N had prepacked just about everything, so it was a simple matter to vacate the room, settle our bill, put the luggage in the breakfast room and have a last crack at the buffet before shouldering our packs and retracing part of our journey to Pasta Sentralen in order to take the 8:35 airport bus. It was sunny with scattered clouds and cool; the weather had held for our entire trip to Bergen. It was a good thing I left those boots at home.
Bergen airport was small, and N spent the last of our Norwegian change at the duty-free shop getting the kids a bar of Toblerone and a pack of cards. But our Norwegian experience was not done: on the Braathens flight to Amsterdam (split oddly enough into "Best", the nice seats in the front two-thirds, and "Back", the cheap seats we occupied), we were served a bag lunch containing a sandwich of smoked salmon and scrambled egg. The kids groaned, but I convinced them to eat it, as it wasn't clear when we'd have a chance to eat next.
We arrived in Schiphol airport about 12:30, waited for what seemed an inordinate amount of time for our luggage, and emerged into the relative chaos of Schiphol Plaza. I knew there was an exchange office somewhere in it, but it took some finding. I had NOK 1650 in bills, which got converted into about NLG 420. It was easiest to think in US dollars in Amsterdam; I was dividing guilder prices in two, though the dollar was worth about 2.3 guilders at the time. Normally I would have gotten a map and something about "what's on" at the tourist office, but there was a long lineup, so we skipped it.
We bought tickets for the train ride into town, found the platform, and boarded the double-decker train when it rolled in. There was plenty of room in the top, but no apparent place to put the luggage, so we crammed it in with us into the four facing seats lest the train fill up at subsequent stops. But there were only two, and few people got on.
The kids were rather tired and grumpy, but we tried to interest them in finding canals, bike paths, and flowers. As we disembarked, we noticed people pulling their luggage out from between the seats, whose reclined backs formed a tent-like space into which bags could fit. Oops.
Centraal Station was even more chaotic, and we came out onto the street and stood there in confusion. Cars, bicycles, and pedestrians seemed to be all coming at us at once. Eventually we spotted the small office where transit tickets were sold, and I bought four strippenkarten, the long rectangular tram tickets. Each had fifteen strips on them, but they didn't come with instructions. I knew from the one photocopied source of information we had (from Frommer's, though we also had some Indonesian restaurant recommendations from the Time Out Web site) that we were to fold the tickets over to the appropriate strip and punch them on boarding, but it wasn't until a day or so later that by interpreting subtleties in the to-me-incomprehensible Dutch on the back of the tickets that I realized that a basic journey cost two strips, not one.
Fortunately, the tram was not excessively crowded, and we could sit in two seats and have the packs in the aisle. We rode down to Leidseplein, and got off. It had been overcast all the time, and now it started to drizzle. N had taken out our raincoats in the airport (of course, we didn't need them on the train or the tram, and they only made us hot) so we weren't getting wet, but the hoods and the rain only added to our feeling of being assailed.
We found the hostel just off a greenspace called Vondelpark, entered, and checked in without any problems (I had reserved via e-mail). Our four-bed room was obviously designed for four individuals; there were two bunk beds in opposite corners of the room (with sheets and duvet covers enclosed in plastic bags piled on top), four small closets looking like the most basic IKEA furniture, a small table and three chairs, a modest expanse of empty blue linoleum, a shower room looking like a shrunken version of a swimming pool change room, a stainless-steel sink, and a room with a toilet. All clean and functional, but very basic after the Grand Hotel Terminus, and therefore somewhat depressing. But this cost us, with taxes, non-member charges, and the 4% commission for using a credit card, NLG 620 for three nights. A double in a regular hotel spacious enough to accomodate two extra beds would have cost us almost twice that.
There weren't even any towels, and we decided the first order of business was to go get some, but when I inquired at the desk, they said we could rent some for NLG 2.50 a pop. The next errand was to go to the bookstore at the Rijksmuseum and get a guide to study before we visited. We had chosen the hostel not only for its cost but its location; the museums were only a few blocks away, and we set out in the intermittent rain. While we are all in favour of environmental alternatives such as public transit and bicycles, in practice these turned out to push the pedestrian even lower on the totem pole; we had to teach the children how to watch for bicycles, then trams, then cars, then bicycles again just to cross the street.
There were lineups outside the Rijksmuseum; their "jubilee" exhibition of "The Glory of the Golden Age" was on. N and the kids went into a passageway between the two halves to get out of the rain, while I went to scout. I talked my way past two sets of guards, the second of which gave me only five minutes, before gaining access to where guides were sold. It wasn't much of a bookshop, more of a hallway where postcards and a few books were stacked up, but I found a guide to the highlights of the permanent collection, purchased it, and made my way downstairs within the time limit, though I suspect I could have disappeared into the parts of the collection that weren't the main exhibition without anyone noticing.
I found N and the kids downstairs listening with amusement to a busking violinist play first a Vivaldi concerto A had mastered as part of her Suzuki training, and then, to cap it off, the piece Z was currently learning. He played some clinkers, too. This inaugurated a new phenomenon for us: the talentless busker. This fellow wasn't bad, but we kept coming across singers or percussionists who were really awful. Perhaps begging was forbidden, but attempting to exchange money for entertainment was not.
It was too late to really see any museums, but too early for dinner. What to do? We decided to move our schedule around, and suggested to the children that we walk up towards the Anne Frank house. We had planned to queue for it first thing the next morning, but thought we could at least enjoy the walk, even if it turned out we couldn't get in.
The old centre of Amsterdam is arranged like a multilayered necklace of canals, with Centraal Station at the base of the throat and Vondelpark and the museums as pendants. We walked up to the next inner canal, Prinsengracht, and along it. The rain had subsided, and we could walk with hoods off and umbrellas collapsed. It wasn't long before we reached Westermarkt, just below the right collarbone, and saw a lineup of about fifty people for the Anne Frank house. That was good enough, and we joined it. We had to wait a bit, as a tour group went in just before us, and admissions were temporarily suspended, but it couldn't have been more than half an hour before we were in.
I hadn't thought of this as a high priority, but after N reminisced about how she remembered her childhood visit to this museum, I relented, and even read the Diary of Anne Frank for the first time shortly before leaving on the trip. The museum turned out to be surprisingly moving. The front part of the building, which was the business at which the father worked, has been turned into a spare museum detailing Hitler's rise to power, the war, and the effects on Amsterdam's populace. Traffic flow is one-way, and there are video screens showing black-and-white historical footage, some with commentary, and some colour shots of reminiscences of people involved in this particular story.
Eventually the visitor reaches the bookcase, swung open, behind which the secret apartment lay. All the furniture has been removed in order to make space for visitors and for small stands showing items of the people who lived in each room. Anne's original wall decorations, photos clipped from magazines and newspapers, are preserved behind Plexiglas. The museum ends with a video reminiscence of the last person to interact with Anne in Bergen-Belsen, some of the original diary books, and a display of editions of the published diary, before dumping the visitor rather incongruously into the cafeteria and gift shop. Still, it was much less heavy-handed than it could be, and quite effective.
It was suppertime when we got out, and I had picked a place out of the Frommer's listings. We crossed the canal and walked down a nearby street to Speciaal, an Indonesian place which sounded intriguing. (We had pretty much decided to eat Indonesian food all the time while we were in Amsterdam.) Alas, the perils of using an older edition of a guidebook! The restaurant had gone out of business, and nothing had taken its place. I didn't know of any other place in that part of town, and didn't wish to risk eating at a random restaurant. We decided to head back to the vicinity of the hostel, but compounded our error by getting on the wrong tram. Fortunately, when it turned in a direction I didn't expect, I was alerted, and we all got off in time. We had come far enough that it wasn't worth catching the right tram, and instead we walked to Leidseplein.
Z was dragging her heels and complaining when we turned into the street I was searching for, but she perked up again at the sight of dozens of restaurants. We had dinner at Puri Mas, a place recommended by the Time Out Web site. We ordered rijstaffel, that Dutch colonial bastardization of Indonesian cuisine, the most basic version for three. This consisted of twelve hot items (in small dishes placed on a warming tray over candles) plus pickles and condiments. The food was tasty, especially after our frantic walk, though a little too sweet at times. Service was attentive to the point of being obsequious -- an unintended reminder of the colonial origin of the food we were eating. Afterwards, we visited a symbol of the new colonialism -- a Ben and Jerry's ice cream parlour on Leidsestraat, right on the tram line. Back at the hostel, the kids settled down in their bunks, while N and I took turns reading further in the Rijksmuseum book.