"Have you seen the canals?" "I am a canal!!"

Writing this a while after the fact but things went from chaos to chaos once I got back to London. From Brugge I hopped a train (make that three trains) to Amsterdam. My hostel was at the edge of the red light district right off of Dam Square one of the main plazas in Amsterdam. It was an amazing hostel with incredibly comfortable beds, two bathrooms in our room, the bar/lounge area was huge and had a leather seating area around a big-screen tv with dvds to watch or a Wii to play. There was also a pool table, cheap bar with good food and a selection of board games and such you could borrow.

First day in I wandered around the city a little bit, found a large tulip market and got a bit lost. It’s a great city to get lost in though, beautiful little house along the canals, quite quaint. When I got back to the hostel I went up to the roof terrace to have a drink and bumped in to two Americans I had met in the hostel earlier. We decided to go out for a beer and run around the city a bit, added another American to our group as we were out and about before finally crashing back in the room for an early night around midnight.

Cute graffiti I found

My second day in I decided to go on one of the free walking tours to learn about the city. Our tour guide was, surprise surprise, Australia, and incredibly enthusiastic.

that bridge is the highest point in all of Amsterdam

He told us all sorts of stories about the city including one about miracle bread that was fireproof and a pilgrimage point for many years before it was lost in a river (fireproof but not waterproof, what a shame). He told us about Amsterdam’s idea of “plausible deniability” which they use to this day as long as it is for the good of the people. Many years ago Catholicism was supposed to be wiped out but the Amsterdamers were a tolerable people and didn’t want to kick out all their catholic citizens so instead they told them they had to practice in secret, they could have secret churches to go to but not out in the open, that way Amsterdam could claim they had wiped out Catholicism. So people built churches inside their homes, these generally weren’t small churches either (see if you can spot the one on this street).

It's the one on the far left, with the crane in front
The inside sanctuary of the hidden church
They had cool markings on the window to line up with buildings in the distance and tell you
what the building you're seeing is

The one pictured above could fit 400 people inside for services. And it has the second largest pipe organ in Amsterdam inside. Well, since the organ was played during the services it wasn’t hard for nearby Protestants to hear that and figure out what was going on. They would go to the police and say “There is a Catholic church over here, you need to do something about it because it’s not allowed”. So the police would go to the street and look around, “I don’t see a church, I just see houses” and that would be it. It was better for the people and the city to do that.

Typical courtyard that the houses face on to

My favorite story though is from World War II. During the war the Nazis came into Amsterdam and took over. At first things were alright, then the Nazis starting trying to push the Jewish community in to a fight to be able to claim they were unstable and needed to be quarantined. After this happened the Nazis went one day and dragged 200 Jewish men out of their homes, through the streets and into the train cars to take them away never to be seen again, this was a Saturday. They went back the next day and did it again. However, Sundays are market days and the two biggest markets in Amsterdam are located directly at the entrances to the Jewish Quarter, so it was witnessed by many non-Jewish Amsterdamers. One of these people went and talked with some of the tram drivers, he said "I just saw the Nazis pull 200 Amsterdamers from their homes and take them away", the fact that they were Jewish was never mentioned from that point forward, the people of Amsterdam did not care if the people were Jewish or not because they were Amsterdamers. The tram drivers were outraged and decided to go on strike the next day which stopped the entire city. As people began to hear the story of why there were no trams they marched on Dam Square, how could the Nazis do something like this to Amsterdamers, it wasn't right, they were very upset. The second day of the tram strike there were over 10,000 Amsterdamers in the square protesting for the basic human rights of their fellow men, they were all Amsterdamers and should be treated the same. The Nazis were very embarresed by all of this and went to the mayor of the city and told him that he had to do something to stop the protests. The mayor simple looked at them and said "No. I am an Amsterdamer". Sadly the Nazis took things into their own hands and ended up opening fire on the crowd of protesters killing 9 in the process. But for that time they stood together and provided a united front with the simple phrase "I am an Amsterdamer", you can still see it on shirts, bags all sorts of things throughout the city. I just think it's such an amazing story, that during that time they were brave enough to stand up like that, to try and protect citizens of their city.

That's how our guided ended the tour, giving all of us chills but loving the city more than we had a few minutes before. After it was done I went with the tour guide and two kiwis I had met at breakfast in Brugge (traveling is a very small world) to have a beer at a cafe along one of the many canals. That evening I met two American guys staying in my room and we headed down to the bar for some pool, food and beer. I found that I actually get a bit better at pool when I've had a beer, strange how that works. We met another American girl who was staying in our room as well and the four of us played a few more rounds before moving over to a table to play some cards. I taught them all how to play Upstairs Downstairs (to this day one of my favorite games) and we ended up playing so many hands of it, the guys absolutely loved it although the girl bowed out after a few rounds.

My last day I spent mostly wandering the city. I saw the Van Gogh museum but I think I prefer to see Van Gogh in the Philadelphia Museum of Art where it is a lot less crowded and you can sit and just enjoy being around the work. I wandered through a neighborhood called Jordaan, full of cute little shops and cafes, much less touristy. That evening I met up with the American guys again for a few beers and a bunch more hands of Upstairs Downstairs, they were right into the game.

The day I left for London was fairly relaxing, I again wandered around a bit, did a bit of souvenir shopping and that was about it. London however turned to chaos which I will discuss soon, maybe after a few more days of sleep.