We spent our last two days in Europe the best way we knew how: eating. After sleeping off our midnight train arrival, we queued for breakfast pancakes, finally settling on savory and sweet to share: one made with Indonesian spices and the other Nutella and banana.
There was plenty of snacking to be done. We admired the seemingly endless canal streets, with tiny kayaks and motorboats moored to the docks right by the sidewalk, matched only by the preponderance of street markets. At Bloemenmarkt (Floating Flower Market), Courtney picked up a wheel of cheese. At Albert Cuyp Market, we gorged on salted cod, barbequed chicken on a stick, fresh fruit juice, and stroopwafels fresh off an iron griddle.
Along the way, we stopped into Amsterdam’s famous coffee shops and “coffeeshops.” Having walked through the Red Light District from the train station the previous evening, we didn’t feel the need to go back again. But we would be remiss not to take part in Amsterdam’s third most popular tourist activity: biking. We rented cheap fixed gear bikes with back pedal brakes, but contrary to the reports of convenience and ease purported in our guidebooks, biking in Amsterdam was stressful! As a tourist, it felt like the equivalent of merging onto a six-lane highway after just passing your driver’s test.
Still, we managed to bike the southern and eastern canal rings to the Eastern Islands and the museum district, where impressive architectural landmarks stood alongside charming old brick homes. We went to an outdoor bazaar where vendors hawked clothing and mismatched Adidas sneakers from giant metal shipping containers. For dinner, we ate at an Indonesian restaurant near our bike rental place, each ordering the rice table that, despite a surfeit of the white stuff, featured dozens of delicious side dishes—satays, sambals, rendangs—in tiny bowls to share.
What else is there to say? Readers who have made it this far will come to expect what was true: nothing particularly life-changing happened. We walked back home along the water, peering into people’s homes in the dim twilight. It’s been a fascination of mine that has only been accentuated over the last several months. Through gauzy curtains, a floral tablecloth set with white china. Another window, where a couple quietly flipped through channels on TV. How many dozens of such trivial encounters do we experience each day? And yet, all the while I couldn’t help wondering who these people were, the lives that existed on the other side of the glass.
Our final stop for the evening was the Anne Frank House, a museum of the actual house and Secret Annex where the Frank family remained hidden for over two years. The building’s lobby was all glass, a marked contrast from the rooms upstairs, where black drapes blot out prying eyes from the outside. In many ways, this blog series owes a great debt to Anne Frank. More than once, she questioned the import of writing a diary at all: “It seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year old school girl.”
As we entered the final dimly lit room, large, unadorned photos of Anne graced white walls interspersed with excerpts from her diary. One of them read: “Unless you write yourself, you can’t know how wonderful it is… I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart.” It helped to strengthen my conviction in the power of words, and what even the most trivial narratives may one day be capable of accomplishing.