2013 Holiday Travels - Amsterdam

  Amsterdam is the capital city of the Netherlands, its financial center, and is its largest city, with approximately 1,000,000 residents.  (It is not the seat of government, which is the Hague)  I can't say this with any authority, but I would dare to say, and will, that Amsterdam is the Netherlands' most interesting city as well.  Low-lying Amsterdam has roots reaching back to the 12th century (and more canals than Venice!), and has a glorious history as a center for wealthy traders.  World wars never really affected it, so Amsterdam has largely been free to do its own thing - making money - while developing a well-earned reputation as a haven for "progressivism", defined here as tolerance and acceptance of non-conformists and their ideas/activities.  Amsterdam is a fascinating blend of old Europe and what is becoming the new world.
  I will freely admit I wanted to come to Amsterdam for 2 reasons, and they were NOT the Van Gogh Museum and Anne Frank House (though both excellent places to visit)!  I wanted to see pot-smokers and prostitutes in public!  Simply, I wanted to experience a very different cultural vibe.  I did visit a coffeshop (that is one word, in English, NOT to be confused with 'coffehouse' or 'cafe', which are they say they are).  I also did tour the Red Light District.
  Some notes: Marijuana is technically illegal, but this is largely to comply with international treaties.  It is (increasingly) tightly regulated.  I went to two of them on my walking tour: Dampkring and Grey Area.  The former is where a scene in Ocean's 12 was filmed, and the latter is a favorite of Woody Harrelson, Snoop Lion and other weed-loving celebs.  Both establishments are former multiple-time winners of the Cannabis Cup.  Yes, there is such a thing.

  Some fun stuff:

  The former palace (above) was where Louis Bonaparte resided for a time after his big bro Nappy made him king.  Luigi (his given name) tried be a good guy and learn Dutch.  Unfortunately, when he stepped out onto the palace's balcony to announce himself as king, he instead said 'rabbit".  Easy mistake to make, but he was tagged thereafter as the Rabbit King.

  The XXX on the city flag and coat of arms does NOT refer to the city's adult industry!  It goes back 500 years, probably referring to Saint Andrew's cross(es).  This building housed a woman's prison.  Instead of cutting off body parts someone figured maybe there was another way to rehabilitate criminals.  The sculpture is amusing because it shows what happens if you're bad (the beating on the right) and if you're good (weaving, while petting an animal).  The men's equivalent had a basement which flooded, and you had to work at bailing water to keep yourself afloat.  If you were particularly unmotivated, you died.

 A deflector, to deter men from peeing in corners

  To wrap things up, Amsterdam is a pretty cool city; I wouldn't mind going back sometime.  To answer the inevitable questions: no, I did not smoke dope, and, no, I did not patronize a brothel.  Though, a young German woman did grab my, um, you know, while on the streets of Berlin, but that is another story...

2013 Holiday Travels - Berlin

  Berlin is the capital city of Germany, and with 3.5 million people, it's also the largest city in the country.  I heard more than once that Berlin is a very "international" city, with inhabitants having come from over 190 nations; it has always had a very cosmopolitan makeup, dating to before the birth of Christ.  Fast forward to the 20th century...

  After the First World War, Hitler brought his act north and Berlin became the capital of the Third Reich; after the Second World War, the heart of Berlin was a shambles.  The city was then divided among the victors, in a similar fashion as the country as a whole.  To illustrate:



  The fun wasn't done yet.  In 1961, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) surrounded West Berlin with a wall, which did not come down until 1989.  East and West Germany were united in 1990, and Berlin again was a capital city.
  I was born in 1969, and have always been a keen student of politics and history.  In related news, I'm also a geek.  Anyway, I work with many colleagues who were literally in diapers when Germany took its present shape.  I try to tell them that this not-that-old man nonetheless remembers a time not that long ago when the world was a vastly different place.  I can understand my parents having what I'll call nuclear attack fire drills in their school buildings that had bomb shelters; I can understand why the Cuban Missile Crisis legitimately scared them to death.  Coming of age in the 80's, I was still fully able to understand the geopolitics of the planet's 2 superpowers.  That's just the way things were.  I couldn't believe when I was in college and the Berlin Wall crumbled.  I never imagined it could happen.  To wit: Rocky 4 may be a jingoistic farce today, but it well represented the times when it came out in '85.
  Fast forward again - a WW2 bomb claimed lives yesterday as it detonated in a town near Bonn in Western Germany when it was disturbed at a construction site.  Apparently, unexploded ordinance from that time is found fairly frequently (though usually without fatalities).  That, of course, is a history lesson that Germans could do without.  What about the period of roughly 35 years after the war?  It is understandable that the Berlin Wall initially took a real beating; a lot of it soon became roadway and fodder for other construction projects.  Then, as the number of remaining sections dwindled greatly, many people wanted to keep some of it as an historical reminder.  Very recently, there was a big kerfuffle about moving a strip for a commercial project.  The builders had the go-ahead, but had to do their business under the cover of darkness in order to evade protesters.
  On a lighter note, Berlin is a city with a relatively young population with people from all over the globe.  It has a great array of museums.  Some of them can be found on Museuminsel (literally, Museum Island).  The best-known is the Pergamon Museum, noted for its art and architectural collections highlighting ancient Greece and the Middle East.  The Topography of Terror and the Berlin Wall Memorial are open-air sites and can't-miss.  The DDR Museum was good also.  The three gave great insight to what the Nazis did and what life was like in the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany).  I was steered away from the Checkpoint Charlie Museum.  Here are some photos of Checkpoint Charlie and of the wall, in original and new locations:

Sign at Checkpoint Charlie

An American soldier (photo, top-right) is forever on guard

A long stretch of the Wall in its original location

It was difficult to comprehend that I was looking thru a gap in a once-divided city.

 At a design studio

Selfie outside a hotel

The Brandenburg Gate

 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

view from within

  Interestingly, "everyone is getting a memorial" in Berlin.  The Jewish people are the most noted victims of the Nazis, but not the only ones.  I saw a sign for a homosexual memorial, and was told that the handicapped, etc. were also "getting theirs".

 Hitler's bunker...

...was underneath this courtyard playground

On a final, more playful note, this hotel by the Brandenburg Gate is where Michael Jackson infamously dangled his infant son from a window :)

Auf Wiedersehen!