charismatic megafauna since 1985

My Last Day in Amsterdam...

…was pretty much like I said it would be. After grabbing breakfast at the hostel (and forgetting half of my soap in my room) I left on the bus to go back to the main train station, Amsterdam Centraal. My night train required a reservation, so I wanted to do that before anything else. Luckily I did, because it turns out the train was an hour earlier than I thought it would be because of track work. I still had plenty of time to see the sights during the day.

My first stop was the Anne Frank Museum. It’s the actual house that the Frank’s stayed in while they were hiding. I was surprised, actually, by how large it was. I haven’t read her diary since middle school? but I didn’t remember that they lived in the secret house behind the real house. I assumed (wrongly) that, like at the ten Boom house, they lived in the real house and only went into hiding when they needed to. A good reminder of what people went through during the Holocaust, a reminder I’m sure I’ll be getting again when I’m in Berlin.

Next stop was a bit more uplifting: the Heineken brewery. The beer isn’t brewed there anymore, so they’ve turned the old brewery/stables(!) into a multimedia experience. There are videos everywhere, including inside the old copper brewing kettles. It’s not a guided tour, but there are a bunch of people: one person-ing the barley/hops tasting, one around the brew kettles, two at the first tasting, one at the “You’re the brew” (I don’t think that’s exactly right) “ride”, and another two at the last tasting. The “You’re the brew” part was the most entertaining. Everyone goes into this room with a big video screen, and stands on a platform, holding onto the rail in front of them. The video goes through the process of brewing beer, along with some physical effects to go along with the video (the platform moves, water sprays out, heat from heat lamps, and some bubbles while we’re “fermenting”). It’s totally cheesy, but fun.

After that, I walked back up Damrak and hit up the Sex Museum. It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a sex museum. It’s three floors, and there’s a ton of stuff there, dating from antiquity to the modern day. It was entertaining, sure, but I do wish there was more of a story to to whole thing. As it was, things were organized around themes (ancient, photographs, BDSM, etc.) but without any sense of a flow between the various sections.

My last stop for the day was NEMO, the science museum; basically, it’s the Danish Exploratorium. Although, they do have a sex section (what part of Amsterdam doesn’t?) which you wouldn’t find in an American museum. On the first floor there was a big kinetic experiment set up, started by a ball rolling down a ramp, knocking down some dominoes, which…etc. The best part (for me) was when the experiment didn’t work, and the guy would have to play it off and knock something over to make it keep going. The building itself was designed for this museum and it looks like a ship sinking into the harbor. Why does it look like that? Who knows!

For the night train, I bought a couchette, which is a bed in a 6-bunk room the size of a dorm single at Hampshire. Next time, I’m just getting a regular seat because I’d get just as much sleep as I did in the too-short bed.