263 Prinsengracht
“…Your first seeing of a country is a very valuable one. Probably more valuable to yourself than to anyone else, is the hell of it. But you ought to always write it to try to get it stated. No matter what you do with it.”
Ernest Hemingway
Green Hills of Africa
We stole into the city before light broke, sailing into Central Station on an amazingly rapid train one eerily silent Sunday dawn. The cold, crisp early morning cast a gray white light on the Dam Square. There were no bicycles or trams, no shopkeepers or pedestrians. As we wandered down empty streets, we whispered, not knowing quite why. We wheeled our suitcases across the street to the Victoria Hotel, built very neatly around a single, narrow Dutch house so organic to the design that it remained practically unobtrusive. The story, we heard later, was that the owner of the huis simply refused to sell his property, forcing the developers to build the hotel around his home.
Not able to check into our rooms at that early hour, we trudged back out into the city streets on foot all set to take in the major sights. From the Dam Square, we made our way past postcard pretty canals to Prinsengracht, intending to visit the house of Anne Frank. Armed with a Streetwise Amsterdam map, we walked right by the museum twice, without realising that was what it was.
As it turned out, our timing could not have been more perfect. Once we finally got there, our third stroll down the same stretch of Prinsengracht, we happened upon the tourists. The line was a short one, just beginning to form by the house right next to it, which was gutted and modernised to accomodate the museum’s admission desk, reception, waiting area, gift shop and café.
We mounted the narrow steps up to the third floor of the annex, and stepped thru the bookshelf that was a door, and the space beyond it – if this space in which twelve people spent two years could hardly be called that. We saw the beds and the furniture. The pots and pans upon which they cooked what must have been the same food day in and day out for two years. The faded pictures Anne and her sister taped up on to the wall of their room. These took my breath away. That there ever was this thirteen year old girl with such a spirit who experienced such a prison only to leave it and find there were greater horrors was in store; that one so young and so optomistic could experience such day-to-day fear and still persistently believe in the good of life and the good of people.
Visitors to Amsterdam should not skip The Anne Frank Museum. The experience is by turns, so simple, so horrifying and yet so indelibly moving, for what it stands for and ultimately, for what it is. Of course, you emerge from this unlikely, unconventional museum experience filled with a quiet awe and a malaise that, fortunately, is fleeting. Do not try for a photo op at this moment, for the smiles will be wan. Wait instead till after you've had a cup of coffee or a bit of lemonade. Wait till the breeze blows off the city's picturesque canals, right there on Prinsengracht. Sieze this moment to take embark upon your on-and-off canal tour. Get into the boat and once it makes its way toward Bloemengarten, once you get a glimpse of the tulips… this is the time to take a shot.
