Almost a year to the day that I arrived in Germany, Michelle and I were paid a visit by Mark and Andrea, friends of Michelle from Toronto. They were taking holidays in Europe and had agreed to spend part of them with us. They had worked out a plan where Michelle would show them around Cologne for a few days (I was still working for AIESEC during the day), then we would travel as a group to Amsterdam for a weekend. Michelle and I would return to Cologne to work while Mark and Andrea enjoyed a few days in Paris and then we�d all meet up again in Munich. It all sounds very grand and decadent on paper, but it really is very reasonable when you look at a map of Europe I assure you.
My part of the story really begins with Amsterdam since I spent the early part of our friend�s visit at the office. This really would be a group effort, as Michelle�s friend Sonia and her boyfriend Christian were going to come along for a day in Amsterdam with us. Christian studies at the university of Aachen in between Cologne and the Dutch border, so they weren�t going to overnight in the Netherlands. So, the six of us gathered in our humble apartment for a fancy traditional meal of Asparagus, ham, pork schnitzel and potatoes on Friday night before setting out the next morning. The food was wonderful, but serving it for six people proved a little much for our apartment, my trusty Ikea table serving for six was just enough, but we could only come up with three chairs, so we had to sit on the floor.
The next morning, we had to hurry as usual to make our train. My apartment is little more than a ten minute walk from the main train station but that didn�t stop us from waking up with just enough time to sprint over and leap onboard our train with seconds to spare. It�s as if the mind knows exactly how much time it is required to be awake at such an early hour, and doesn�t give you an extra second to play with. Needless to say, everybody slept for the duration of the journey until we arrived in time for lunch in the Dutch capital.
Unfortunately, although not surprisingly, it was raining when we arrived. This dampened our spirits a bit since we had had no luck finding a youth hostel before arriving, and had actually brought sleeping bags in case we were forced into one of the campsites at the edge of the city, but this was not good camping weather. After dropping our bags off in lockers at the station, we decided to weather the storm and get an introductory look at the city all at once by riding the so called circle tram, a line on the public transit system that follows a circular path through the downtown area of Amsterdam. By the time the tram had reached the heart of the city it had stopped raining, and we decided to cut our trip short and try our luck with some of the hostels which seemed to be clumped in this area of town. We stopped at a Hostelling International place first, and as luck would have it, found beds enough for all of us, albeit in separate rooms. Now we could investigate the city with all it�s lovely canals and bridges safe in the knowledge that we wouldn�t be sleeping under any of them.
Amsterdam is a gorgeous city, plain and simple. The inner city looks like a great dart board when viewed from above. A series of canals form concentric circles radiating from the cities inner core. We didn�t actually read up on the founding of the city, but one can easily imagine a group of settlers piling off boat on the Amstel river, promptly setting up shop and digging a ring of canal around their homes to make transport that much easier. Then each generation followed suite until canal building became less fashionable and you the city took it�s modern shape. So, in a city where water seems to have played as important a role as roads, we decided to take a boat cruise. By now the sun had come out from behind the clouds, and it actually started to get quite warm inside our largely glass tour boat as we ploughed through the intricate waterways, taking pictures and marvelling at the well preserved and very unique buildings of the city. As our guide explained, there was a time in Amsterdam�s history where one paid property taxes based exclusively on the width of your property, thus all the houses are very narrow but stretch back and up. On the top of most of the houses one can also find curved and decorative gables which as far as I can tell are particular to the Netherlands. They do serve a more practical purpose as well though. Jutting out from the majority of the gables are hooks and pulleys which can be used to hoist goods and furniture in through the windows of the houses upper stories. The narrow design of the houses generally forces narrow circular staircases upon architects, and thus anything large that you wanted above the ground level had to be brought in through the windows.
After our cruise, we wandered through the streets a little, passing through the renowned flower market and stopping briefly for something to eat before deciding to split up briefly. I chose to accompany Mark, Andrea and Michelle at the national museum of the Netherlands while Sonia and Christian opted to visit the Van Gogh museum. I have actually been fortunate enough to visit Amsterdam briefly on a number of occasions when I was younger with my family and with my high school, but couldn�t remember much from either trip, and so was still surprised and impressed with the Rijks (national) Museum. The building which houses the museum is impressive on its own, built from Red Brick and towering over its superb gardens. We began with a special exhibit on Dutch history during the last three hundred years, but realized too late that the museum had a lot more to offer, and ended up breezing through the rest of its collection awfully quickly. We squeezed in all the suggested highlights of the museum including Rembrandt�s Night Watch, but I really was impressed with the history exhibit. I think everybody was a little surprised at just how much influence the Netherlands had had in the world abroad during its �Golden Age� when it�s trading companies rivalled the British in India and surpassed them in South East Asia.
We took our leave of the museum happy, but quite hungry since we hadn�t had a proper lunch earlier, and headed downtown to meet up with Sonia and Christian who would only just have time for dinner before catching the train back to Aachen. We settled on a Scottish restaurant of all things, and after a somewhat hectic day, everybody was so happy just to be sitting down and having a nice simple meal. That set the tone for the rest of the day. The daylight hours were waning as we sent off Sonia and Christian and picked our luggage up from the train station. After dropping it off at the hostel we made our way to the entertainment or �Red Light� district of the town for the evening.
Being one of the world�s most powerful centres for international trade and shipping for so many years, it seems only logical that the city would have developed a variety of establishments catering to traveling sailors. Now that tourism has become such a big part of Amsterdam, it seems the Dutch haven�t had to change much, sex and alcohol are still popular. In fact, after seeing bar after bar and window after window filled with women bathed in red light, I really wonder if the association of �triple x� and sex didn�t begin right here where the town crest consists essentially of the three crosses of St. Andrew on a red shield. Downtown Amsterdam at night is filled with people from all over the world, although as far as we could tell no Dutch people. The streets are packed and everything is open late, except the public transit system. Upon realizing we�d have to walk home, we didn�t stay out very late since we�d begun the day before the sun rose.
The next morning we had breakfast at the hostel and dropped our bags off before doing a little more wandering around the city. Today the sun shone brightly and lit up the buildings doubly as its rays reflected off the watery canals. We stopped several times for to take postcard pictures before eventually reaching the Heineken brewery to find out just exactly where all that beer comes from. We tried to balance the day out with a stop at the Anne Frank house which is now a surprisingly detailed museum of life during the war era before hurrying back to the station to get back to Cologne. Andrea and Mark stayed behind as their next stop was Paris, but Michelle and I of course had work in the morning.
