To start off my trip to Amsterdam, I went to a Shinedown concert. I had booked the show before I booked the hostel rooms and the bus tickets, but it was no problem since the bus left at 1 or 2 am and the concert finished well before that.
I had lost the keys to my bike (I spent about a half hour to an hour looking for my keys at work), so I was very late getting back from work, and this made me late for the concert. I also did not find my keys so my bike had to stay at work 😢😢. Fortunately, I was able to get to the concert before Shinedown started, but I did miss the first band, Press to Meco, and half of the Starset show.
The Starset show had lots of cool effects, and I was very impressed with them. It was honestly the first time I had thought of them for a while. It renewed my interest in the band, and also gave me the knowledge that they are a great live band.
Shinedown was also a great show, but I was a bit disappointed that they did not do all the songs I was hoping to hear. There was a lot of music I was hoping for them to play and giving the time they had they covered lots. The singer was great to listen to and put on an excellent show.
After the show, I hung around the stage and then eventually left. On my way out I saw the members of the first band, and two of them were shot-gunning beer at a very slow pace, so I commented on that. The band member actually offered me a beer which was awesome.
Arrival to Amsterdam
Eventually at 01:55 my bus left Antwerp for Amsterdam, and I slept the whole way. When I woke, it was the last stop, Schiphol Airport, and unfortunately, I had missed my stop, the middle of the city. I proceeded to nap at the airport until some friendly security guards told me to wake up. I then searched for the central station by learning the bus system (by the way those buses have USB ports 😁😁😁😁😁😁). After finding it, I found a lovely coffee shop and had some breakfast.
Amsterdam Central
First Day
This is where I decided to start my day, and my first stop was a museum about Amsterdam. This museum talked about how Amsterdam was built and its general history. It explained the history of the Amsterdam Canals and their importance to the city. The biggest driver for its earliest development was the maritime trade that Amsterdam was a part, and now it is mostly used for tourism. It was also described how Amsterdam went from being a republic to being a kingdom. In the museum, it also covered how Amsterdam had the first gay marriage. Of course, when talking about how liberal Amsterdam is the Red Light District and Coffee-shops were mentioned.
For those of you who don't know the Red Light District is a place where prostitution happens regularly with the blessing of the police, however, police do try and stop pimping. A coffee-shop in Amsterdam could be a regular coffee-shop, but the more famous ones in Amsterdam are the ones that sell cannabis.
After that museum, I decided to go find the Red Light District. It was about a half hour walk if I remember correctly. When I first got there, I decided to go and see the museum Red Light Secrets. It was a fascinating and informative museum that described the sex work economy in Amsterdam. They did talk about how some of the sex workers come here and get controlled by a "lover-boy". A loverboy is basically a pimp, but one that convinces the sex worker that she loves him. They are the biggest problems for the police because a lot of the times it can be younger girls and they are being coerced to do something, so it is not really there choice (At the end of the blog I have included a few news articles about loverboys). It should also be kept in mind that if prostitution was entirely illegal it is likely stuff like this would still happen, but nobody would know. Overall the district is safe for both the people there and the sex workers.
After seeing the museum, I walked up and down one of the streets where there are sex workers. I did not see anybody negotiating with a sex worker, but then again I was trying to pay much attention. If you look like you are interested the girls will try to seduce you into there room, and I did not want that. It costs 50 euros for 8 minutes😱😱, according to the museum information.
A little bit ironically the oldest church in Amsterdam is located right across the street from that street, so I went to look at it. It was quite a large church and had lots of things to look at and some audio guide stuff. It was also very open which might have made it seem larger than it is. The floor had interesting carvings in parts as well. It was an exciting church and being placed in the Red light district made it even more impressive.
Some photos of the floor of the church
The next stop was the hostel since I at some point in time should stop carrying around my backpack, and I was getting tired. After checking it, I decided to go and have a nap. When I was nice and fully rested, I decided to go to the hostel bar's happy hour. It was two for one drinks, but only Heineken was on the approved list for beer. The bartender gave me a couple names of music bars that I could go to. One was a jazz bar, and another was a rock bar. In the rock bar, I met a couple Americans who were working in Amsterdam, and I had a good conversation about hockey with them. The jazz bar was crowded beyond belief. People were sitting on the stairs, and there was almost no room to move. The most important thing they had in common though was ridiculously expensive beer. It was about 6 euros for a Westmalle Triple which, in Belgium, costs about 4 euros. The music at both places was good though.
Day 2
On day 2 I started by having breakfast and talking with some of the other people at the hostel. I met a nice guy from Turkey who was also leaving that day but much earlier than I was. After breakfast, I went on the 'free walking tour'. The group going was huge, and there were multiple languages, so the tour guides split us into smaller groups. The tour guide I got was a funny Scottish guy.
Our guide showed us the canals and explained why they are essential. He also did a sort of party trick where he linked historical events to the canals. I got him to connect the Confederation of Canada to the canals. He showed us where the university is and the Jewish quarter. He also described some of the hardships that the Jewish people went through during the war. At the start of the war, there were 90,000 Jews, and at the end, only 5,000 came back. Throughout all of this, he was also making fun of the difference between how people were handling the cold. There were some Australians who seemed to be dying and then there was a Russian and me who were okay.
We did stop in a coffee-shop to warm up (an actual coffee-shop not a cannabis one). I bought an 8 euro 😰😰😰Irish coffee which I would not have purchased if I knew it was 8 euros. We went and saw a few more things, and then he went and got us a sample of cheese. While enjoying his cheese sample he did another trick where he would describe the flag of any country we asked him to. He was able to do this very quickly even when I and others started to use our cellphones to stump him.
After this, we went to the last stop which was the homomonument and the Anne Frank museum. Now the Anne Frank museum most of us could not go, because tickets have to be bought well in advance. However, our ever helpful guide explained to us the story. Anne Frank was a Jewish girl who wanted to become a bestselling writer, and she kept a diary throughout the war while hiding from the NAZIs. Eventually, she was caught and ended up dying. Her father, however, did end up surviving the war and found her diary. He decided he was going to make her daughters dream come true by publishing her journal, and he was successful. It is a great story that has affected many people around the world.
The homomonument is by the canal and is a public monument. It is in the shape of pink (or grey if you're like me) triangle. This is the same figure that was on the ID cards that homosexuals had to carry with them during the war.
After this, we all paid the tour guide what we thought he was worth. I would have paid more, but that darn Irish coffee was damn expensive.
For my last stop in Amsterdam, I went to the resistance museum. In this museum, they described the occupation and resistance movement in the Netherlands. It said that at first, the Nazis were kind to them, because they thought the Dutch, being of the Germanic language family, would eventually accept the occupation. When it became clear they were not going to be happy about being occupied the NAZIs turned nasty.
It was also described that people had a choice to make during the occupation. People could collaborate with the occupiers, they could accept them, or they could resist them. This museum mostly focused on the collaborators and the resistors.
An interesting thing that I did not know was that the allies dropped propaganda from planes on their way to bomb Germany. In an exhibit, there were some of the pieces they dropped, and there was a matchbox from Canada 😃.
After that museum, I headed to were my bus was going to leave from. I met one of the other IAESTE students who was in Amsterdam visiting family and was also heading home. The rest of the trip was uneventful.
- https://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/schoolgirls-controlled-by-loverboys-math-class-in-the-morning-turning-tricks-at-lunchtime-a-705104.html
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/aug/18/loverboy-child-prostitution-netherlands
- https://www.dw.com/en/charming-the-girls-then-prostituting-them/a-5874959
Some Pictures of the Canal
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