amster-dayuuuum

It's officially almost spring break! It amazes me how fast time is going by over here. Seems like just yesterday that Erin & I were walking to the train station, talking about how ready we were for this week to be here. Or...how excited I was that it was finally February!
Slow down life. Please.

We went to Amsterdam last week with AIB. We left at 8am Wednesday morning and rode on a charter bus for 4 hours until we got there. Party. I had never before had much of a desire to go to Holland. (Dreaming about sitting on the beaches of Italy and stuffing my face with italian food in Venice were more near & dear in my mind). Needless to say, Amsterdam was a pleasant surprise. I absolutely LOVED it. seriously, obsessed. love, love love. It is the Austin, Tx of Europe. Out of all the towns I've visited this year(and in the past as well), this by far had one of the biggest personalities of a town. It was full of quirky stores, really cool graphic design, bicycles, color, people, food, food, food x23947, canals, youth, prostitutes(ha ha), art...the list goes on. You could walk around there everyday to explore and not get bored. Not to mention it had the best flea market there. Seriously y'all, it was massive. 
I was so happppppppy!

The first day there, we went on a giant canal cruise as a group. There's 30 of us. Yes, we were that group of tourists. 

Seeing Amsterdam via the canals was neat. It's got nothin' on Venice but it's still gorgeous!

After that we went & toured the Anne Frank Haus. We weren't allowed to take pictures unfortunately. I  will say this though; this is one of my all time favorite museums i've been in. I left it feeling seriously moved. Walking through the house and seeing the size of the space they had to live in for 2 years blew my mind. Words won't do it justice, but i'll give my best attempt. Imagine having 2 floors to live on. Each floor had around 3 rooms(and you had to share your bedroom with others). Imagine not seeing daylight for 2 years. Imagine seeing the same people EVERYDAY and imagine not being able to move from morning to evening...everyday, for if you walked, the workers below might hear you. Imagine only being allowed to whisper. Imagine having no windows except in the attic, which only allowed you to see the top of trees. Imagine having nothing to vent to except a journal. Being there & witnessing everything they went through just got me. I left feeling extremely blessed for the life I live and the freedom I have. 

The next day we went to tour the company Fabrique. They are a web design/graphic design company based in the Netherlands. Lemme tell ya, they have a seriously cool office space. It was super mod and everyone was wearing your typical holland-chic-hipster-i love vnecks and sweet kicks-attire(picture it in your head. do it now). It was relaxed and awesome. I liked how the employees were split up between designers and coders. Often, companies require the employees to be able to do both, which is fine...except most people are more passionate about one or the other. Fabrique's got this dowwwwwn. Can i work there? K thx. Net, we went and toured the Van Gogh Museum which was pretty dayuuuum cool. He used to be my favorite artists growing up as a kid, so seeing a lot of his work in person was inspiring. No pictures were allowed. Sad day again. After that, we went to the city of Noordwijk, which is a small town on the coast of the Netherlands. That evening, after settling into our astonishingly nice hostel, we went on a lil excursion to the North Sea. For some reason they gave us huge torches to light on fire...yes. please give immature college boys giant sticks of fire to play with while you walk in the wind and dark 30 minutes to the beach. No worries, we did get lost but nobody died. Had a couple of close calls though ;)

Awful quality picture, i know! Just know that this was at the beginning annnnd the flames got bigger. The following day we woke up and raced vehicles that we made out of random stuff we found. Teaghan and I teamed up and made a super ghetto machine that failed miserably. We(I) named it SassE. Precious, I know. It wasn't precious though when it wouldn't move >:(

We left Noordwijk and some people went back to Bonn & some of us went back to Amsterdam(me included). We basically just explored the town the next couple of days. Fun fact: When you go to the Red Light District, you will see a surprising amount of elderly couples there. Just living out the rest of their lives I guess...lol. Teaghan & I also found this AMAZING store called Time Machine. Like seriously, I want to move to Amsterdam and work there, it made me that happy. It was basically a small hole in the wall store that was like a dream, it was so cool. It was filled with vintage pieces from name brand designers; Chanel, Alexander McQueen, Prada, Dior, Versace. You name it, they had it. I wanted it all. Buuuuut, not only did they have that, they had antique pieces that all had an amazing story! The girl working there started going around and showing pieces to us. She showed us all these authentic bomber jackets from World War 1. Each jacket belonged to someone in the war and had been hand painted with things such as the number of people they killed, the number of planes they flew, types of planes, places they had been, etc. It was all personable and just amazing. Absolutely amazing. 

Also, they had these Reebok Voltran shoes that cost thousands and thousands of dollars. Collectors from all over the world come to see them, as there are only 80 made in existence. I had no idea what they were until she explained it to me but Teaghan immediately knew and freaked out. Apparently the man who owns this store has really good connections all over the world, which is how they get all this stuff. She said that he was constantly leaving and meeting people to look at things they had to buy. 

Another piece that stood out in my mind was this suitcase they had for sale. It belonged to a woman who was a Jew. She had that suitcase with her as she was fixing to be shipped to a concentration camp. However, the bus she was on got bombed and she managed to escape with her bag. Gives me chills just thinking about it.

I didn't want to leave! If anyone goes to Amsterdam, please go visit this place. It's like a secret museum.
The rest of my time there was filled with bar hopping, people watching, shopping, annnnd just soaking it all in. Oh, I also learned to like cappuccino there. Like, I seriously woke up and wanted it one day. Now I've had it almost everyday. Miraculous do exist people. 

I'm back in Bonn now! Spring break begins Friday for us. I plan on traveling to Switzerland(Lucerne, Lauterbrunnen, & Grindelwald), Scotland(Edinburgh), and Ireland(Dublin...SAINT PATRICKS DAY!) all within a week and a half. It's gonna be exhausting but I'm ready for it! Let the adventure continue :) And with that, I'll leave you with one last picture of the beautiful city of Amsterdam.