La Vie Parisienne: Amsterdam

In which I delineate my weekend in much too much detail and bombard you with photos.

I can’t believe it has been so long since I have written. This last week and a half has just flown by. Last weekend and week were consumed by research and paper writing. I had a paper for my French class due last Tuesday, and a paper for my history of science class that was due in class today. Despite the fact that I am well accustomed to both writing and editing papers by now, it takes me at least twice as long to write in French as it does in English (not to mention the fact that my work ethic has about halved since I stepped on French soil – low goals, remember?). French was fairly easy to get through once I started, but my paper for history of science was much more difficult. I had to write a commentaire composé (basically an explanation of a document) based on the French Revolution. Since I remember very little about the French Revolution, this was a much bigger task than I expected. Once I found the English translation of the document online, I was able to figure out what was going on a little more, but this job required professionals. Hence, I emailed Mom. She had the brilliant idea to talk to her mom (I’m seeing a trend here…) and I ended up two days later on skype with Grammie being taught everything I could ever want to know about the French Revolution. If ever there was a time to be thankful for modern technology it was then! I have no idea how I would have finished without their help. Luckily, my eight-page paper is now turned in and I don’t have to worry about that class until the end of the semester!

Despite all this work the past week, I did manage to find the time to have a little fun – in the form of traveling to Amsterdam! About a week ago some friends asked if I wanted to join them on a weekend trip, so I booked my train tickets and did a little hotel searching and off we went!

Fridays I have class until 2:30, and my friend who I have class with and I booked a train leaving at 3:25. It should have been plenty of time to get to the train station but unfortunately we ended up with the most stressful train experience! We were told that the best way to get to the station was to take the bus, so we headed out to find the stop. After a little searching, we eventually found it, but had to wait at least 10 minutes for the bus to come. At this point it was about 2:50 and the bus ride was supposed to take about 20 minutes. Of course, there was construction on the way to the train station, so the bus was moving excruciatingly slowly. Eventually my friend and I just decided to get out and walk because we were hoping it would actually be faster. For a while, we stayed ahead of the bus, and were pleased with our decision until we saw the bus whiz past us and down the street towards the train station. Miraculously, by sprinting the last block, we made it to the station by about 3:22. I saw the sign for the train to Amsterdam and we ran onto the first car in the train.

Once we got on to the train, I looked up and saw that the sign said we were going to Brussels. I panicked. I didn’t want to go to Brussels! We asked a couple people in terrible and hurried French, and each person told us something different (usually responding in English, I might add). The doors of the train were locked shut, and just as we started moving I spoke to an employee on the train who explained that we were on a different train than the one we wanted to be on, but that we would just have to transfer to our train in Brussels. Apparently, the back of the train where we had hopped on was stopping in Brussels, and we just had to change to the cars up in the front in order to get to Amsterdam. Once the panic subsided, we were able to laugh at the ridiculousness of our voyage thus far. Luckily, we had no problems changing cars, and found the rest of our group in the train when we switched in Brussels.

The bar where we picked up our keys

Once we got to Amsterdam we headed to our hotel to check in and put our bags down. We stayed at the Hotel Prinsenhof – which I found because Mom stayed there when she visited Amsterdam 28 years ago! Turns out it is still a beautiful hotel, and was the perfect choice for us. Our first taste of Amsterdam culture came in the form of a note on the door of the hotel when we arrived. It said that the hotel was full, but if you had reservations you should head to the bar next door. Shrugging, we went into the bar, and told them we were staying at the hotel. The bartender pulled out an envelope with our key and four “Drinking Excuse” coupons entitling us to a free beer or glass of wine back at the bar. Gotta love the English translations they come up with!

The Hotel!

Once we got settled, we headed out for some dinner and ended up at an Argentinean restaurant, which was delicious. We headed out for a little taste of Amsterdam nightlife in the form of a couple interesting bars near our hotel. We eventually ended up at a bar/club that’s tagline was “Warm beer, cheap food.” I’m still trying to work out their marketing strategy there, but apparently it worked on us! It was sort of an Australian bar, but it had a lot of different people in it, which was fun. I also just have to mention – Dutch guys are so tall! I might just have to go back and visit again!

The Heineken Brewery

Saturday was rainy and cold, but we spent most of the morning into early afternoon in the Van Gogh museum, which is one of the most well done museums I have seen. It is set up beautifully and they have great explanations of the art and his life throughout. Afterwards, we decided to head to a pancake house for a late lunch where I got banana pancakes – not quite the same as in the US but closer than crêpes! From there we went to the Heineken factory where we took a tour and got to see how their beer is made, bottled, and marketed. The tour was very well done and had a lot of cool things to see. They had samples of something called wort, which I believe is heated water and barley. Let’s just say I won’t be sampling that again.

At the Heineken Brewery

Saturday night’s activity was a bar crawl organized by a company in Amsterdam. We got to the meet up spot and it was pretty crowded, but we broke off into smaller groups and went to five other bars and clubs in the area throughout the night. It was a fun way to get a sense of the nightlife in Amsterdam and we met some interesting people. There were several Brazilian students, a lot of British people, a couple Dutch, some other Americans, and four or five people from New Zealand. At literally every bar we went to they played this song:

Duck Sauce - Barbra Streisand

I suggest you check it out if you want to be cultured in the ways of European dance music because they love it here!

Large wheel of cheese?

Sunday was possibly even colder and rainier than Saturday, but I headed out to do a free walking tour of the city anyway. Three hours, countless umbrella flips, and some very wet shoes later, I felt like I at least had a good handle on the city! One girl who came with us didn’t make it through more than 20 minutes of the tour, but the friend who stuck it out with me and I stopped to have some traditional Dutch pea soup afterwards. Delicious!

Me in the rain

Then we met up with the rest of our group (eight Tufts students in total were there this weekend – in two groups of four) and went to see Rembrandt’s house – mostly to get out of the rain. It was interesting, but nothing fantastic.

The Brewery Crew

Our Beer Tasting - Note the Grains of Barley!

On the tour that morning, our guide had told us that there was a little microbrewery in a windmill just on the outskirts of town that was fun to visit. Three of us went there, and got to taste their 5 different kinds of beer, as well as some delicious cheese and sausage. It was more of just a bar with a brewery in the back, but all the staff were happy to talk to us about how the beer is made, and even gave us some different types of barley to try - not making my list of favorite foods, but it was fun to see the difference between the toasted barley used for making dark beers is different from the lighter untoasted barley. We had a great time at the brewery people watching and talking to the bartenders and people around us. My favorite moment was when we looked behind the bar and a little two-year old was wandering around back there. One of the bartenders finally noticed and scooped him up to hand him back to his parents!

The brewery in a windmill

The Brewery

For dinner on Sunday we had Indonesian food – traditional rijsttafel – which is basically either rice or noodles with a ton of different dishes to put on it. My favorite were the chicken skewers in a peanut and coconut sauce and the toasted coconut that they gave you to sprinkle on everything! Indonesia used to be a Dutch colony, so we saw a ton of Indonesian restaurants and it was fun to try some new food!

"Drinking Excuse" from Hotel Prinsenhof

Afterwards, we stopped at the bar by our hotel to use our “Drinking Excuses.” We talked to the man who runs the hotel there, and his friend (both are older men and very stereotypically Dutch). They were happy to chat with us and delighted in trying to figure out where each of us were from originally. They picked out my friend who's family is Scandinavian easily, but my heritage was a bit harder to pick out! After a while, I headed to check out the infamous red light district with the two guys we were traveling with. Wow, it is quite the experience. It is definitely interesting to see, but I was glad to be walking around with the boys as some protection, and was reassured that they were just as appalled as I was!

Monday morning we had tickets to see the Anne Frank house. The museum there was also incredible – it was a very sobering experience to walk through the house where the Frank family was hidden. I bought the Diary of Anne Frank there and will read it as some fun reading when I have the chance since it has been a long time since I read it.

Tulips at the Flower Market

On our way back to the hotel, we passed by the floating flower market to check out some of the tulips and find some souvenirs. It was a lovely way to end our trip – and it was also the first time since we got there that it was not raining!

Selection of Tulip Bulbs

Overall, I loved being in Amsterdam. The people were very friendly, and the atmosphere is very relaxed (think: hey is that a baby in the bar? um. yeah.). It is so neat to be in a place where you can just wander along the canals and admire the architecture. I would love to visit again when it is warmer sometime, and be able to see a little bit more of the country (and of course the tulips!). We didn’t get a chance to bike around since the weather was so terrible, but in keeping with Williamson family tradition I left something to go back for!

A much less exciting train ride, filled with napping and some homework, brought us back to Paris in time to for dinner with our host families, and time for me to finish writing my paper!

I think my next few weekends will be filled with travel as well – now that I have started I don’t want to stop! In two weekends I am headed to Normandy with Tufts, and then hopefully to Brussels (yes, this time I will actually want to be on that other train) with some friends. Top on my list of other weekend trips right now are Mont St. Michel, Marseilles, London, Vienna, Munich, Annecy, Lisbon, Madrid… whoops. I might have to extend my stay a little!

Well hopefully I made up for my lack of posting with this one enormous post! Sorry it was so long, but as a reward for making it to the end here are a bunch more pictures from this weekend!