Day 8 - Amsterdam

There were still things in Amsterdam that I wanted to see, and so I went back to Amsterdam on Tuesday. I first went to the Bible Museum and learned about the bible and such. I then went to the FOAM museum, which is a photo museum (FOAM is a photo magazine). I wasn’t as impressed with it as I was hoping because it was super small. I think that they must rotate out their exhibit because it wasn’t very big. Oh well. I then went back to the cathedral that I went to on my second day of Amsterdam so I could go inside and go to mass. It was beautiful inside, and very different then the cathedrals in Brussels. In Brussels, the cathedrals were big, packed with alters and pictures and lots of stained glass and statues, and they were very bright with lots of natural light and I think they were made out of stone. In Amsterdam, the cathedral was large as well, but it was wood inside and so it was very dark. Because it was surrounded on both sides by buildings, there wasn’t very much natural light, and because of the wood, it was quite dark inside. It had a lot paintings and statues, but it wasn’t as ornate as the ones in Belgium. Mass was in Dutch, so I didn’t understand any of it, and I didn’t participate in the standing and kneeling and everything (partially because I didn’t understand what was going on) and I left probably half way through (when people started getting up and greeting everyone, and the Priest was coming down and greeting people). It was neat to see though, and I hope I can go to an English one as well.

The alter

Beautiful stained glass above the alter

The dome. See what I mean about it all being so dark?

I then grabbed me some food (fries!) and went to the Schownburg theater, which is where the Jews were deported from. That too was very small (compared to what I was expecting) but it was still really neat to see. I also found the Auschwitz memorial that is right near the theater. That was really neat to see.

Read this. Its written by the artist of the memorial, and is really neat as to why he made the memorial the way he did.

The sign at the memorial

The broken glass of the memorial

I was going to go to the Anne Frank house again, but I wasn’t really near it, so I went home =] Once home, I played chess with the son in the family I was staying with, and he is super good! I was very impressed (he is only 8) and I learned a lot about chess from him. We had dinner, and on Tuesday is Glee night, so we watched Glee =]] Then to bed for me!