The Netherlands

For New Year’s Eve this year we boarded a plane and flew to Amsterdam. It was hard to know exactly when to whisper/shout “Happy New Year!” because we were flying over so many different time zones haha.

We went with Dave’s parents, two brothers, and his brother’s friend Adam. We packed the time we were there with everything we could. We went to art museums, the Anne Frank House, the house where Corrie ten Boom hid Jews during WWII (in the book “The Hiding Place”), a ballet, Rembrandt’s house, the IAMSTERDAM sign, to see the windmills, Haarlem, the Haag, and to Cologne, Germany. We arrived in Amsterdam on a Sunday morning with enough time to make it to church. We were all SO tired from jet lag that we barely paid attention to our translating headsets. Later that night we went to a ballet and all 7 of us crashed—hard. We could tell that people were staring at our sleeping row, but since we were so tired, we didn’t care. Daniel woke up at some point and saw that the lady in front of us had taken a snapchat photo of us. Unfortunately he couldn’t read what was written over the photo because it was in Dutch, but hopefully it wasn’t too mean haha.
We went to the Anne Frank House, where Anne Frank, her family, and friends hid during WWII. It was fascinating to see the magazine photos she had pasted on her wall were still there along with the markings on the wall where she and her sister had kept track of their growth. It was an experience that was on the forefront of our minds for a while after. Dave and I bought a copy of her diary when we were there. We were especially amazed by her entry on November 11, 1943, which she titled “Ode to My Fountain Pen In Memoriam.“There are more bikes than people in Amsterdam, and it’s very apparent. It was often hard to tell the difference between the road, bike lane, and sidewalk.
We drove out of Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans and Kinderdijk to see some famous dutch windmills. Since so much of The Netherlands is below sea level (hence the name Netherlands) the windmills are used to pump the water coming in from the sea back uphill into the inland rivers.  We tried poffertjes, which look and tasted like mini pancakes. I especially loved how they warmed up my cold hands. It’s her – “The Girl With the Pearl Earring.” I’ve always loved this one, so it was cool to see it in person. We also saw “The Night Watch” by Rembrandt, I had no idea of its enormous size. We went to the house that Rembrandt lived in before he went bankrupt and saw where he painted. We also went to the Van Gogh museum. Van Gogh lived in Amsterdam and wasn’t known for being a painter during his lifetime. He was often so poor that he reused canvases, and many of his famous paintings were painted on the backside of a canvas he had already used. We drove to Cologne, Germany to meet up with some German friends of the Steiners. We met at the Cologne Cathedral, whose size still shocks me when I look at pictures of it. Construction of this cathedral began in the 1200’s—whoa!
These three served LDS missions together in New York, the one on the left is from Germany.
Most of Cologne was wiped out during WWII by aerial bombs. By the end of the war, the population had been reduced by 95% because of the countless bombings and evacuations. Knowing that gives a different perspective when walking around the city.
Since coming home from The Netherlands, we have been missing Stroopwaffles, bought a self-portrait of Rembrandt, and read all of Anne Frank’s Diary.