Day 3 - The ACTUAL Recovery

So I re-read our post from Day 2 and noticed all the half sentences and grammatical mistakes made in my half-sleep haze. I will endeavor to do MUCH better tonight.

Today was kind of a wash. Jessi felt sick all day and is battling something. She was ill from the moment we got going this morning. Despite that, we got the Anne Frank Museum and some further wandering in today.

We woke up this morning at our AirBnB, packed our things, and slipped out the door. We gave the house key back to the owner the night before. Luggage in hand, we slow rolled to the bus station with our large pieces of luggage and hopped on the bus to Amsterdam Central Station. From there we walked to our hotel, where we are staying tonight and tomorrow. We left our bags with the EXTREMELY friendly staff, and made our way over to a cafe for coffee and breakfast to go, on the way to our 10:30 ticket time for the Anne Frank House. 

The house is a timed entry self-guided audio tour,  through the house in which the Frank family and others hid during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. They lived inside a hidden annex within the house, hidden by a bookshelf, craftily pulled aside. The story, one I am somewhat familiar with, is even more heart-rending to experience in the ACTUAL house where the family was forced to live for 2 years. The tour begins with a walk through of the  company business, which sold pectin and spices. Anne's father, Otto Frank, brought his family from Germany to Amsterdam and opened the company "Opekta," which sold and warehoused the above materials. In addition to the Frank family, another Jewish family (Van Pels), and another man Fritz Pfeffer, were hidden from the Gestapo for two years. The loyal business employees and friends of the Frank's saw to their needs as best they could, while the family hid.

The hidden annex (Dutch: Het Achterhuis) is the name of the structure in which the Franks were hidden. It was basically a 2 floor (plus attic) hidden addition to the back of the house. It is the name that an aspiring young journalist/writer Annelies Frank (her full actual name) gave to the future book she wanted to write about her experiences being hidden. She planned to complete the book after the war. Most unfortunately, she did not survive, as she was killed in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. It is not known precisely how she died, but it is likely that both she and her sister Margot died of a typhus outbreak in the camp. Otto Frank, the father of Anne and Margot, was the only survivor in the group. He returned after the war and was given his daughter's diary and other notebooks of stories she kept by one of the friends, who helped them hide. He later convinced a publishing company to publish his daughter's diaries.

The house made so many deep impressions on me, and here are a few of them:

1. The hidden annex is larger than I thought it would be in square footage BUT there is no furniture in it, as Otto Frank did not wish to return furniture to the hidden annex.

2. The room, which Anne shared was papered with drab wallpaper. Her father gave her lease to retrieve her collection of pictures and movie star cards and gave her a bucket of glue and a brush. She plastered the walls with her private collection of paper plaques, posters, cards, pictures, art, etc. It was like looking directly into the childhood of ANY little girl. It destroyed me, looking at her selection of movie posters, movie stars, quirky art, postcards and other things. She was just like any kid, decorating their environment, and adjusting to the situation by bringing comfort through familiarity

3. On display was a menu card with meals for the day, possibly jokingly prepared for the occupants of the annex by one of their friends, who was bringing them food.

4. Learning more about the people who helped to hide the Franks, Van Pels, and Pfeffer, was a lesson in compassion. The people who helped the family took HUGE risks to do so. They sacrificed so much of themselves to do the right thing, by giving protection to people being persecuted and systematically murdered by ideological monsters.

There is no better time in the history of our country for Jessi and I to have come here and witnessed the story of these people. With extreme-right rallies of white-supremacists, ultra-nationalists, and racist alt-right nutjobs in Charlottesville, where a man with a fascination for ADOLF HITLER ran his car into a crowd, this was a good reminder to Jessi and I of what can happen when society allows hate to grow. In the USA, we are allowing hate to grow more and more each day. We have a president, who makes statements, which do not condemn these hateful ideologies, but implicitly encourages them. Jessi and I have been watching the news from home over the last few days, and our hearts are broken for the things that have happened and are happening in our country right now. Being at the Anne Frank House today re-enforces the lesson that it is vitally important to stand up against the ideology of hate and to deny it further footholds in our homeland. May it be that the horrors of the Nazi regime NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN IN ANY FORM. 

After the Anne Frank house, we found the beautiful nearby Westerkerk in the Jordaan district, as we continued to wander through canals and neighborhoods. We checked out the Homomonument, there by the Westerker, which is dedicated to homosexuals, who have been persecuted for their sexual orientation. The monument is a triangular structure, which protrudes into the Kaisersgracht (Emperor's Canal). There were flowers on the monument. It was very tranquil. 

Random observation: Along the canals, there are these small green curved structures. It took me a moment to figure out what they were. I remember reading about this FOREVER ago. To stop the issue of drunk persons falling into the canals and drowning, while urinating off the sides, Amsterdam has setup these safe public urinals with privacy screens and drains! How evolved!

We walked back to the hotel. Jessi was not in a good way, so we asked if they had our room ready. Unfortunately, the room was not ready yet, but the staff was SUPER helpful. They helped Jessi out by sending us to the third floor common area, where there was a place for Jessi to lay down and take a nap. So we did that for a few hours until the room was ready. More napping in the room occurred and at about 6, Jessi was feeling better enough to eat something. We went out and got a burger. Yes, a burger. It was just sort of the best thing we could find her here in the tourist-zone. After eating we wandered a bit and came back to the hotel for Jessi to get some more rest.

Hopefully Jessi feels better tomorrow, and we can get an early start on the Rijksmuseum. We're going to take it slow so that we are rested and ready to go on our 330 mi bike ride around the Netherlands, starting WEDNESDAY. Wish us luck!