Amsterdam!

I went to Amsterdam this past weekend with a bunch of friends. I had a really great time and there was a lot more to the city than I had anticipated. My friends and I took a bus to get there, which was about 8 hours. The bus was really crowded and we were all pretty tired and hungry after we got to Amsterdam so we got settled in the hostel, went out to eat and then went out for the night. The city is absolutely beautiful and there are canals running through the entire city. On Saturday a few of my friends and I took a walking tour trough the city and it was really interesting to hear all about the history of the city and the culture of the people. Over the years, Amsterdam has been a profit driven city with their main focus on economic advancements. Amsterdam is a really beautiful city with quaint canals running through the entire city and old architectural buildings. On our tour I was able to see many different aspects of the city in a very concentrated area. Amsterdam is a simple city in that they name things according to their function and role, such as national monument or the new/old church, but it is also very complicated because the city center is structured like the layers of an onion. It is very confusing to get around the city since most streets all look the same. One of the only parts of the city that is very distinct is the Jewish district, which was redesigned by students in the 1960′s. This area of the city was falling apart because during the end WWII the people of the city were so deprived of everything during Nazi occupation that the began to take apart the buildings and take the wood from the buildigs in the Jewish district. Since all of the Jews were moved out of Amsterdam, this part of the city was vacant and then falling apart so it needed to be rebuilt. After these students rebuilt the Jewish District, the buildings were all strange shapes and colors, so the rest of the city protested to maintain the architecture of the rest of the city. Amsterdam was under Nazi occupation for a while without too many problems until the young Nazi children lost a fight to the young Jewish and non-Jewish boys of Amsterdam and the Nazi’s invaded the Jewish district and moved all of the Jews to camps. Some families went into hiding and were able to delay their capture, but spys and informants would give away the locations of some of these families and they would be found by the Nazis. One of these families was the Frank family. On my tour I saw the building where Anne Frank and her family was in hiding for 2 years and the church tower that she could hear the bells from. I could not believe that it was right there along that canal where she was forced to stay in small room up stairs behind a hidden bookshelf for over 2 years. It’s crazy to be able to see things and places that I’ve read about, but for some reason was never able to place into reality. On my tour I was also able to see one of the secret Catholic Churches in Amsterdam. When the Catholic religion was banned in Amsterdam, the government and police had more of an interest in making profits and did not want to drive away all of their wealthy Catholic business men so they allowed for “secret” churches, as long as they were plausably deniable. In one of the regular business buildings, a wealthy Catholic businessman converted the top two floors of his building into a church and every Sunday 500 Catholics would walk down the street, go into this building, in a secret entrance, up a secret staircase and into secret church. The Catholics had an agreement with the police that there would be no investigations on Sundays and the police got paid. This allowed for Amsterdam to maintain it’s wealth and to keep it’s citizens content. A similar trend can be seen today in regards to the Coffee Shops and Cafes in Amsterdam. The culture of the city is to focus on things that are more detrimetal to society and to not focus attention on things that they believe to be overall harmless. This city was unlike any other city I’ve been to because of all of the different aspects of it. From the history to the coffee shops to the red light district to the van gogh museum, it is remarkable for such a small city. Everyone that I had met seemed very friendly and people were welcoming to tourists, which is not very common. My friends and I walked around the red light district and I still cannot believe that it’s real. For blocks there were girls in windows trying to get attention and make money. Whether it was 1 in the afternoon or 1 in the morning, there were girls everywhere. By 2015 the city is trying to eliminate the red light district so the city is beginning to buy some of the windows and display local work of artists. Prostitution is still legal and the girls are tax payers, but they will be forced into brothels or shows instead of being in the windows. The red light district is as old as Amsterdam itself and there is a church located right in the red light district. When Amsterdam was port city, sailors would arrive into the city with pockets full of cash, go right into the red light district, then feel guilty and go to confession at the church. The Priests would mark down an amount next to each sin the sailor would confess and then they would pay the church so they would be allowed to go to heaven. This is a perfect example of how profit driven the people of Amsterdam have always been. There are a lot of tourists in Amsterdam so the night life is very exciting and there is always something to do.
On Sunday, some of my friends and I went to the Van Gogh museum.
It was really interesting because there were over 500 of his paintings, along with many of the letters he had written. Most of them were to his brother Theo. Through reading some excerpts from many of the letters I was able to gain a better understanding of who Van Gogh really was and what his motivations, as well as struggles were. The letters gave a real insight into who he was as a person, not just an artist. After the museum we saw the i amsterdam sign, which is life size letters saying i am sterdam.
I really had a great weekend and I find it really interesting how Amsterdam has become the way it is through it’s history.

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