimed, “I have come to the conclusion, that parents will never truly know their children.” Therefore, in order to give his daughter one last gift, he published her diary.
“One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be. April 9, 1944.”
************************************************
This past week, the gang took its final Loyola sponsored trip of the semester to Amsterdam for the weekend. Having already headed into the great Netherlands once, I was excited to compare my experience with Rotterdam to my second Dam city.
The name “Amsterdam” stems from a literal dam that was built on the Amstel river around 1250, in what is now the center of the city. The growing community that surrounded the dam eventually came to be known as Amsterdam. In addition, as a result of the dam and water flow through the city, there are more canals in Amsterdam than in any other city in Europe, including Venice. In turn, as a result of those canals, there are over 205,000 house boats that reside in the waters and 1,200 bridges – 500 of which are from the 1700’s.
The city has an interesting history which began to flourish in the 1300’s when it became a large fishing village. As people flocked to it, in 1323, it was also given the sole right to import beer from Hamburg – the largest brewing town in Europe at the time. Beer was essential not only for Amsterdam, but for most of Europe at the time because not all water was drinkable.
After some religious turmoil between the Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500’s followed by the 80 years war, the independent Dutch Republic was formed. In the 16th century, the Netherlands really hit its stride as the Dutch East India Trading Company made Rotterdam and Amsterdam the center of the financial flow in Europe. However, the rise of England and France and the subsequent wars drained the Dutch economy.
In modern history, Amsterdam managed to escape damage in WWI and remained neutral throughout the duration of the war. However, in WWII, it was occupied by Nazi soldiers and, after various insurrections in the winter of 1944-45 the Nazi’s placed an embargo on the population as a punishment for its aid to the Allies. As a result of the harsh embargo nearly 10,000 people died, some surviving only by eating tulip bulbs. In addition, by the end of the war, the city’s Jewish population was decimated, going from 130,000 to 30,000.
Following the brutality of the 1940’s, Amsterdam became a hippie haven in the 1960’s. As a result, prostitution and drugs became legal. It became legal to smoke marijuana and do other soft core drugs in what are known as “Coffee Shops.” In these shops and subsequent “Smart Shops” mushrooms and various other herbal varieties of soft drugs are available and sold.
However, despite its popularity as the “most liberal place in Europe,” Amsterdam, as the largest and capital city in the Netherlands, is center of both Flemish history and art, thus making it a staple in the Loyola program since the programs founding.
The first night we arrived, we took a crisp walk over to the canals and took a nighttime tour of the city from the water. The arrival of both winter (the cold air biting our cheeks) and Christmas (the bright green and red lights throughout the city) were a welcomed sight to our group. The view from the water at night was magnificent: the lights of the city, dancing off the water top doubled the value of our boat tour. After touring the river, the group divided and a majority of us traveled over to an Improv comedy show that Matt had heard about. It turned out to be an American based company called Boom Chicago, who put on a show in English. We ended up receiving half price tickets to the 11:30 showing. The show was fantastic, especially when yours truly got called up on stage to perform – my big league debut. I’d say I batted about a buck fifty (having stumbled over the expression “Chimney Sweep” twice), but all in all I had a blast – and I got a free beer out of the deal.
Over the course of our trip to Amsterdam, we made spent a majority of our time in museums, visiting the Anne Frank Huis (mentioned above) the Rijk Museum, the Torture Museum, and the Van Gough Museum. The Rijk museum has famous Flemish painters from the medieval ages. We saw many paintings from Rembrant, Frans, Vermeer, and Hals, some of them using paintbrushes as thin as a single mule’s hair to define the details. Outside of the Rijk Museum are the famous red and white 8 feet tall “I Amsterdam” letters. We spent a majority of our time near the museum climbing those letters and taking pictures with them.
The Torture Museum, which we had seen advertised all over the city, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. We thought we would get a tutorial in medieval ages torture methods, the reality of the situation was that we ended up just reading yellowing pieces of paper describing random torture themes as we walked point to point throughout the museum. It most definitely was not worth the 7.50 Euro entrance fee.
On our last day in Amsterdam, we spent the morning at the Vincent Van Gough museum. The museum had just renovated its design to include a variety of letters that Vincent wrote to his brother Theodore over the course of the years he was painting. From his early days in the Dutch countryside painting peasants, to his years in Paris, to his eventual slip into mental atrophy in the south of France. The letters, combined with a brand new, high-tech audio guide, and the beautiful art work, helped to paint a more colorful (no pun intended – ok maybe a little) picture of Van Gough’s life. What struck me the most was his brother’s undoubted support of Vincent through his trial filled years, and his eventual slip into depression. In a tragic ending to his life, Van Gough shot himself in the chest with a rifle. His brother, having found out about the incident, traveled 2 days straight to see him, only to have Vincent die in his arms.
Before we hopped on the bus back to Leuven, Liam and I caught the very beginning of the Sinterklaas Parade in Amsterdam. The Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas is an interesting one to say the least. Sinterklaas, accompanied by his non-politically correct helper named Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) goes around every year delivering presents to Dutch children. Zwarte Piet’s job is to climb up the house, break in through the chimney, climb down through the soot (hence his “black” skin color), and unlock the door so that Sinterklaas can come in and deliver the presents. The children are supposed to leave something sweet for Sinterklaas, a carrot for his horse, and a beer for Zwarte Piet. Though I don’t think that this version of Santa would get by in the United States, it was an interesting one to experience nonetheless. Liam and I stood in a crowd of children all yelling “Piet” over and over again, until one of Sinterklaas’s helpers would arrive and distribute cinnamon flavored cookies to the crowd. The entire time, the children’s eyes were focused on what the man in red was going to do next.
Thus concludes the story of Sinterklaas and our time in Amsterdam. Tune in soon, hopefully by today or tomorrow, for my tales of Madrid, Toledo, and Alcala.
As we strolled out of Hotel Nadia, the morning mist rose steadily off of the canal – starting a hazy battle with the sunshine trying to fight its way through the clouds. The overcast was a fitting touch to the emotions that were running through my mind as the group meandered across the bridge and through the churchyard of the West Kerk. The walk from our hotel to the Anne Frank house was short, but it seemed even shorter because my mind was racing the entire time.
In the seventh grade, I had read a book for my English class called The Diary of Anne Frank, not knowing what I was getting myself in to. I remember distinctly staying up late at night pouring over the pages trying to make sense of what I was a reading. From my basic memory of the readings, all I remembered was how unfair it was that a teenage/pre-teen girl, trapped in hiding during WWII, was forced to live the way she did. I remembered the black and white pictures in the book of the “secret annex” – the bookshelf that concealed the doorway. The stories of her father’s impatience with the Allied forces and the idea that he still played a part in the factory business even after he went into hiding. I remember her stories about the boy named Peter, whom she loved, and her fights with her sister Margot and her mother Edith. However, what I never realized was the profound philosophical thoughts she had reflected at such a young age – she was just a girl.
“I know what I want, I have a goal, I have opinions, a religion, and love – April 9, 1944.” This excerpt from Anne Frank’s diary is scrawled across the wall next to three consecutive black and white photos of Anne laughing, in what is now the atrium to the modern museum. In 1944, it was in the basement of the building adjacent to her father’s factory. Anne wrote in her diary, almost daily, with ambitions of being a professional journalist and novelist after the war. She even planned on publishing a book called “My Secret Annex,” once the war was finished. As I wandered through the first floor of the museum, those thoughts bounced around my brain.
It hit me when I saw the bookcase. The bookcase was what I had a distinct visual of from my memories of the diary. Black and white in my mind, that same bookcase jumped to life – as most of my memories from the diary did – when I saw it firsthand. Who would have thought that such a simple bookcase could hide two families for so long?
I climbed through the hole behind the bookcase – and ascended the narrow, steep staircase into what was once the bedroom of Otto, Edith, and Margot in the “secret annex.” As my feet creaked across the floor boards, I was struck by the paranoia that those types of creaks and cracks must have caused 60 years before – the incessant anxiety that followed even the slightest bump, or the smallest bang. The rooms were coated in a dark green wall paper, but otherwise bare. On one wall there was a small pocket map where Otto Frank, Anne’s father, tracked the progress the allies were making across Europe. In Anne’s room there were newspaper and magazine clippings which she had pasted to the wall in order to make it “much more cheerful.”
Otherwise, they were empty, furniture removed and scraped to the bone. They appeared this way intentionally – Otto Frank, the only survivor from the family – wanted the rooms to appear the same way the Nazi’s left them after the family was taken (it was a common custom for them to divide the belongings of Jews among the officers in the group). The story of the Frank family is truly tragic. Having survived in hiding for almost 2 years, they were taken just weeks before the Allies broke through the lines and into Amsterdam. Then, having survived the concentration camp for a little over six months, Anne and Margot, both died of Typhus, just days before it was liberated in 1945.
The final and perhaps the most moving room in the museum lies in the top floor of the building adjacent to the annex. In a video designed specifically for the museum, Otto Frank discusses his hard fought decision making process in deciding whether or not to publish Anne’s diary. After having read through the pages slowly, which took Otto a number of years, he decided that the best way to honor his family’s memory, support his daughter’s wishes (Anne had always wanted to be a famous writer after the war) and to tell the story of the sufferings of Jews in WWII, was to have the diary published in its entirety. After having read through the diary he was surprised at the profound thoughts his daughter had. He had always had a loving relationship with Anne and he assumed he knew her well. Otto explained his decision making process in the video footage, and in the final scene, with tears in his eyes exclaimed, “I have come to the conclusion, that parents will never truly know their children.” Therefore, in order to give his daughter one last gift, he published her diary.
“One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we’ll be people again and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be. April 9, 1944.”
************************************************
This past week, the gang took its final Loyola sponsored trip of the semester to Amsterdam for the weekend. Having already headed into the great Netherlands once, I was excited to compare my experience with Rotterdam to my second Dam city.
The name “Amsterdam” stems from a literal dam that was built on the Amstel river around 1250, in what is now the center of the city. The growing community that surrounded the dam eventually came to be known as Amsterdam. In addition, as a result of the dam and water flow through the city, there are more canals in Amsterdam than in any other city in Europe, including Venice. In turn, as a result of those canals, there are over 205,000 house boats that reside in the waters and 1,200 bridges – 500 of which are from the 1700’s.
The city has an interesting history which began to flourish in the 1300’s when it became a large fishing village. As people flocked to it, in 1323, it was also given the sole right to import beer from Hamburg – the largest brewing town in Europe at the time. Beer was essential not only for Amsterdam, but for most of Europe at the time because not all water was drinkable.
After some religious turmoil between the Protestant Reformation and the Spanish Inquisition in the 1500’s followed by the 80 years war, the independent Dutch Republic was formed. In the 16th century, the Netherlands really hit its stride as the Dutch East India Trading Company made Rotterdam and Amsterdam the center of the financial flow in Europe. However, the rise of England and France and the subsequent wars drained the Dutch economy.
In modern history, Amsterdam managed to escape damage in WWI and remained neutral throughout the duration of the war. However, in WWII, it was occupied by Nazi soldiers and, after various insurrections in the winter of 1944-45 the Nazi’s placed an embargo on the population as a punishment for its aid to the Allies. As a result of the harsh embargo nearly 10,000 people died, some surviving only by eating tulip bulbs. In addition, by the end of the war, the city’s Jewish population was decimated, going from 130,000 to 30,000.
Following the brutality of the 1940’s, Amsterdam became a hippie haven in the 1960’s. As a result, prostitution and drugs became legal. It became legal to smoke marijuana and do other soft core drugs in what are known as “Coffee Shops.” In these shops and subsequent “Smart Shops” mushrooms and various other herbal varieties of soft drugs are available and sold.
However, despite its popularity as the “most liberal place in Europe,” Amsterdam, as the largest and capital city in the Netherlands, is center of both Flemish history and art, thus making it a staple in the Loyola program since the programs founding.
The first night we arrived, we took a crisp walk over to the canals and took a nighttime tour of the city from the water. The arrival of both winter (the cold air biting our cheeks) and Christmas (the bright green and red lights throughout the city) were a welcomed sight to our group. The view from the water at night was magnificent: the lights of the city, dancing off the water top doubled the value of our boat tour. After touring the river, the group divided and a majority of us traveled over to an Improv comedy show that Matt had heard about. It turned out to be an American based company called Boom Chicago, who put on a show in English. We ended up receiving half price tickets to the 11:30 showing. The show was fantastic, especially when yours truly got called up on stage to perform – my big league debut. I’d say I batted about a buck fifty (having stumbled over the expression “Chimney Sweep” twice), but all in all I had a blast – and I got a free beer out of the deal.
Over the course of our trip to Amsterdam, we made spent a majority of our time in museums, visiting the Anne Frank Huis (mentioned above) the Rijk Museum, the Torture Museum, and the Van Gough Museum. The Rijk museum has famous Flemish painters from the medieval ages. We saw many paintings from Rembrant, Frans, Vermeer, and Hals, some of them using paintbrushes as thin as a single mule’s hair to define the details. Outside of the Rijk Museum are the famous red and white 8 feet tall “I Amsterdam” letters. We spent a majority of our time near the museum climbing those letters and taking pictures with them.
The Torture Museum, which we had seen advertised all over the city, wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. We thought we would get a tutorial in medieval ages torture methods, the reality of the situation was that we ended up just reading yellowing pieces of paper describing random torture themes as we walked point to point throughout the museum. It most definitely was not worth the 7.50 Euro entrance fee.
On our last day in Amsterdam, we spent the morning at the Vincent Van Gough museum. The museum had just renovated its design to include a variety of letters that Vincent wrote to his brother Theodore over the course of the years he was painting. From his early days in the Dutch countryside painting peasants, to his years in Paris, to his eventual slip into mental atrophy in the south of France. The letters, combined with a brand new, high-tech audio guide, and the beautiful art work, helped to paint a more colorful (no pun intended – ok maybe a little) picture of Van Gough’s life. What struck me the most was his brother’s undoubted support of Vincent through his trial filled years, and his eventual slip into depression. In a tragic ending to his life, Van Gough shot himself in the chest with a rifle. His brother, having found out about the incident, traveled 2 days straight to see him, only to have Vincent die in his arms.
Before we hopped on the bus back to Leuven, Liam and I caught the very beginning of the Sinterklaas Parade in Amsterdam. The Dutch tradition of Sinterklaas is an interesting one to say the least. Sinterklaas, accompanied by his non-politically correct helper named Zwarte Piet (Black Piet) goes around every year delivering presents to Dutch children. Zwarte Piet’s job is to climb up the house, break in through the chimney, climb down through the soot (hence his “black” skin color), and unlock the door so that Sinterklaas can come in and deliver the presents. The children are supposed to leave something sweet for Sinterklaas, a carrot for his horse, and a beer for Zwarte Piet. Though I don’t think that this version of Santa would get by in the United States, it was an interesting one to experience nonetheless. Liam and I stood in a crowd of children all yelling “Piet” over and over again, until one of Sinterklaas’s helpers would arrive and distribute cinnamon flavored cookies to the crowd. The entire time, the children’s eyes were focused on what the man in red was going to do next.
Thus concludes the story of Sinterklaas and our time in Amsterdam. Tune in soon, hopefully by today or tomorrow, for my tales of Madrid, Toledo, and Alcala.
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