Anne Frank House

When I mentioned to other SHAPians (yes that it the term for people associated with the base) that I was going to Amsterdam and Anne Frank's house, the most common reaction was - that is the only way you are going to get in!  This crowd of people is lined up to get into Anne Frank's house.  It wraps around the corner and extends for quite some way.

As we were part of a group tour, we didn't have to wait in this line and we had a bit of an orientation before joining the shuffling line through the house.

I had always wondered how one kept an entire house hidden from view.  Now I know.  Here is what one sees from the street.
I've cut off a bit of the roof and the ever present hook for raising and lowering things but that is it.  This is the warehouse frontage.

There is an entire house with two additional stories behind it.  From the street, from across the street, from around the block, it doesn't matter where you stand, you can not see the house behind it.

This is best seen by looking at a cut away picture of the warehouse and annex.

Those hiding in the annex occupied the attic and top two floors of the house.

In some ways the space seemed large - I think of hiding as being in a small space, smaller than a single room.  In other ways the space was very small.  The room Anne shared with Pfeffer (Dussell) could have barely held two beds.

As we shuffled through the rooms we could see the pencil marks Otto Frank made measuring the height of the children and Anne's pictures of movie stars.  The windows were covered with blackout curtains.  We got a sense of the space and the atmosphere.  What none of us knew and hopefully will never know is the sense of fear that the occupants of the annex lived with day in and day out.

Anne's diary has been translated into many languages and read by millions and in many places in our world people are free from this kind of oppression and persecution.  But there are still some places where people are in hiding because of their race or religion.  There is still work to be done...

Amsterdam

On Saturday, Kyra, Flat Stanley (of course!) and I traveled to Amsterdam.   We left SHAPE at 7am in the morning and arrived downtown shortly after 11am.

Planning out our touring plan was a bit of a challenge.  Museums close at 6pm.   Our tour of the Anne Frank house was scheduled for 3:30 right smack in the middle of the day.  The attractions of the city are spread out so one can't easily get from one place to the next.  I had little interest in visiting the red light district and certainly wasn't going to with a 12 year old.  Kyra wasn't interested in art museums.

Our compromise turned out to be touring the city via canal boat that we could get on and off throughout the day.

The canal boat took us past this windmill.  I took a photo because, well isn't it required to take pictures of windmills when in the Netherlands?

From the canal boat we saw many of the canal houses.  We learned about the hooks at the top of the homes.  When one has narrow staircases, the only way to get furniture in or out is through the windows.  The hook was and is used to hoist large items.  You may or may not be able to tell from the photo that the facades of the homes lean out a bit.  This is intentional.  We also saw homes that obviously leaned sideways, this was not intentional.

As we walked around the city we learned about bikes.  They are everywhere.  They are parked and locked all over and the citizens do ride them everywhere.  The most important thing a tourist can learn is - don't walk in the bike path!  Kyra and I quickly learned to be more cautious when crossing a bike path than when crossing the street.

As you can probably tell from the lighting in the photos, the weather was constantly changing throughout the day.  It was cloudy, rainy, sunny, windy, and hailing at various intervals.  Flat Stanley posed by a canal in the brief amount of sunlight we enjoyed.

You can see the canal, bikes and some houseboats in this photo.  The steeple in the background houses the church bells that Anne Frank could hear in the annex.

Tomorrow I'll share more about Anne Frank's house and our memorable visit there.