A Tale of Two Cities: Berlin and Vienna: Amsterdam

I spent the first part of my vacation in Amsterdam. Although also having a notoriously crazy night life and lax laws, from my experiences I found Amsterdam to be a beautiful city with pretty canals, more people on bikes than I’ve ever seen before (The biggest adjustment upon arriving was watching out for bikes. Crossing bike lanes in Amsterdam is more dangerous than crossing streets with cars), and some great art museums.

The canal system (mainly formed of four half circle canals) is truly impressive from an urban planning standpoint. To be honest, the very existence the Netherlands is impressive in terms of a landscape planning perspective. I don’t think there’s another country that can even come close to the Dutch in terms of removing water from the land. Case in point: Schipol, Amsterdam’s main airport, is located at the bottom of a former lake at 11 feet below sea level which was emptied to build the airport. Anyway, in addition to being a practical necessity, I found the canals to be wonderfully charming.

While there, I of course visited Anne Frank’s House.

Although I thought the house was overpriced, it was powerful to see the actual space where Anne lived with her family during the war. While I knew the Secret Annex was a small space, I didn’t really comprehend how small it was until my visit. I can’t imagine living in such confined quarters, unable to leave, for so many years.

I also had the time to visit both of Amsterdam’s major art museums: the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museums. Although most of the museum was closed for renovations, a smaller collection of paintings from the Netherlands’ Golden Age, the 17^th century is on display.

This collection included an extravagant collection of Delft pottery:

a few of Jan Vermeer’s works, which I particularly liked:

and several of Rembrandt’s works, including his masterpiece The Nightwatch:

Although it may be an unpopular opinion, I was quite underwhelmed and unimpressed by Rembrandt. I realized at the museum that although I knew Rembrandt was a famous Dutch painter, I hadn't seen any of his works. After seeing a few, while they are certainly technically advanced, his type of realism really just isn't my preferred artistic style.

On the other hand, the Van Gogh Museum was definitely my style. Vincent Van Gogh is one of my favorite painters, so seeing a museum full of his works was wonderful. It was also cool to see the development of his style and development over time, since the exhibit was organized chronologically. Photography isn't allowed in the museum, but some of my favorite paintings at the museum were Sunflowers:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_127.jpg

and Wheatfield with Crows:

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Vincent_Van_Gogh.jpg

I also took a free walking tour in Amsterdam which covered most of Amsterdam’s major sites such as the National Monument, a World War II monument in Amsterdam’s main square:

the building where the Dutch East India Company’s headquarters were:

and the Royal Palace. Originally Amsterdam’s city hall, it became the royal palace when Napoleon crowned his brother Louis king of the Netherlands and is currently one of the palaces of the Dutch royal family. Funny story from the tour: Upon arriving in Amsterdam, King Louis gave a speech to the people in which he spoke the Dutch language. However, his Dutch wasn’t very good so apparently he said he was the Konijn of Holland (which means rabbit) as opposed to saying he was the Koning of Holland (which means king). From that point on, he was nicknamed the rabbit king. Anyway, here’s the palace:

I also stopped by the flower market. I don’t know if it was actually tulip season while I was there, but the flower market was full of tulip bulbs and tulip flowers being sold.