AMSTERDAM this weekend! I had class Thursday from 1-3 and then again from 5-7 and we were leaving from Fribourg on a 7:36 train! When German class got out at 7, I ran back to St. Justin, grabbed my backpack, and met Maria to walk the 5 minute walk to the station. This was the start of such an adventure – I don’t even know where to begin J There are 7 of us going to Amsterdam Jen and Vincent have been amazing – they’ve been working on all the details all week long. Roundtrip train tickets from Fribourg to Amsterdam usually cost around 500 francs. Instead of paying that, we decided to piece together trains from border to border – Fribourg to Basel (Swiss-German border), acroos Germany to Oberhausen (German-Dutch border), and then on to Amsterdam. It was going to be super cheap… we were totally going to “beat the system” and not have to pay the 500 francs. Yeah, we’d be traveling through the night, spending 5 hours in the Frankfurt airport, but it was all going to be part of the adventure (just making for a bigger adventure and better story afterwards) It turns out our super cheap (hint) tickets to get across Germany were only for the IRE trains (inter-regional express), not the ICE trains (intercontinental express). So, we crossed 3 countries on interregional trains – it was a slow process of nine legs. Little did we know that our biggest problems were ahead of us J It’s the middle of the night at this point and we’ve been booted off the ICE train that our tickets do not allow us to ride and are stranded in Offenburg, Germany – where the next train doesn’t leave until 6 AM. Luck was on our side though… There were 2 Californians, Colton and Steven, on the train with us when we got booted off. They lived in Offenburg and offered for the SEVEN of us to stay at their place until we could get on the 6 AM train. We contemplated it for a little while, but it didn’t take us long to decide to take them up on their offer after standing just a few minutes in the freezing cold outside the station. We wake up at the crack of dawn to catch the first train out of Offerburg and start making our way again towards Holland. Things are going fairly smoothly, no real disasters yet, and then we’re arriving in Oberhausen, Germany… It’s time to switch from train 8 to train 9 and Oliver, Jen, and I don’t get off the train in time! The other 4 are standing on the platform just watching as the train pulls off with Oliver, Jen, and me still on board. Just the luck of our trip! Luckily, the next stop wasn’t too far away. We jumped off there and then rode a bus back to the rest of the group. All of this causing us to miss the next leg of our trip, setting all our next trains an hour back. Hahaha, we all such good attitudes though – we had come to expect nothing less from this trip.
We finally got into Amsterdam around 9:20 Friday evening – over 24 hours after we left Fribourg and more than 10 hours later than we had originally planned to get into Amsterdam! Jen, Julia, and I got made-to-order tortellini served in Chinese to-go boxes from Julia’s the restaurant and then took a tram to the hotel. We’re stayed in the Marriot Amsterdam in the Leidseplein neighborhood. It’s perfect! The best location! We’re sleeping 7 in a 4 person room, but it’s still great! The beds might as well have been made for queens – we all slept like babies. We weren’t going to let our late arrival set us back at all so we showered and went out for the night. Amsterdam’s Christmas lights are up – sparkling everywhere and beautiful! It’s always different seeing a city for the first time at night… The night colors of this city are really incredible – Christmas chandeliers and lights hanging over every street, lights reflecting on the canals.
After just a few, but wonderfully pleasant, hours of sleep we woke up Saturday morning ready to squeeze in as much as we could in the little over 24 hours we had in Amsterdam. We had a big “English” breakfast – advertised-as-pancakes crepes, topped with strawberries and bananas, whitekaffee (café au lait), and fresh-squeezed orange juice. We walked up the Spuistraat and Raadhuisstraat boulevards to the Anne Frank house. It was raining, but it didn’t even bother us. We had a 45 minute queue for the house and then walked through. It’s a really sobering experience – to see the tiny quarters the five Jewish hide-outs lived in for so many months. I’ve visited the Dachau concentration camp twice now and several Holocaust museums, but this was a completely different way of witnessing the atrocities of the Holocaust. You witness the Holocaust on such a personal level – when you exit the museum and tour, you can’t help but feel like you personally knew Anne Frank. To have access to this one little girl’s profound thoughts and words on a situation that is still so hard to comprehend sometimes was incredible. After the Anne Frank House, we walked around for a bit longer ad then had a late lunch at the infamous Bagels and Beans. I had completely forgotten how much I love bagels! I had a whole wheat bagel with cream cheese, honey, walnuts, and thyme on it. It was great, by far the best bagel I’ve ever had. We split up for the rest of the afternoon – some went to the Reikmuseum and some went shopping through the winding streets. We met back up at the hotel, rested for a bit, got ready for the nights, and then headed out to cross some things off our to do list. We had several recommendations from friends and guidebooks, so we started with those. We didn’t have much time Sunday so we woke up, packed, and then headed to the Van Gogh Museum – amazing!
We had the same problem going back to Switzerland as we did coming – our super cheap tickets only allowed us to ride the regional trains. So, we had another day of piecing together short regional train rides to get across Germany. Instead of getting back into Fribourg Sunday night, we arrived at 7 AM Monday morning, just in time for my 8 AM class J I love, love, love Amsterdam! It’s never been at the top of my list of places to see and I’ve never put in a real effort to get there, but it surprised me in the best of ways! It’s incredibly beautiful, historic, alive, and fun! I’m ready to go back and spend more time there!
This trip was awesome for all its kinks, poor timing, and bad luck. It was so much more about savoring the moments and enjoying the adventure there and back instead… the true European traveling experience full of multiple set-backs, but hours of laughing and an irreplaceable weekend get-away!
