Adventures Abroad: Netherlands & Germany

This week was the first of three international trips I will be taking this last month and a half of my time abroad. Our route for April 8th through 14th wound us from Amsterdam to Vallendar, Germany—und was für eine perfekte Reise!!!

Stop #1: Amsterdam

 I suppose I could say that this was my second go-round in Amsterdam, but the first time I had been with my family was hardly a trip (it was perhaps one day). So this three day exploration of the unique Netherlands city was a trip really all in its own. The canals of this city intersect throughout, crossing this way and that; they make for beautiful, long stretches of very old water-front canal tow homes. (Some had been there for so long that they leaned a bit). The budding trees, the harbinger of spring, and lovely weather made for an all together invigorating feeling. I took most of these pictures while on morning runs through the alleys and streets near our hostel, The Flying Pig (Sidenote: this hostel is AMAZING, if you ever find yourself in need of lodging in Amsterdam. Cheapest prices but seriously the cleanest rooms and bathrooms, kindest staff, and FREE BREAKFAST. It's also on the shop street, which was great for sating our shopping thirst but terrible for our wallets). 

 

One of our necessary and immediate stops was getting a waffle! Though we aren't quite in Belgium, we're close enough. I just had to indulge :)

It was delicious, trust me

We made another necessary trip that afternoon: the Anne Frank house and museum. Though the line was just over an hour of standing, the experience was worth the wait. Visitors can walk through every room of office building and secret annex in which the Frank family secretly lived from 1943 until their arrest by the German police a few years later. I'm sure you have all read The Diary of Anne Frank at some point, so imagine how moving it is to read the words of alternating despair and hope of a teenaged Jewish girl, persecuted by hatred towards her heritage, and eventually sent to death in a concentration camp. I highly recommend visiting this memorial site if you ever pass through. 

Though we weren't allowed to take picture inside, I looked one up and attached it here to show the secret bookcase that hid the annex in the office building that the Frank family lived in. It was quite eery walking through it

In the evening, we figured we would hit the town and see what the nightscene is like in Amsterdam :) We went to this bizarre-yet-fun sounding place called the Amsterdam Ice Bar. It is exactly as it sounds-- a bar that, in its back rooms, is chilled to a cool 15 degrees Fahrenheit!! They gave us thermal ponchos and big mittens to wear as we mingled among the polar bear ice sculptures, but we were still just a bit too cold for comfort ;) Those ice glasses were hard to hold on to, too!

night 4 & 6, icebar1

Deciding to see the city how the locals do, we rented bright yellow bikes for the entirety of the second day. We thought it sounded cute and relaxing, because when in Rome, right? Wrong!! This was the most life-endangering activity I have done in Europe so far!!! Cyclists here have no mercy. With more bikes than people in the city, it makes for a dog-eat-dog rough biking style. They move fast, and will give you one ring of their bike bell before they will run you over (literally). Though we didn't get in any wrecks, I may or may not have fallen off my bike while managing to stay standing. Klutz or skills? I'm going with the latter. 

My friend Hannah on her yellow bike! (We were nervous)

With our bikes we rode to the Museum district of Amsterdam. Here the national, 16th/17th century Dutch masters, modern, and Van Gogh museums were all housed together like little clumps of art havens. Seriously, the plaza was an art historian's dream. My American friend Hannah and I made the tough decision on which to visit, and ended up at the Van Gogh museum. We both have studied and loved his work, so it was exhilarating to see the work of the only ten short (yet wildly prolific) years that the artist actually painted. A fervent member of the avant garde artistic movement, Van Gogh experimented with vastly varying styles in his career; however, his most famous pieces are often associated with and belong to the Neo-Impressionist movement with a colorist style. 

Its those little cups in front!

We continued to shop a little in the museum shops and local market stalls. I got my hands (finally) on some of that blue and white painted Dutch porcelain, in the form of a tiny, delicate espresso set. I also managed to find a small bag of tulip bulbs!! As tulips are my all-time absolute favorite flowers, walking about in the in-bloom spring tulip garden near the national museum was the icing on the cake for my Amsterdam stay. Hopefully the bulbs I plant someday will be as beautiful as these ones are! (Maybe I won't need much of a green thumb though since these bulbs hail from the homeland of tulips themselves!)

Stop #2: Vallendar, Koblenz, and Bonn

The second half of our trip floated us around the western part of Germany, in the Middle Rheinland. Similar to Amsterdam, I had already been to Germany twice, but never to this region. We stayed in Vallendar with some of Hannah's friends who go to Arkansas with her back home. Vallendar itself is a small town in the country, and it had a peaceful, quaint feel to it.

A view of Vallendar town from atop a hill

After relaxing and catching up on our sleep in Vallendar (interestingly enough, we stayed in a nunnery...! Hahah! It's difficult to feel comfortable under those strict and watchful eyes) we took a daytrip to a local city called Koblenz. Though also small, this city along the river was bursting with colorful life and local character. We walked along the river and gardens on the side, which were blooming in the springtime air. The atmosphere and weather were delightfully intoxicating, and we strolled at our leisure to the Kaiser Willheim II memorial, which we actually went all the way up into to see the surrounding river valley and the flags representing each German state rippling in the breeze.

Walking through the lovely little alleyways and streets of Koblenz!

Kaiser Memorial

And you can't go to Germany without getting Schnitzel, right? We made sure to stop by Biergarten and relax while eating some of that delicious German dish!

It is exactly as delicious as we dreamed it would be

Our trip to Bonn another day was similar, if a bit shorter. We mostly toured the sights on foot, and didn't do much since it was Sunday (In Germany, everything is closed on Sundays. It can be quite bothersome really). I'll just include some of the prettier pictures here that I took while we walked! Enjoy these, and I look forward to writing my next post about Prague and Vienna, which I leave for tomorrow!! Aufwiedersehen!!