It Has Been a While, Jaa?

Since Christmas, my travels have continued. I have been to Salzburg, Vienna, Munich, and am now in Amsterdam. I am quite surprised myself to look at those cities and know that I have seen them, breathed them, walked in them. And it is far too difficult to properly convey them in writing. Nevertheless I will try...

Of course it is Winter in Europe. So it is cold. Today in Amsterdam I didn't wear gloves during the day, and my hands froze numb because I had to take them out of my coat pockets to look at the map of Amsterdam, which has canals going round in circles. There are bikes everywhere, and it can sometimes be difficult to know whether you're on a pedestrian path or a bike path, or whether you even have right of way over bikes at a pedestrian crossing. And the bikes move quickly. After snow, the paths can get icy and quite slippery too.

I suppose the main image of Amsterdam is that they smoke drugs and ride bikes and have gay marriage and an infamous Red Light District. While I have seen a small cafe called "Yellow Mellow", which sold marajuana, I have not visited the Red Light District, and there is nothing overly radical about the city.

Today I visited Anne Frank's House, which was a very sobering and moving experience. Walking through her house, accompanied by all her personal diary entries, and crouching to go behind the moving bookcase to the annexed section of the office, knowing how many times a girl, who you almost feel to know on some level, had crept in silence, and knowing that for all their precautions of silence and darkness, what their fate was, nearly brought me to tears, oddly enough.

On a lighter note, we also visited the Rijkmuseum, where there were many paintings by Rembrandt and a few by Vermeer and other Dutch painters. There was a particularly amusing portrait of an exceptionally rotund and piggish looking boy, which I am sure was entirely truthful and attentive to details.

Salzburg is perhaps the most beautiful city I have visited yet. It is surrounded by mountains from which fresh water flows, tap water which, as one waitress summised when we commented that it was nice: "Ja, you can drink it.." We visited Mozart's house, which had an excellent museum with audio guides, but did make me realise that Debussy really should've had a better museum.

Vienna was bigger and busier, and the Schloss Schonbrunn was almost as decadently decorated as my own house.

I am tired now and it is 11:52pm in Amsterdam.