The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam

Anxiously awaiting the metro to take us down town

Today The Linguist, Pianogurl and I headed into Amsterdam to visit the Anne Frank house. We parked at a park and ride location outside the city and caught the metro into the city center and then walked about another mile to get there. We were unable to buy advance tickets (due to a school group we saw arriving who had purchased them all), so we weren’t sure how long the wait time would be. I’d say if you have the option, definitely buy the advance tickets, but the wait wasn’t bad.

Anne Frank and her family and some friends (8 Jewish people in all) lived in hiding in Mr. Frank’s spice factory for two years during WW II before being betrayed and captured by Nazis. The family was divided among various concentration camps and Anne’s father was the only survivor. Anne recorded her thoughts and feelings in a journal during that time and even began revising her journal with the intention of publishing it when the war ended. Her journals and notebooks were saved by one of the office staff and returned to Mr. Frank after the end of the war. He pursued Anne’s dream and her account has been published in multiple languages around the world.

The tour begins with a short video clip that gives a summary of her experiences and some of the events during WW II. It is appropriate for younger children – we weren’t sure, so left ours with our friends, but the pictures of the concentration camps were fairly brief and I’m not sure younger kids would even recognize what they were seeing. After some more introductory exhibits, you enter the hiding place behind the swinging bookcase and walk through the rooms where they lived. The furniture was all removed after their capture, and Mr. Frank wanted it left that way. They have a scale model that shows where things were originally, but in the rooms there are just a few things left on the walls. You can see the marks where Anne and her sister, Margot’s, heights were recorded, along with some of the pictures of movie stars that Anne pasted on her bedroom wall.

Pianogurl sings the visitor book in the Anne Frank Museum

The whole experience was sobering. Anne’s family had originally lived in Germany and had relocated to the Netherlands to begin new lives just 7 or 8 years before they had to go into hiding. And Anne died just a month before the prison camp she was in was liberated. One of her friends speculated that if Anne had known her father was still living, she might have found it in herself to hold on. As it was, she believed she was the lone survivor in her family. I have great admiration for her father, who returned alone and had to begin yet again.

The rest of our visit to Amsterdam was more lighthearted. We wandered through the streets, admiring the architecture and the boats in the canals. There are tons of bikes in Amsterdam….like Ferrara on steroids! There were several really beautiful buildings that we’d like to go back and visit, so we may need to plan a long weekend there sometime. We find ourselves fascinated with the huge Gothic churches we’ve driven by in this part of Europe – in part, I’m sure, because they’re so different from what we see in Italy.

Downtown, riverside view of Amsterdam

On our way out, we stopped at a pancake shop to sample some local cuisine. I can’t remember the names of everything we ate, but I’m pretty sure the Linguist has pictures! My favorite was the savory pancake that was more like a large crepe. It had slices of chicken and cheese sprinkled over it and cooked in. The waitress suggested eating it with maple syrup, but I rather liked it plain. Pianogurl loved the waffles that tastes almost like crystallized sugar and melted in our mouths. I couldn’t decide how the little puffs were made…almost like doughnuts, but with more of a muffin consistency. We walked around some young adults who were wrapping their friend in a large, red carpet in the middle of the sidewalk and returned to our van via the metro.

Yummy cheese, chicken pancake!

Super sweet waffles near the Anne Frank House.