Amsterdam

Clever branding

Within the time frame of one month I have dragged my family to various “Districts” in Europe. The “Green Light District” in Christiania, a special part of Copenhagen with its own jurisdiction, and to the “Red Light District” which obviously can be found in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands. Exploring the world one “District” at a time…and now it sounds like I am making references to the “Hunger Games trilogy”, oh dear.

As for the start of the trip to Amsterdam, the first step was to actually get on the flight from Copenhagen. We used my sisters’ cheap staff tickets, a privilege she has since she is a flight attendant. This is great, however it makes us part of the passengers placed on the standby list. It looked a bit grim for a while as the gate personnel announced it was a completely full flight. After the boarding closed arrangements were made and with Ida sitting in the cockpit we were granted access to the aircraft as the very last people onboard. Always a thrill!

Rush hour

Touched down in Amsterdam at Schiphol, one of my favorite airports, and vacation mode was on. And what a great city to have a mini vacation in! The vibe was so chill! I was struck by the laidback attitude of the people around the canals, locals and tourists alike. Now granted this was Saturday and the people around the canals may have some high stress jobs to return to on Monday morning, but it felt like the Amsterdamers really know how to enjoy life. It was a bright sunny day and loads of boats in various sizes were sharing the canals. Many people were going in groups in smaller vessels drinking wine, eating bread, chocolate and cheese. And the people on land did the same thing, enjoying the very best things in life, good food, good drinks and good company. I think I will share one of the highlights of the trip already: watching tourists, a few a bit tipsy, trying to maneuver little rental boats. I laughed so much I cried! May not have been so much fun for the professional drivers of the larger canal boats carrying tourists, but still, it was entertaining to say the least. The atmosphere was friendly and strangers standing on the docks assisted the newbies as they tried to park the small plastic rental boats.

Stepping away from the canals and into the narrow alleyways offered another view of Amsterdam. From the waterway one could see the amazing architecture and the beautiful buildings, many built so that they lean a bit forward to make them look larger. This also assists with moving furniture up and down the siding of the house (many buildings have hooks on the outside as taking in furniture through narrow staircases inside the house proves very difficult). Walking in the alleys, for example in the Jordaan District (see…another “Distinct”) offered closer views of the buildings and their decorations such as plants and elaborate shutters. However, when you leave the safety of the boat and step onto dry land there is big hazard in Amsterdam: Bicyclists with the courage of a daredevil on crack. How the Amsterdamers dare to ride their bikes so fast when they know there are plenty of slow moving tourists around beats me. Bicycles are everywhere in the city, including in the canals. It has been said that the canals are 3 meters deep: One meter water, one meter mud and one meter bicycles.

A trip to Amsterdam is not complete without a visit to the Red Light District. However, I don’t think we were keen on getting the full experience so we went there rather early in the evening and didn’t venture that deep into the alleyways. Saw a few red curtains, the “photography forbidden signs”, signs that read “you can smoke HERE” and “Belle,” the statue to honor sex workers everywhere. That was enough for us and I will leave it at that.

Poffertjes

My favorite part of traveling is always trying out local food and drinks. It didn’t used to be like that but now I am a huge foodie, like huge! To start of this section of the post I will write a few sentences about our breakfast at the hotel. It was not particular Dutch, but man it was tasty. I allowed myself to eat stuff I normally would never have in my kitchen such as white bread, waffles, pastries and Nutella. I am such a liar, I totally have Nutella from time to time! But I try not to. I love how luxurious it feels to eat breakfast somewhere else than your own kitchen. Or my sister’s kitchen as I don’t have my own yet. Moving on to the Dutch foods. We tried “Stroopwafel” which is two thin layers of baked dough with a caramel filling in the middle. It certainly was tasty and I had mine with a cup of coffee.  Another dish that comes from the same family are “Poffertjes” which are small puffy pancakes served with powdered sugar, butter and syrup. Tasty indeed! I may add they tasted great with a side of Heineken beer. To offset all the treats made out of various batters I had a tuna steak one evening. So delicious and enjoying the meal sitting by at a table right by the water was magical. Another food item worth mentioning was the Gouda cheese. I normally don’t eat too much cheese but trying Gouda, regular and with added spices, was heaven.

Anne Frank House

This trip was all about soaking up the vibe of the city, relaxing, spending time with my family and eating and drinking well. We did not do many touristy things while there. I mean, yes we did visit the Flower Market where thousands of tulips bulbs were displayed and sold. We also located the Royal Palace. There was however one spot I really wanted to visit: The Anne Frank House. The house where the young Jewish girl Anne Frank hid for two years with her family and others before they were betrayed and taken to various concentration camps during World War II. As our trip came together kind of late we could not sign up for tickets online as they were sold out way in advance. I had been told that you can stand in lines for hours without a ticket. We decided to stand in line for one hour and see how much further it would be after that initial hour. Sounds kind of cold to think like that, but we were just being realistic. After that initial hour we stood in line for another 35 minutes and we were in. A very important place to visit. It was well organized, but yet it’s hard to fathom what took place there. I think the Anne Frank House is very important as it may be hard for us to fully take in that millions of Jews and other people were killed by the Nazi regime. We can perhaps try to process that this special girl perished. And she was special not because she was a saint, she was special because she was human. Due to what happened to Anne, and millions of others, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on December 10^th 1948. May we never forget what took place during World War II. I think the organization behind the Anne Frank House carries out a very important job and I was glad to see so many people queuing for hours to visit the house. Maybe not everyone knew the exact background to this, morbidly put, “number one tourist attraction of Amsterdam” but since the staff handed out small brochures (offered in many, many different languages I may add) to read in the queue, I believe everyone benefitted from the visit.

After spending some time at the Anne Frank House we had to sit still and take it all in so we had coffee and hummus by the canal. Some time past and we climbed onboard yet another canal boat and visited the part of the harbor where the science center with the rather appropriate name "Nemo" was located. We never entered "Nemo" but it had a very cool upper deck which apparently offers great views of the city. We got off the boat and headed to a grocery store. I absolutely LOVE going to grocery stores abroad. I bought some stroopwafel to take home as gifts and weirdly enough toothpaste by a brand I can’t find in Sweden. Yeah I am a weird, weird tourist. One more sight to see before dinner and it was the narrowest, or at least one of the narrowest houses in the world, located at Singel 7. The house has a width of only one meter. And when we are on the subject of small living, seeing some of the 2500 houseboats located in the canals of Amsterdam was a real treat. It’s quite the romantic idea to picture oneself living on a houseboat in this beautiful city, but it’s rather hard to get a mooring permit. If I would live in Amsterdam I would probably try to have an apartment in the heart of the city, but totally have a good enough sized boat to chill with my friends and family on weekends.

Perfection

In summary - No stress, very chilled out vacation. Sitting on a canal boat watching people. Taking naps while on the boat. No rushing around. It was great. Thankful I now live in Europe so I can do this, travel to other parts of the continent and spend time with my family. And if we can do it rather cheaply using my sister's tickets, well that’s just a bonus. And as a side note, the Dutch language was amazing to my ears. Sounds like German mixed with Norwegian, mixed with English. Well not really, but I can’t say it better than that. I loved it. Very European. So I guess this means I am getting more and more European…maybe not completely Swedish, but I will take being European any day.