Amsterdam

When we first got to Amsterdam we walked around and went in a sex museum – that and the red light district was our first impression of the city. The next day we walked to the south end of the city to see the Van Gogh museum. They had really high tech audio guides that were PDAs and you selected an image of the painting on the screen to hear more about it.

We did something called “The Heineken Experience” at the old Heineken brewery. Heineken moved into a bigger brewery recently so the old one was converted into a museum. The museum was more of an extension of Heineken’s highly successful ad campaign than an educational museum. There were some displays on the history of the company, the Heineken family and how the beer is made, but it was mostly a lot of loud and flashy high-tech exhibits. They had video stations where you could record a short video message and then email it to someone. There was one video station that had a blue screen so we recorded another video that made it look like we were swimming in beer. There was a dj face-off where Charlie and I were at opposing stages and pushed buttons to make a beat and sound effects and change the lights. There were two virtual rides, one that simulated what it is like to be a bottle in the bottling plant. In a little movie theater you stand on a platform with some railings that lurches back and forth while a big screen shows you the perspective of a bottle on the conveyor belt, being washed, filled, a label slapped on, boxed and shipped. The other virtual reality ride was in a wooden carriage with hydraulics that made it bounce around while a video gave you the view of from carriage pulled by the Heineken horses through the streets of Amsterdam. There was another room where you lie on a recliner and look up at a big screen and you can watch all the old Heineken commercials. There was a bar in the middle of the tour that gave you one free beer, and another bar at the end that gave you two free beers, and then we got a Heineken glass at the end of the tour, so we definitely got our money’s worth.

We looked into seeing a movie but there was nothing that we both wanted to see. The next day we went to the Dutch Resistance Museum, which tells the history of the Dutch people who resisted the German occupation during WWII. Later that night we went to the Anne Frank house, which gave a personal story of a family that was a part of the Dutch resistance. The museum was really well done. We went to an Indonesian restaurant since Amsterdam is supposed to be the best place to get Indonesian food outside of Indonesia. We got gado-gado and chicken satay, both were made with a peanut sauce. It was the best food we’ve had so far I’d say. The next day we left early to go to Brussels. We tried to take a train to Gouda in southern Holland, but ended up in another town in the middle of Holland. So we decided to get another train to Rotterdam and explore that city instead. We walked around Rotterdam for a while and were surprised by all the skyscrapers. It has some canals, but we never saw them. It had a very different feel from Amsterdam; it was a big and boring commercial and shipping center. We had some Surinamese food there and then got back on a train.