Inside the house everything felt calm, we began by walking though a room with pictures and quotes from Anne Frank's diary on the walls. I liked reading the quotes because they show how normal she was even in the most unusual setting, which also makes it more real, It is easy to think that, however horrible her situation was, it is a distant story that could never happen to ourselves. In fact it wasn't that long ago and I don't think there is any reason it couldn't happen again. One of the saddest things, I thought, was how she talks about not being able to open the curtains, so they were not really able to see daylight for the duration of their stay in the house. In such a small space it must have felt claustrophobic even with daylight let alone without.
We left Anne Frank's house to find the queue had doubled from when we joined it. In the gift shop we heard a man ask one of the staff "is it always this busy", she replied "yes, everyday". It is so wonderful that people, so many people, from so many different places and backgrounds visit the house everyday so that it takes 2 hours or more to queue, in fact, despite the long queues, people still visit. I think that really shows the good in the world.
Jenni, Milly and I headed off for lunch, we got on a tram and decided to get off anywhere that looked like there might be a place to eat. When we got off the tram in an unknown land we walked for a while, lots of places were closed, but eventually we found a little cafe on the corner of a road. We ordered paninis and sat outside, we noticed that the people of Amsterdam, whilst they are lovely, love to stare. We don't really know what is so interesting about us that makes them want to stare but whatever it is, it's very interesting. Whilst we waited for our paninis and ate them a few people watched us, I just wish I could speak Dutch so I could understand what they were saying. The Paninis were wonderful, whether that was because we were starving or because they were genuinely fantastic I will probably never know. During our lunch we noticed that the road near by was rising up from the ground so that it was vertical, being something we have never seen before we all stared at it in amazement whilst the locals went about their daily business as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, of course it hadn't in their eyes. We must have looked like such tourists!
We followed signs to the Van Gogh museum and still managed to get lost. We did work out the directions eventually, walking through the Rijksmuseum archway towards the Iamsterdam sign (which we later climbed on) and across a park. We made it to the Van Gogh museum which I had been excited to see for months before our trip and were surprised to find such a short queue, it took us only about five minutes to get in. We were slightly annoyed that we had to pay to get in because we are 18 but it was worth it. When we got inside we had to go through security (like full on air port security with a metal detector machine and trays to put your bag in), the security man said we couldn't bring in bags so Milly and Jen had to put theirs in the cloak room. We got through security fine, no bombs were detected, so made our way to the first room of paintings. What I love about Van Gogh is he seemed to see movement in the world that other people don't, even his skies look alive and full of emotion.
We took quite a while to walk around the gallery. I was intrigued to see some of Van Gogh's paintings that are unlike the style I would recognise as his. It was also nice to see paintings by some of Van Gogh's artist friends. I like the idea that he had a group of artist friends and they all gave each other paintings they had done and even painted portraits of each other. At one point, when walking around the gallery, Milly went slightly mad for no apparent reason. She was running around laughing, she laughed into Jenni's shoulder so it looked like she was crying, she wasn't, it was odd. Milly calmed down eventually before we left the gallery. Once we had left we decided to sit in the park area near by, Ellie (a friend from school) had texted Milly saying she was in Amsterdam at the same time as us, so her and Libby came to meet us in the park. We chilled for a while whilst trying to find out what the other part of our group were doing. We wanted to go and have dinner in a cheap restaurant, Libby and Ellie knew of a good pizza place not far from where we were so we tried to persuade the others to come and meet us before going to the restaurant. By this point I was starving.
Amsterdam seemed to be full of interesting people, for example I saw a man carrying a bag look into a bin as if he was searching for something specific, he walked away empty handed unfortunately. Another couple of interesting people we met were two girls who we saw walking into the park carrying rucksacks, wearing hippy clothes and walking boots with pink and blue hair. We decided we liked them so Milly waved at them and they waved back, confused. Milly went over to them after a little while to explain why she waved and eventually we all joined them to have a chat. It turned out they had hitchhiked all the way from the Czech Republic (coolest mode of transport ever!). I asked them if they were scared about hitchhiking because they are girls, one replied "no, because there are two of us" I told her I would still have been scared with 5 other girls. Another interesting thing these Czech girls were doing was camping in Vondel Park ( I assume illegally) for free. They were actually only interested in doing things for free. When they asked us what there was to see and do in Amsterdam and the rest of Holland we started talking about the Anne Frank house and the Van Gogh museum etc but they weren't interested in sites they had to pay to see. Basically I want to be those girls, although I have to admit the sites we saw in Amsterdam were worth spending money on.
The rest of our friends rang to tell us they were on the other side of the road, opposite the Rejkmuseum. We walked to meet them, finding them on a bridge, only to take them back in the direction we had come from, under the Rejkmuseum arches, past the Iamsterdam sign. After that I can't remember the directions to the restaurant, I zoned out and followed the crowd.
So we arrived at the restaurant and Ellie and Libby left us there, we all went inside and sat down. We told them how many there were of us (12) and had to sit on two separate tables of 6 because there wasn't enough space for us to put tables together. By now I was actually starving, I'm not even sure how I was conscious. I think the waiter thought I was a bit strange because of how enthusiastic I was about pizza. We didn't have to wait long for the food which I really appreciated, when the food came I ate super fast (I am a very slow eater but I spent most of my time on InterrRailing feeling hungry so I ate at twice my normal speed). When we we're done and were counting out our money to pay the waiter turned down the lights so there were only disco lights in the restaurant and turned on some music. He then fetched a lady from outside and began to dance with her, she wasn't very in to it. After dancing with her for a little while he went to the back and came back in with a vacuum cleaner to dance with instead. It was hilarious. Whilst the waiter was still dancing we left the restaurant and began our walk back to a tram stop to get home to nap before going out in the evening.
We walked back past the Iamsterdam sign, we couldn't resist climbing on the letters. All of us started to climb except Fiona who stood like a worried mother holding everyone else's bags, watching us and telling me to be careful with her eyes. I managed to climb onto the letter d, the highest letter, despite everyone's worried exclamations, telling me not to hurt myself. This one of the highlights of the trip for me, possibly for everyone else too, I'm not sure. After having a good climb and taking some great photos, we headed back to our hostel on the tram.
At the hostel everyone spent their usual 7 million years to get ready whilst I napped. We ended up running for the tram, we thought we would miss the last one which leaves at about 11:30. As it happened we got there with loads of time to spare, so I spent the time singing and dancing at the tram stop, which made most of my friends question how sober I was, the answer was 100% sober just high of life. We had decided to get the tram to the same area we went to the night before (Leidseplein) because a few of us wanted to return to the adorable bar we had found, others wanted to meet some boys they knew from home and others still wanted to go to the Sugar Factory Club they had heard about.
When we arrived in Leidesplein we went to meet the boys in a steak house (stupidest place to meet ever). We got stopped outside the steak house by a group of English boys asking us to give one of their friends a kiss, he needed 18 because it was his 18th birthday. Sophie told them she wouldn't give him a kiss, when they asked why she said "what's he going to do on my birthday? come and give me a kiss? no." they left eventually and we went inside this stupid steak house. There wasn't really enough room for us to all sit around one table so a few of us sat on a different table, after a short amount of time Milly, Jenni and I decided we wanted to go to Biblos (the bar we were at the night before) so we made our excuses, I said that a steak house offends me because I am vegetarian, and left.
When we arrived at Biblos it was packed, unlike the night before, we could barely move. We found seats at the bar and said hello to the barman then bought drinks. It was a wonderful atmosphere in the bar, I felt very at peace. Later on the Bar man gave us free shots in the cutest shot glasses ever, like tiny pint mug things. We ended up dancing in the bar and it felt more like a really tiny club, later the rest of our friends arrived and joined the dancing. There was very little room so Soph, Orla, Milly and I danced on the bar to the Back Street Boys, at one point I fell off but was fine. It was more difficult than it looked to dance on the bar due to the heavily decorated and rather low ceiling. Milly then decided she needed more money to buy more drinks so Milly, Jenni and I headed off to the cash machine.
There was a long queue for the cash machine, I didn't mind because I am very good at entertaining my self with singing, dancing and spinning in circles. A couple of Dutch people were laughing at me, they asked where we were from and I shouted "ENGLAND" they asked if I ever stopped talking, I said no. We got to the front of the queue for the cash machine, Mils put her card in but it wouldn't go in fully and the machine didn't recognise there was a card in it, we tried to pull the card back out and couldn't. The two dutch men behind us tried to help us get in out but also couldn't, I think the rest of the queue behind us were getting a bit annoyed, they all left soon enough. The two dutch men and another girl remained and tried to help us by ringing ING (the bank which the cash machine belonged to) they spoke to the person on the phone for a bit for us and then asked if they could speak in English I think so Milly could then talk to them. She spoke to them for a little while, I wasn't really concentrating. I was talking to one of the dutch guys and he said something about him being a robin and then asked me what I was so I asked Jenni what kind of bird I was, we went through various different birds trying to decide and it turned out that he wasn't trying to tell me he was like a bird but, intact, his name was Robin. I told him my name was Hannah and he called me Hannah Montana, I did not appreciate that.
ING said they couldn't help Milly because she needed to talk to her card company so the dutch guys googled Milly's card company's number and rung it. Annoyingly the time of night (about 2.00 am) meant the offices were closed so she would have to wait till the morning. We stood around not knowing what to do and then decided we would go with the dutch guys (Robin and Phillipe) to a work party they were at.
Robin and Phillipe lead us to this club which had a massive bouncer man standing guard outside it, the bouncer said "these girls weren't in here before and stopped us going in, the boys said "its okay they're with us" I felt very important. We went into this club and almost immediately noticed people were staring at us and Robin said that was because we were the only girls in the place, that wasn't exactly true but there were very few girls. So we danced and talked for a little while but Milly felt a bit overwhelmed from losing her card so we decided to go home. We had been warned by a few people about getting a legitimate taxi so we thought we would go back to Biblos where the nice barman was and ask for his help.
We walked into Biblos, Milly was a bit teary so the bar man knew something was wrong, he came outside with us and rung a taxi for us, he told the taxi driver where to meet us and then directed us to where we needed to go. He also told us we needed to look for a particular number on the taxi to make sure it was the right one. Milly hugged him goodbye and we all thanked him, I was actually amazed at how genuinely lovely he was. We ran off to where he said we would find the taxi and saw one, we weren't sure if it was the right one but the driver pointed at his phone then Milly's phone started ringing, this was to prove he was the right one. We got in the taxi and told him where to take us, it didn't take very long to get home, we got back to the hostel at about 3.00 am. We went to our bedroom and just sat and talked for a while, I packed my bag a bit because it needed to be ready for check out in the morning.
Here's a link to Biblos' facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/biblosamsterdam?fref=ts
Here's a link to the hostel we stayed at: http://www.nieuwslotania.nl/nieuwslotania/index_slotania.asp?taal=en
