I can’t remember the first time I heard about The Netherlands, but I’m sure it wasn’t until I was into adulthood. Growing up, I learned about Holland and saw pictures in books of Dutch people walking around in wooden shoes and funny white hats while dodging windmills and tending the tulips. Now, I’m finding out that there are twelve provinces in The Netherlands, including North Holland and South Holland, but if one refers to the Kingdom of the Netherlands as Holland in general, it’s politically incorrect and downright offensive. My childhood has been turned upside down in a two-day visit to Amsterdam, the capital of Holland….oops, I mean the Kingdom of the Netherlands, hope I didn’t offend anyone there.
Yesterday we flew from Barcelona, Spain, north along the length of France to Amsterdam arriving at 9:30 in the morning. After a 4:00 wake up and early airport arrival, we were wiped out but ready to explore this old city. We’re lodging at the Shelter Jordan Christian Youth Hostel where Deena stayed twenty-seven years ago on a trip to Europe with her sister and two other friends. The girls are on the first floor, and the boys are on the second in dorm-style rooms with bunk beds—I called bottom bunk right away. There are large shower rooms on each floor and a dining hall right off the reception area. Everything is clean and orderly, and the staff is friendly and helpful….and young, very young. I would estimate the average age of the staff and residents here to be about twenty-one, so Deena and I are ancient in their eyes, but everyone has been warm and respectful to us.
We arrived too early to check into our bunks, so we stowed our luggage and spent a couple of hours wandering the streets along the canals, immediately taken in by the design of the city and its unique construction. There are bicycles everywhere—either chained up along the streets and bridges or being ridden by ruthless people who refuse to slow down for anything except to roll a cigarette. We had been warned by our Uber driver about the rudeness of the bicycle riders, and we could tell pretty quickly what he meant. In the US, pedestrians are given preferential treatment and right of way, but in Europe they’re sitting ducks and easy prey for motorists and bicyclists. Even the locals here don’t dare jaywalk as they do in other large cities, and they use the extra waiting time to smoke. Yeah, they have those crosswalks and flashing yellow lights here, but it’s a sham. On a positive note, the citizens of Amsterdam get plenty of exercise on their bikes as they ride to the market for tobacco, beer, and flowers.
We had hoped to visit the Anne Frank house early in our visit; so we headed in that direction and discovered a long queue of people holding tickets they had obviously printed themselves. We found out from a docent that visits to the museum could be scheduled in advance and time slots booked online for morning and early afternoon visits. Through the use of the smartphone, we also discovered that there are no online slots available for the near future. Oh boy. The docent also told us that we could return at 3:30 PM to stand in line for the general admission tickets and try to gain entrance before closing time at 8:00 PM. With no other options, we continued our walk of the city with hopes to return later in the day.
There is evidence that land was being reclaimed in this area as early as 1000 AD, but real settlement didn’t begin until the 13th century when building expanded beyond the original fishing village. By the 17th century, Amsterdam was into its golden age, and it became the richest city in the world due to the savvy of its merchants. Rembrandt perfected his genius in this time, and Dutch colonization proliferated around the globe. The following centuries would bring financial decline, plague, and war, but today Amsterdam stands on the banks of the picturesque canals, still a powerful city of commerce and culture. The city has a dark side as well with its red light district offering cannabis in coffee shops to backpackers on pilgrimages for a legal buzz, and sex shops offering every kind of hedonistic act dreamed up since the days of Corinth. Curiously, almost every website with a top-ten list of things to do in Amsterdam ranks a visit to the red light district high on the list…so to speak. I think we’ll stick to the boat tour and enjoy the architecture and gelato instead.
Back in the day, citizens of Amsterdam were charged a tax based on the width of their houses, so most homes were built narrowly and deeply—the Dutch way of sticking it to the man. Along the canals, the buildings are about twenty feet wide and rise five or six stories, capped with bell shaped gables. Like New Orleans, Amsterdam is built below sea level, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why city founders thought this scenario would lead to perpetuity. Since the buildings were all constructed on wood pilings, they’ve shifted and sunk over the years, and some were intentionally built with a forward tilt to facilitate runoff from rain. Because of their shape and position, the buildings give the streetscapes a hand-drawn, cartoonish look that one cannot resist photographing hundreds of times. From the center of the front gable on each house, a sturdy three-meter wooden beam protrudes decorated with trim molding with a thick iron hook installed at the end. I wondered about this detail until I saw a tradesman using a large pulley attached to the hook to pull supplies up to the upper floors of the building with ropes—very clever. I learned later that due to the steep, narrow stairwells in the houses, furniture has to be moved with pulleys in and out of windows that were built overly large for this purpose. I think that avoiding taxes has led to more innovative ideas than the space program.
We walked back to the hostel after our initial exploration of the city, checked into our rooms, and rested for a couple of hours before gathering the energy to try the Anne Frank house again. By the time we got back to the museum, the queue stretched around the building and down the street for two blocks. Like the Mona Lisa in Paris, the Anne Frank house has become the thing to do in Amsterdam, but the Anne Frank house has infinitely more worth than any piece of art in my opinion, and we were determined to wait out the line so our children could experience it.
“The two of us looked out at the blue sky, the bare chestnut tree glistening with dew, the seagulls and other birds glinting with silver as they swooped through the air, and we were so moved and entranced that we couldn’t speak.”
Anne wrote those beautiful words in 1944 after two years of hiding in fear, and they move me to tears. Most people are familiar with the story of the Frank family hiding in the secret annex of Otto Frank’s business, helped by four employees who provided them with food and necessities for two years. I won’t go into the whole story here, but looking it up is worth the time, and so is reading Anne’s diary. The horror of the holocaust is large and drenched with evil, and I have trouble comprehending the capacity humans have to be gutturally cruel to other humans. The story of the Frank family helps me see what one small family endured, and it astounds me that at least six million other people endured it as well. What gets me the most about Anne and her loved ones is that they almost made it. After two years of hiding, they were able to listen to the BBC on a small radio, and hear that the Allies had invaded France on D-Day. From that point, they kept track of the Allied advances through France and were hopeful about the war coming to an end. Then they were betrayed, arrested, and moved into concentration camps where they all died except for Otto Frank.
We toured the secret annex—a very solemn and moving experience for my family. We had seen pictures of the rooms furnished, and we wondered why they are empty now. We learned that Mr. Frank agreed to have the rooms staged with furniture to show how they looked while his family was hiding there, then requested they be emptied and remain that way to symbolize the void left by the death of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. What a powerful reminder and what a selfless act by Mr. Frank to share his story and his daughter’s writing. Anne’s diary is a treasure and testament of hope under the stress and tension of being persecuted to death, and I was unaware that it was on display in the museum section of the house. I stared at it for a long time, and even though it was written in a language I didn’t understand, just the sight of it stirred feelings of hope and courage and the simple desire to be kind. Compared to two years of living in fear, standing in line for an hour was nothing, and the lessons we learned were everything.
We walked back to the hostel where we had signed up for dinner and enjoyed homemade Hawaiian pizza, salad, and fruit with yogurt followed by a Bible study with some of the staff members. Since we’re staying on different floors, we’ve had a few logistical issues with things like toothpaste and electronics chargers, but we’re enjoying the youthful vibe at the hostel.
The hostel serves breakfast from 8:00 to 10:00, and I was there at 0800 on the dot, ready for coffee. I was up early and spent an hour writing in the courtyard before the rest of my crew came down to eat. The air was cool with a light breeze, and I enjoyed the solitude while I contemplated the events of the day before. The coffee was fresh and strong, made from a large press that produced a layer of froth on top of the diner style cup. I enjoyed it tremendously. One by one, my family came down for breakfast, and we attacked hearty pancakes with butter and syrup that was thick and sweet, similar to molasses. Properly fueled, we hit the streets of Amsterdam for a long walk to the train station in the center of town. Our destination for the morning was the Corrie Ten Boom house in the neighboring town of Haarlem, about a twenty-minute train ride away. It took a few minutes to figure out the ticketing process, but we were on our way in short order, and stepped off the platform ready to walk some cobblestone streets.
The town of Haarlem was a major trading city through the centuries and still retains its medieval charm with gabled houses and merchant-lined streets. We found the Ten Boom House after a fifteen-minute walk and waited outside in the alley for the free tour. The members of the Ten Boom family were Christians living in the Nazi occupied Netherlands and saw it as their duty to help Jews escape persecution by hiding them in their home. They were eventually betrayed and arrested but not before helping many Jews and members of the Dutch resistance to escape. Corrie survived a Nazi work camp and went on to live a long life sharing her experience through books and speaking engagements all over the world. After the tour, Deena and I talked to the children about willingness to help people in time of need even though it might result in harm. Like Queen Esther, would we all be ready and willing to offer aid for “such a time as this”? In the living room of the Ten Boom house, there was a piano with a singe sheet of music sitting in the stand on top. The song was "You are My Hiding Place", one of my favorite songs of worship and a reminder that our hope in troubled times doesn’t come from money or governments, but from God, who is ever faithful and unchanging.
You are my hiding place; You preserve me from trouble; You surround me with songs of deliverance.
Psalm 32:7
The Hiding Place
We walked to the main square of Haarlem and ate our lunch at a cafe on the border of all the activity including a large wedding. We enjoyed a relaxing meal of soup and panini sandwiches before finishing our time in the town with a little shopping, and after another short train ride, we were back in Amsterdam, ready for a boat tour of the canals. The discount tickets provided by the hostel gave us an hour of cruising through the canals and seeing the city from a different perspective. The audio guide was engaging as we bobbed on the water in the afternoon sun, but we were a little sleepy by the end of the tour. On the walk back to the hostel, we stopped at a very efficient three-story McDonalds where the crew enjoyed sundaes while I savored a big cup of strong coffee. Like nowhere else on the trip so far, I’ve had the easiest access to excellent coffee in Amsterdam, and I think it’s a fine city indeed.
Every other Friday night at Shelter Jordan is deemed Hostel Night, and guests are offered a free dinner with a short program and a long time of fellowship with other travelers. We showed up early and enjoyed talking to one of the staff, a young Australian girl who had traveled to many of the places on our itinerary. Many young people these days are vegetarian or vegan or something, and the meal catered to those lifestyles and consisted of mixed vegetables, roasted potatoes, and apple pie. I think I could be a vegan for a few days as long as there’s apple pie. We sat with Emerson, a delightful eighteen-year-old staff member from the US, who is in the middle of a gap year between high school and whatever life brings her way next. For being so young, she was already well-traveled, and we enjoyed her tales of adventure and hearing about her duties at the hostel. Deveny was inspired to hear that life can lead down many avenues, and with a good head on one’s shoulders, the opportunity to explore those streets is worth considering.
Deveny and Emerson
After checking out of our rooms at 10:00 AM, we spent the last morning at Shelter Jordan sitting quietly in the courtyard alongside our bags. Deena had a bout of vertigo earlier that morning, and we thought it best to take it easy in the cool of the morning rather than tackle one more fast-paced walk along the canals. Along with everyone we talked with at the hostel, Joseph and Deveny liked Amsterdam very much, and I wish we could have spent a few more days in this unique city, but the strain on the budget would have been difficult to manage. Still, we had enough time to get a feel for the culture and enjoy the look of the city which is like no other in the world. Of all the countries we’ve visited so far where language has been an issue, the Netherlands has been the easiest to manage. English is the second language of the citizens, and they are fluent and eager to converse with Americans. Most signs are written in Dutch and English, and we found that the streets in Amsterdam are easier to navigate than the travel shows would have one believe. Our compass is pointed toward Germany now, but the next time I find myself in the path of a crazed, cigarette-smoking cyclist, I’ll yield and smile and remember Amsterdam fondly.
Goodbye Shelter Jordan
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