The very windy land of windmills

The week of the new timetable! This is my final timetable of the year so I got more of a say in which classes I'd like to be in. I requested more classes with the younger students which is exactly what I got, as well as Fridays off so the travel can continue.

Talking of travel, after school on Thursday I headed off for the weekend. Despite having spent many of my weekends in the last few months travelling around Europe with Katherine, I had never actually been to visit her in Utrecht. A mere six hours later I was in Utrecht Centraal. There was only one incident on the journey, and for once it had absolutely nothing to do with the beloved DB Bahn. Basically, I convinced myself that I had left the hob on in my flat and it was going to burn the building down. This was 10 minutes before getting the train from Hannover Hbf to Amersfoort, so not the best timing in the world. Fortunately I managed to contact my landlady who checked my flat... unsurprisingly I had not left the hob on. Panic over.

I was met in Utrecht by Katherine and Emma (Katherine's uni friend) for a relaxed evening featuring genius tea courtesy of Julia's, a takeaway pasta place in the main station. You simply choose your pasta, choose your sauce, watch it getting cooked and then it is given to you in a box with one of those fun plastic forks that looks like a metal fork. Like I said, genius.

Utrecht

The following day was Valentine's Day. How to celebrate? Hmm, how about stroopwafel for breakfast and maybe a day trip to Amsterdam?! The Netherlands is a fairly compact country, so it only took about half an hour to get from Utrecht to Amsterdam. We obviously began with a wander into the centre, down the main shopping street and to the square with the Royal Palace. There really is a lot of water! There are canals everywhere with bridges and bikes and building that are tilting so far forward it's amazing they are still standing.

In amongst all these buildings is the Anne Frank House. As it sounds, the Anne Frank House is the hiding place where Anne Frank wrote her diary during World War II. It has since been made into a museum as a reminder of Anne Frank the other occupants of the secret annexe, the helpers and all others like them. We had to queue for about 45 minutes to get in, but once inside the queuing is forgotten. It is absolutely fascinating. As someone who has read Anne Frank's diary numerous times it was amazing to walk round the 263 Prinsengracht. You begin with the warehouse, offices and storeroom, from which Otto Frank (Anne's father) ran his companies. The people in the warehouse knew nothing of the inhabitants of the secret annexe, but the office staff were the helpers. Next you walk through the doorway which was concealed by the bookcase (the actual bookcase is still there!) and into the annexe. Although there is no furniture there are still signs of Anne and the other inhabitants of the secret annexe: pictures of film stars and artwork stuck on a bedroom wall, lines on the wall marking how much Anne and Margot (Anne's older sister) grew whilst living in the annexe and Otto's map marking the advance of the Allies.

The feeling of walking from room to room in the secret annexe is indescribable. But inevitably you continue into a room documenting how it all went wrong. How the eight people in hiding were found and arrested by the Nazis, how they were taken to a transit camp and then onto various concentration camps.

Perhaps the highlight of the museum is the diary itself. A red-checked diary kept by a thirteen year old girl. It looks so ordinary, that it's hard to believe that this is the actual diary, the one that has been translated into dozens of languages, read by millions of people all over the world and symbolises Nazi atrocities during World War II.

If you ever get the chance, go to the Anne Frank House.

After a carefully chosen lunch we saw a very different side to Amsterdam. Whenever you go to a capital city you want to see the most famous things there, which in Amsterdam happens to include the Red Light District. From an architectural point of view it is one of the oldest and prettiest areas of the city; you just have ignore the signage and window displays. Oh and the smell of weed.

At this point the weather (which had been rubbish to begin with) went downhill. We managed a visit to the Old Amsterdam Cheese Shop where I shamelessly had tried loads of tasters, but gave up and went home. The upside was that we spent the evening in central Utrecht which I'd seen little of so far, enjoying pasta and cocktails.

Amsterdam

With Emma safely on her bus back to Prague (!!!), Katherine and I headed to downtown Utrecht to see the sights. It might not be a big place but it is very pretty. There are cobbled streets, flowers, canals and bikes everywhere. On the topic of bikes: I'm not a big fan. They are absolutely terrifying and people carry such stupid things on them. An ironing board for example. Or there are the couples cycling along holding hands... it is just me who sees that as dangerous?!

Back to Utrecht, where I had a lovely guided tour by Katherine so saw the Dom and Dom Cathedral (which used to be attached), some university buildings and ate supposedly the best chips in the Netherlands (to be fair they were good). Then it was back on the train for a trip to Zaanse Schans, a town which is basically a microcosm of the Netherlands. It might be close geographically to Amsterdam but that's where the similarities end.

Het Jonge Schapp (saw mill), De Zoeker (oil mill), De Kat (dye mill), De gekroonde Poelenburg (saw mill)

Zaanse Schans is a well-preserved traditional Dutch village. It was once the most industrial area of the Netherlands, with over 1000 windmills. Now there are only thirteen. Unsurprisingly it was an amazingly windy place, and with water on either side of the paths it was amazing we didn't fall in! The windmills were certainly working. We wen't inside 'De Kat', a dye mill, and the blades were turning so fast that the whole windmill was shaking. The visit was 'at your own risk' and we realised why once we started climbing up the wooden stairs inside the windmill. A combination of high winds and ladder-like stairs meant you had to hold on tight. There were three levels, including a particularly precarious balcony area. Eeeek.

Zaanse Schans

Our exploration continued with a visit to the cheese farm for more tasters, and then a clog museum. I can confirm that clogs are very uncomfortable, and gave Katherine a splinter. Our 'chocolate box' Dutch village even smelt like cocoa! On the way home we stopped in at Amsterdam (because we could) as the weather was so much better than the previous day. Another reason to love Amsterdam: we found Dairy Milk there!

Sunday was home-day. Back for another week of school.