The weekend started out a little crazy, beginning with the cancelation of our original train out of Norderney. Luckily, everyone was in the same boat. We quickly found a back up plan, involving two train changes, the second of which included only a nine minute layover. First train change was fine, but our second train was delayed five minutes, leaving us only four minutes to make it to the other one. Thirteen of us made a mad dash to the platform, only to find a blank screen and no train. After asking one of the workers, we discovered our train had changed platforms but luckily we all made it there on time! There was one point where a lady told us we had to get off the train and switch once more to go to Amsterdam. I think half of us had gotten off before someone else told us that was wrong, and everyone hopped back on the train. Pretty stressful journey to say the least, and I can't even describe how relieved I was once my feet finally touched the ground in Amsterdam at midnight.
We made our way to the hostel, checked in and dropped off our bags. At this point, I was still pretty wired from the journey, so we wandered around the city for a while. There were tons of people out and about, so it really didn't even feel that late. After abut two and a half hours of sleep, some of us got up early to go the the Anne Frank house. Even though sleeping in would have been nice, I am so glad we got up early to go. There were maybe fifteen people in front of us, and we waited in line just a short time before they opened the doors. The museum impacted me a lot. It is just so hard for me to imagine what that must have been like, to be forced into hiding for two years. Anne's father, Otto, was the only survivor from his family and it was really sad to hear his stories, about how he was waiting after the war to hear the fate of his little girls. I'm glad that the museum was established, to help people understand the past.
After the Anne Frank house, we had pancakes for lunch and then went to the Rijksmuseum (I hope I spelled that right). That museum was huge and pretty confusing, although I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not only were the paintings fantastic, but they had some really interesting furniture and jewelry pieces. I'm not much of an art buff, but I was blown away by the pieces in that museum. We spent hours in there, and I still didn't get to see everything. After the museum, we checked out Vondelpark and then had some pizza. We had an early night, since we were all running on less than three hours of sleep.
Sunday, we had to check out of our hostel. We were able to leave our luggage there and walked around the city some more. We visited souvenir shops and eventually made our way to the Heineken factory, where we looked around the gift shop for a while. We had a quick lunch, grabbed our luggage, and headed to the train station. The train back to Cologne was absolutely packed, and that was easily the best four euros I've spent to reserve a seat. I have officially used up all the days on my Eurail pass, and I have mixed feelings about train travel. On one hand it is so convenient when everything runs smoothly. It just seems that more often than not, everything doesn't run according to plan. We've had delays, platform changes, and cancellations. However, despite all of that, we made it everywhere we needed to be, so I can't complain. I'm glad to be back in Bonn, although it will be hard to say goodbye in a few days. For the time being, I'm just going to relax and enjoy it!
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