The Netherlands Part 1

     Last weekend we visited the Netherlands with the added bonus of a visit with my cousin Miriam, her husband, Thomas, and their 20 month old daughter, Emily. Miriam is the eldest daughter of my dad's brother, Howie and his Canadian wife, Renata. She grew up in Amsterdam and met her husband there. Thomas's father is English and his mother is from New Zealand. It is quite the multi-nationality household. They were kind enough to host us for our weekend excursion in their lovely, interesting, confusing country.
     Andrew adjusted his hours on Friday, so we left that afternoon hoping to get to Amsterdam early enough to visit the Van Gogh museum before meeting up with Miriam and Thomas at their place in Ouderkerk aan de Amstel. But again, traffic and road construction foiled our plans. Instead of spending 2 hours looking at fabulous art, we sat in the slow moving traffic for 2 extra hours.
     We got to Miriam and Thomas's place a little after 7 pm and had a lovely evening chatting with them. Miriam even made an apple pie! This was quite a treat for us - especially Andrew. (We haven't had pie since we left Texas.) It has been a long time since I've seen Miriam. We were both children last time we got together - it was great to get to know her as an adult. She has spent most of her life living in Europe and yet, having North American parents, has a unique perspective and understanding of both sides. It was so interesting to discuss some of the  differences and interesting peculiarities we've come across in our travels and get her and Thomas's views on them.
     Their house was what you'd expect a Dutch house to be - tall and narrow. Thomas told us that houses use to be taxed on width so taxes were cheaper if you built up instead side to side. The floors of these narrow houses were connected with narrow, steep staircases that would no longer be allowed. Since we found the stairs in Miriam and Thomas's place plenty steep and narrow, the ones in the old houses must have been ridiculously steep and narrow!
     The kids were given a room on the second floor equipped with bunk beds and Andrew and I slept on the third floor in a room mainly used for storage but with plenty of room for an air mattress on the floor. The bathroom was interesting. The "water closet" really was a closet. The toilet and a little sink was located in a tiny room - about the size of a stall in a public washroom. The shower, bathtub, and a larger sink were in another room down the hall. I'm not sure if that is standard in Dutch houses or not.
      The next day we were out the door at 8 am to walk down to the grocery store.

On our walk to the grocery store

      The Dutch public transportation system uses plastic cards like credit cards. You charge up the card and then scan it going in and out of the bus/metro and the charge for the trip is deducted from the card. Sounds simple enough, right? Miriam had two cards that we were able to use but we needed to purchase two more and then charge up the cards. Just the two cards cost 15 euros with no credit on them. Then to get credit, we had to use a machine that didn't like Andrew's credit card. So the very helpful clerk at the grocery store used her card to buy the credit and Andrew paid her cash. Now we each had a card and, two buses and a metro later, we arrived at Central Station.

Amsterdam Central Station

     We had two goals for the day - Anne Frank's House and the Van Gogh Museum. We started our exploring walking down Damrak. The Damrak is a partially filled canal that runs from Central Station to Dam Square. Amsterdam began right at Dam Square. In 1250 they dammed the Amstel River and, voila - Amsterdam was born. In the 1600s, the Royal Palace was built here. It was originally the home of the city council. When Napoleon took over the Netherlands, he appointed his brother, Louis Napoleon, king and Louis Napoleon converted the building into a royal residence.

Royal Palace

Close up

     Across the street is the National Monument. It was built in 1956 as a remembrance of the Dutch struggle during WWII.

National Monument

      Next to the Royal Palace is the New Church. This was built in the 15th century because the Old Church, built in the 13th century, was getting too full as the city grew. It is the church used by the royal family for coronations and weddings.

      We continued on our way to Anne Frank's House crossing over canals as we went.

     People in Amsterdam have many modes of transportation. Like all big cities there is a public transportation system that includes buses, trams, and metro. (Their metro is, of course, above ground since you'll hit water if you dig down very far at all.) There are some cars that brave the city. But the most popular way to get around by far is the bicycle. It is said that there are more bikes in Amsterdam than people. I believe it. There are also more bike racks than parking spaces. The bikes rule the city. The bike path is larger than the sidewalk. And woe to you if you happen to get in a biker's way. They won't even slow down - just yell at you in Dutch and hopefully you can jump out of the way in time.
      Then there's the canals. These watery streets offer boat owners a way to navigate around Amsterdam without having to worry about those numerous bikers. Did you know that Amsterdam has more canals than Venice?
     Just before we made it to the Anne Frank House, we came to the Westerkerk.

Westerkerk

     The bell tower of this church is topped with a crown that was given by the Habsburg emperor, Maximilan I. The church was built in 1631 and Rembrandt is buried somewhere inside - they don't know where.

      It was just outside the Westerkerk that we encountered a line of people stretching down the side of the church and around the corner. With a terrible feeling that this was the line to go inside the Anne Frank House, Piper and I got in line while Andrew followed it up to find where it was going. Sure enough, this was the line. And we were to spend the next 2 hours slowly making our way through it.

The line for the Anne Frank House

     While we wait, a little history. Anne Frank was born in Germany in 1929. When the Nazis took over the government in Germany, Anne's father, Otto Frank, moved the family to Amsterdam, a city known for it's tolerance. But in May 1940, the Germans started bombing the Netherlands and, within a week, the Dutch were forced to surrender. The Germans marched in and occupied the country until the end of the war.

      The Nazis immediately started implementing their anti-Jewish measures and were soon rounding up Amsterdam's Jews and sending them off to death camps. So the Frank family went into hiding. The building they used was the office of Otto Frank who owned a business selling spices and pectin. The secret annex was hidden from view on the outside making it a perfect place to hide out. On July 6, 1942, they walked into the office wearing extra clothing to avoid carrying suitcases and disappeared. The four office workers who agreed to assist them provided the Frank family (and 4 others that were hiding with them) with clothing, food, books, and newspapers. The warehouse workers knew nothing of the arrangement.

     The 8 inhabitants of the secret annex had a total of 5 rooms including the bathroom. The door to the annex was hidden by moveable bookcase. They hid there, never setting foot outdoors, for 2 years. During the day they had to sit still and silent so the workmen downstairs wouldn't hear them. Even running water or flushing the toilet might be heard downstairs and get them discovered. At night, when the office was closed, they would sneak into the business area and listen to the BBC for news on the war.

     Then, on August 4, 1944, a band of Nazis came into the office and walked directly to the bookcase and opened it up. They still don't know who tipped them off. The 8 Jews were arrested and sent off to concentration camps. The only one to survive was Otto Frank. Anne died just weeks before the camp she was in was liberated by the Allies. A shocking 100,000 of the 135,000 Dutch Jews died in WWII.

     Otto came back to Amsterdam when he was freed and learned that the rest of his family had perished. One of the office workers had found Anne's diary among the paper the Nazis had left behind and she gave it to Otto. He had it published in 1947 and then opened the Anne Frank House in 1960 as a museum. The rooms are empty because the furniture was carted off after the arrest and Otto Frank decided to leave it that way to symbolize the emptiness left behind after the war.

     We were given a museum guide to look at while we waited in line but even after reading it cover to cover, we had moved very little. Taran took off to ride his ripstick around. Piper and I decided to check out the nearby souvenir shops. Andrew amused himself by talking to our fellow "sufferers of the long line". The couple behind us was from Seattle. The guy in front of us was from Scotland. He'd been trying to get to the Anne Frank house for 3 days now always encountering the amazingly long line. He'd decided to endure it since that was his last day in Amsterdam.

The Prinsengracht canal
Anne Frank's house is along this canal

Pretty house boat

You can't see it in the picture, but the
boxes under the window say "MacGyver's".
We're big fans of the show. = )

     (Interesting note: Most of the houses in Amsterdam have a hook attached to a beam sticking out of the house at the top of the building - you can see one on the MacGyver house. This was used to haul furniture up to the upper floor where it was brought in through a window. The houses lean out toward the street so that the cargo didn't bump against the walls on the way up.)

     We did finally make it into the Anne Frank House but, once again, no photography was allowed. We got to see the rooms that were once the office of Otto Frank's business. There were old advertisements for his products, the typewriter that the secretary use to work on, along with some old letters on display. We studied a model of the secret annex complete with miniature furnishings. Then we passed the moveable bookcase and climbed the stairs to the little annex. The first room was where Otto, his wife, and eldest daughter slept.  On the wall are marks where the family kept track of the growth of Anne and her sister while in hiding. The next room was the one Anne shared with one of the family's close friends, Fritz Pfeffer. Anne decorated the walls by pasting magazine pictures and postcards on the wall. Many of them are still on the wall. (One is of young Princess Elizabeth.) The bathroom is next and then up some more stairs (definitely steeper and narrower than Miriam and Thomas's) into the room for the other married couple, Hermann and Auguste van Pels. This was also the communal living room, dining room, and kitchen. On the other side of that room is the door to their son's tiny room. It was really just a corridor where the stairs to the attic were located. The attic had one window that looked up to the sky. Anne and Peter would often go up there together. It offered the only glimpse of the world outside even if it only was the sky.

      The story is so incredibly sad and moving. Reading the quotes from Anne's diary displayed here and there in the rooms makes the whole thing especially tragic. It is more than just a story about some faceless someone - Anne makes it so real. She was a regular teenager with regular issues living through a horrific time in history . . .  

Anne's house in the one to the right of the
peaked roof house.

Anne Frank's House and the Westerkerk

But enough depressing thoughts. Let's go look at some art. = ) Our goal was the Van Gogh museum. We are great fans of Van Gogh. To get there we had to pass right under the Rijkmuseum, the Dutch national museum of art and history. Impressive building, aye?

Rijkmuseum

Statue on Rijkmuseum
I love how they have art on their art museums.

     On the other side of the Rijkmuseum is the Museumplein, a park-like square used for festivals and demonstrations.

Museumplein

    And on the other side of the Museumplein is the museum we were headed for. I'd bought tickets earlier at a shop near the Anne Frank House hoping this would mean that we could go right in. But the museum is so popular that they have to limit the number of people that go in at a time. So our line was shorter than the one with people who still had to buy tickets but we still had to wait.

    Finally we were allowed inside and I was thrilled to find out that flash-free photography was allowed. Okay, quick history of Vincent Van Gogh. He is one of the most famous Dutch artists of all time despite the fact that he didn't decide to become an artist until age 27 and then died when he was only 37. But in those ten years he produced more than 800 oil paintings and 1000 drawings as well as some watercolor paintings. Much of what is known about Van Gogh's life was discovered in the many letters he wrote to his brother Theo and other family and friends.

    Van Gogh was mainly a self-taught artist. He did spend some time in classes and studying with the masters but mostly he taught himself through textbooks, advice from friends, and just painting - a lot of painting. In the beginning he wasn't all that good. But his passion and determination kept him at it. He painted on anything he could find from cardboard to tea towels - one of his tea towel paintings is on display at the museum. 

     His early work is very different from the style that he is known for - the vivid colors and expressive brushstrokes. In the beginning he confined himself to mostly earth tones.

    Van Gogh would paint anything and especially like to paint shoes. But not until he'd worn them and gotten them dirty and worn out. Until then they had no character.

Skull with Burning Cigarette - 1886

     Art students are often required to paint skeletons. Perhaps as a joke or to annoy his teacher, Van Gogh painted a cigarette in the skull's mouth.

    His first major work was The Potato Eaters painted in 1885. He was quite proud of this painting.

The Potato Eaters - 1885
Ignore the green glare - couldn't get a good angle

Character painting - she's also in
The Potato Eaters.

    He was still mainly painting in dark earth tones. Then he moved to Paris in 1886 where he studied more and started experimenting in his painting. He was greatly influenced by his artist friends and tried out many styles of painting. In 1888, he was tired of the city life in Paris and moved to the south of France to the town of Arles.

This one looks very Dutch, doesn't it? 

The Yellow House - 1888

The Bedroom in Arles - 1888

The White Orchard - 1888

Seascapes at Saintes-Maries - 1888

Sunflowers - 1888

Van Gogh actually did several paintings of sunflowers. The Van Gogh Museum has two of them but I was only allowed to photograph this one.

     An artist friend of his even painted a portrait of Van Gogh painting sunflowers. = )
    Van Gogh painted quite a few self portraits. Here are a couple:

Here he painted himself painting.

Most of his self-portraits look a lot like this one.

 Here's a few more of my favorites.

Blossoming Pear Tree - 1888

Paul Gauguin's Armchair - 1888

   Van Gogh battled with mental illness and in 1889 decided to have himself admitted to a mental health clinic in Saint-Remy, not far from Arles. He continued painting there.

Corner of Saint-Paul Hospital - 1889

Almond Blossoms - 1890

The Pieta - 1889

Undergrowth with Ivy - 1890

I can't find the names of the next three. = (

      He left the clinic in May of 1890 and settled in an artists' village called Auvers-sur-Oise. On July 27, 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest and he died three days later. He is buried in the graveyard of Auvers-sur-Oise. Another rather sad story.

      Van Gogh was such a complex, interesting man whose art is so incredibly varied in style and technique. Some of his work, in my opinion, is terrible while other pieces are truly awesome. It makes him all the more fascinating. I obviously only took pictures of the pieces that I like so I can't show you what I mean, but if you're interested, look at the list of Van Gogh paintings on Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean.

Kids in Van Gogh's Yellow House painting

     It was just after five when we finished at the museum. Taran was pretty worn out by this time, feeling something like this guy looks.

This is how Taran actually looked:

Totally Van Gogh-ed out

We headed back across the Museumplein in search of a bus to take us to Central Station.

Other side of Rijkmuseum

      Thomas and Miriam had invited us to eat dinner with them - Dutch pancakes. Yum! Since we didn't have anything else we were dying to see in the city and Taran was dying to try some Dutch pancakes, we decided to head back to their place. Easier said than done. When we tried to board a bus headed for Central Station, we found that two of our cards had no credit left on them. So we had to walk back to Central Station.

I love that house!

Safest way to travel in Amsterdam - no bikers!

    I won't go into detail, but getting back to Ouderkerk aan de Amstel was not my favorite part of the day. After much confusion, lots of money, and an incident involving gum all over Taran's hands, we made it back.

Waiting for our bus

    It was a little after 8 pm when we got to Miriam and Thomas's house - way too late to share in their Dutch pancake dinner. But when they found out that we hadn't gotten any supper, they were so kind and whipped us up a batch of pancakes. Taran especially was thrilled. = )

     Then the kids played on Thomas's Nintendo 64 for a while before bed.