Beer, hookers and Ann Frank

This is probably going to be a short post because I wasn't in Amsterdam for very long. Scotland's will be a little longer, but probably won't be for a couple days. I'll try to get it up as fast as I can though (that's what she said) because I'll be home in less than 2 weeks (crazy!) so I want to keep everything as up to date as possible.

Okay, so Amsterdam is a beautiful city. I don't know what I expected really, lots of potheads and hookers I guess, but I did not really expect it to be such a gorgeous city. The architecture is amazing. I didn't see a single bad neighborhood and I went all over the city. I mean, even the Red Light District wasn't as skeezy as I expected it to be.

At the train station I met an awesome girl named Kim from California/Colorado (she works in Colorado) and she decided to come to my hostel with me to see if there was room. There was and we were in the same dorm and got to explore the city together. My hostel was outside the city a little ways, and it was on a lake. It was more like a campground than a hostel. It was pretty nice, and the best part was that ducks kept wandering through! Little baby ones, too! They were so cute!!!

I went to the Ann Frank house. It was very cool and so...well, depressing is the only word that really comes to mind. It would be so awful to be cooped up in a little tiny apartment for years just to be found out and sent to a concentration camp. I've never even read The Diary of Ann Frank (I will now though). I heard the story and knew about her, I mean, everyone knows about her. But to actually stand where she stood and see the covered up windows...it was incredibly powerful. I guess there aren't really any words to explain. Like the bullet holes in the Reichstag, it was just such a slap in the face to realizing that all the things we hear about wars aren't just stories. I know that I'm blessed for being so far away from any war zone ever, but I feel almost a little like I've been living in a fake world. I feel guilty that I don't think about the war in Iraq more, and that the hell some people go through every day doesn't even crosses my mind most days...

And because all of that is horribly depressing Kim and I decided we needed some cheering up. So we went to the Heineken Experience. It. Was. EPIC. Seriously, it was one of the coolest places I've been. Who knew beer could be so delicious and so fascinating? I am totally going to go to the Budlight plant thing in St. Louis sometime. I think it's Budlight anyway...and I think it's in St. Louis...okay so maybe I should figure that out.

The Red Light District was as expected. The whole area smelled like pot, there were sex shops every 10 feet and lots of hookers in windows. So yeah. It was honestly a little underwhelming, but I didn't go there very late at night. I heard the area gets kind of sketchy (for obvious reasons) late at night so Kim and I went early evening-ish.

Basically Amsterdam was a lot of fun and I made a new friend and had a good time. Yay for Heineken beer, hookers and Ann Frank. That sounds awful...