The City of Bikes

Before I commence further, I must point out that anyone wanting more info on this trip could check out the link to Meridith's Murmuring on the right hand side of my blog. It should be the last link on my fellow bloggers list. Also, if anyone has sent me any urgent emails, I cannot seem to access Hotmail from this location in the interior of Germany. Mom, you can use my yahoo address.

When I last wrote, we were boarding a train to Amsterdam, the infamous capital city of the Netherlands. After hearing of this place where the international airport is such a busy hub, I expected a very large, raucous city. I was much surprised at what I found. The people are indeed "free thinking" with legallizes prostitution and "smart shops" selling such delicacies as cannibis lollies. But the city itself is small and old and quite picturesque. A population of only about 750 000 roam around the 100 km of canals. Or more accurately, they cycle on 600 000 bikes, traversing the u shaped canals that intersect and curl up to the harbor. There are over a 1000 bridges. They protect their bikes with gigantic locks. The red light district is indeed a sinful area, but not as obtrusive as I feared. I was deeply saddened to see scantily clad women posing in red lit windows, hoping for business.

In the midst of this crazy culture, we found a few bastions of hope. Our abode was the Shelter Jordan, a Christian youth hostel in an old beautiful neighborhood. The attitudes of the staff reflected their beliefs. It was quite refreshing. Our first night, we joined in a free dinner where we got to know a few staff members and befriended a few of the non-Christians staying there, including James the Scotsman with whom Meridith could discuss music and some technical things I don't understand. I met an Italian girl who had studied Chinese. Kind of random. Anyone interested in staying at a Shelter hostel or working at one, check out www. shelter.nl

Our first full day, we went on the characteristically tourist canal tour. We were warned that locals laugh at the people who go on the boats, but we still wanted to see the city from the 17th century canals. James joined us since his friends had not yet arrived in the city. The houses along the canal are all so narrow because the greater the river space they took, the higher the cost. Because the staircases are so narrow, all furniture must be moved through the windows. To facilitate that, a hook is located at the top of the house. To make furniture moving easier, some houses are built sloping slightly forward. Some slopes seem a bit extreme and make you want to walk in a tilted fashion. All in all, I enjoyed the tour and I recommend it to future tourists. Afterwards, we had a tapas meal and went our separate ways.

I beelined for the Van Gogh museum. I had considered going to the main art museum which houses 17 century masters and a lot of Remembrandt, but instead opted for a period I knew better. It was so cool to see the progression of Vincent's work. He didn't take up art until he was 26. At first, he tried to be traditional in form and worked from his pastor father's cottage and then Antwerp. He then moved to Paris under the patronage of his brother Theo. Here, he encountered pointillism and impressionism, which took a while to impress him. Some of his works looked like overexposed photos as he experimented with color and brightness. I was intrigued by his fascination with Japanese prints and their composition and content. On some pictures, he painted a border of random Chinese characters that he'd seen on other pictures. I enjoyed it immensely - but I didn't enjoy the company of the lesbians beside me.

I also got to see my first Monet, my first Manet, my first Cezanne . . . I actually cried.

That night, we bought last minute tickets to the symphony for 7.50 Euro. We enjoyed a selection of Mozart in a 19th century concert hall. The showcase piece was a wonderful clarinet piece. The clarinetist broke a sweat doing the piece. We kept getting the double bass player and the cellist to smile at us. The bass player even said goodbye to Mer at the end of the night.

Sunday morning, we attended Christ Church, a wonderfully active congregation of varying ethnicities. God's love was definitely there. They welcome homeless people to have coffee between services. I sat beside a bearded woman who smelled exactly like Timmy, the Dutch homeless man who frequented the store where I worked in Medicine Hat. We met a cool girl from Michigan who had just arrived to attend DTS at the local YWAM base.

Then we hopped on a train bound for Zaans Schans, an open air museum in the countryside. Amsterdam is very international so we wanted to see a place that was more Dutch. Real windmills line the banks of the river Zaans with old houses clustered all around. They've preserved what I imagine to be authentic old Dutch life. We wandered into a color mill, where they grind the coloring to make paint. It was definitely not up to North American safety code. No fences kept us from lunging under the huge mill stones. But that gave us an impressive view of the inner workings of the mill. We climbed higher and higher and saw all the gigantic wooden shafts and gears and cogs. The building creaked and shook with the turning of the blades. We also wandered into a porcelain workshop and a cheese factory, where Meridith actually found cheese she liked. We were amoungst Asian tour groups who were laughing and taking a bazillion pictures. The number of Asians increased at the wooden shoe shop. We watched a demonstration and I succumbed to my childhood wish to possess a pair that fits my feet. Now I'll have to carry them around for a couple of months.

On Monday morning, we checked out of our hotel and headed across the canal through the rain to the Anne Frank house. Both of us had grown up hearing about this little heroine who recorded her days of hiding from the Nazis in her now famous diary. Their hiding place was next to Westerkerk, a large and impressive church. Just behind the church is the Homomonument, dedicated to non-heterosexuals. It seemed to strange to be right next to a church.

The Anne Frank house has been left unfurnished, according to her father's wishes. The effect is haunting. A few carefully selected artifacts complement carefully chosen quotations from her diary. A few multimedia displays present the memories of Meip Gies, one of their caretakers during their time of hiding and the memories of one of Anne's childhood friends who has an amazing story on her own. I was overwhelmed to look out the blackened windows and wonder how many hours she spent staring out, yearning for freedom. Some tangible things are left of her existence - pencil markings where her parents recorded the growth of her and her sister, the game Peter got for his birthday . . . In the room Anne shared with Mr. Pfeffer, her pictures are still on the walls. Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, the Dutch Royal family, Greta Garbo, Ginger Rogers . . . She was just like normal girls with a curiousity about the famous. I cried a few times as I looked at remnants of the Nazi regime - pictures of roundups, yellow stars of David. Why have I been so lucky to have such an easy life when some people live through such unwarranted horror? If you're in Amsterdam, go to the Anne Frank house. It deeply impacted me.

A side note: I saw my first real Academy award there. On the set of a movie based on Anne's diary, Shelley Winters promised Otto Frank that if she won an award, she would put it in the Anne Frank museum. And she did.

I could write so much more about the city of bikes. But now we are in Lage Lippe, Germany with friends of the Penner family.