Plausible Deniability in Amsterdam

Saturday, March 28 I woke up at 4:30 am to head out to Amsterdam! This time I traveled with a group of people I had never traveled with. There were 12 of us total! I knew Melissa, Lindsey, and Scott from SMG (school of management) classes, and although most of the other people went to BU, I had never really hung out with them before. More for my memory than your information, the other people were: Louis, Aaron, Bailey, Stephanie, Liz, Katie, Rebecca and Anjali.

We all went on different flights, but I flew with Lindsay, Melissa, and Liz on British Airways which was very nice and very easy. We arrived around 10:30 Amsterdam time and hoped on a train to get into Amsterdam. We found everyone else at our hotel when arrived. Our hotel was incredibly nice! I was very confused about how we had booked rooms so cheap! However, we found out very quickly that a mistake had been made, although we had a confirmation for three, four-person rooms, the rooms the computer booked for us were 2 person rooms (which explains why it was so cheap per person!). The hotel was completely booked due to a Scotland/Netherlands game occcuring that weekend....so after some discussion the hotel allowed us to keep our rooms and have 4 people in them. The rooms had king sized beds so we promised them it would be okay.
















We headed out right away to explore Amsterdam and find a recommended pancake place in a nearby nieghborhood. Pancakes are huge in Holland apparently. Amsterdam is simply beautiful during the day! The canals are so cute! Aaron pointed out that there were no barriers between the canals and the street so if car failed a paralell parking, it might end up in the canal!









































































Oh and due to that soccer game there we drunk Scottish people in kilts EVERYWHERE. So assume for the rest of blog entry that I was constantly in the presence of Scottish people in kilts.


















We found our destination, right near the Anne Frank house, and ordered some amazing Dutch pancakes!































There was a HUGE line outside of the Anne Frank house so we walked across central Amsterdam to find the Van Gogh museum. Along the way we found the famous I amsterdam piece of artwork and obviously had to take lots of photos. I made sure to get a photo with the "am", can you see me!?






























The Van Gogh museum was very well done, they put all of their collection in chronological order and had great descriptions! And it was pretty small which is good for a big group like us. I saw Starey Night and lots of other famous works. No pictures allowed though, but I snapped a quick one out front...
















After the Van Gogh we basically ran to the Hieniken factory because it was closing soon. However, when we got there we discovered that it was 15 Euros! So we decided it was not worth it, even if you do get to "free" beers at the end. But, we took lots of photos anyway so that we could pretend we went.




















Next, some people in our group decided it time to see whats up with "coffee shops" in Amsterdam so we found one close by and checked it out.































After this, some people stayed out and went to other coffee shops but I went back to the hotel to shower and such. Before we went out to explore the red light district I went across the street with Lindsey and Katie for a drink, I kind of needed one to go where we were going.















Finally we started our journey into the red-light district which was crazy, weird, and kind of scary. Not that I would post them here necessarily, but you can't take pictures of the prostitutes because I heard they will try to grab our camera and smash it or some of them keep a cup of urine next to them and throw it at people that try to take pictures of them. We did a couple laps and explored the streets but only for a bit.





















































We eventually tried to find a bar to go into but due to all the drunk Scottish people and our large group of 12, it was impossible to find a bar spacious enough for us. We ended up finding a pretty empty Spanish restaurant for some drinks and nachos. It was really fun but it was getting late AND it was European day light savings time so it actually was really late and we headed back to the hotel.

































































Sunday, March 29 Lindsey, Scott, Melissa and I got up early to beat the lines at the Anne Frank house. The house was really done and despite its size of like 5 rooms, took about an hour to do because to video interviews and information they presented. It was very moving.



















The four of us headed back to our hotel and waited for everyone else to get ready and check out. We grabbed lunch at a local diner type place and then met up with a free group tour, same company from Berlin!

Our tour guides name was Steve and he was so fun!




















First he told us a 10 minute recap of the history of Amsterdam, then he took us through the red light district. He pointed out some interesting art within the red light district and the prominent church there. Apparently the church welcomed the red light district back in the day because sinning sailors would come to church and end up buying indulgences to make up for their sins!

Our group learned about how low of altitude Amsterdam is...the airport is actually 3 meters below sea level. And the bridge in the below picture is the highest point in Amsterdam! haha




















He brought us to a popular shopping district and one of the most famous coffee houses in Amsterdam. (Picture below, don't know if I could spell the name...) I guess a scene in Ocean's 12 was filmed there and they have a famous cat that sits in the window.
















Oh and so the titled of my blog post comes from Steve! Steve said that Amsterdam's motto is "plausible deniability". Here is a story why...

Back in the day hundreds of years ago, Catholicism was banned in Amersterdam. BUT, because Amsterdam is all about business and money, it did not want to lose the Catholics tax money, so they did not expel them. One day, this rich Catholic asked if he could build a church. The government agreed that he could, if it was heavily taxed and inside a house. This man went out a bought the second largest organ in Amsterdam and put it in his house. Since Calvinists do not allow music/singing in their churches, this organ could be heard all over the surronding neighborhood on Sundays. I am pretty sure the large amounts of people going in and out of the house made it pretty obvious too. Of course, the protestants complained...but when the government sent officials looking for the illegal church, they claimed that there was no church to be found, only houses! HAHA...

Very similar situation with the selling of pot in Amsterdam. Techinically, pot is decriminalized but still illegal in Amsterdam. However, the government loves the tax money and tourism it brings in so as long as the pot dealers label themselves as "coffee shops" and actually sell some coffee with their pot, it is ingored. The trick is to be discrete.

Steve showed us some beautiful architecture...which is probably my favorite part of Amsterdam. And informed us that back in the day, the residents of Amsterdam were taxed on the lengeth of their house. So if you wanted to show off how rich you were, build a really long house.




















He also noted that staircases in Amsterdam are basically verticle, (which I experienced in the Anne Frank house!) I forget why..but it means that people needed a way to get stuff to the top floors of their house. So there are hooks on the top of basically every house in Amsterdam for them to lift things such as sofas up to the top floors. This is why I love these tours, I never even noticed them until Steve pointed it out!
















Steve pointed out some more churches and famous buildings such as the old post ofice and the city hall. He also brought us into the cutest little courtyard, around which is a nunnery. I saw the area in my guide book and wanted to see it but figured we would run out of time so I was so glad we went there.
















Steve also showed us examples of the old plaques that hung above doors to indicate who lived there. They are basically pictures, like a giant tooth for a dentist. This is way Amsterdam did things until Napolean made his brother the king of the Netherlands and the new king forced Amsterdam to use street numbers.















The whole tour was great and the tour guides work for tips so its basically the cheapest tour ever. It also helps me walk off all the food I eat! After the tour we went to what is supposedly the best pancake house and chilled out there until it was time to go to the airport. Oh and when we were getting to the airport we saw a beautiful rainbow!




















Overall the trip was extremely interesting and fun. Amsterdam is the craziest city, and one of the most beautiful, cities I have been to. I definitely could not live there, but I think everyone should go there atleast once to see how different things can really be.

Last Week In March

I am very sad that it is the last week in March because that means I only have one month left! :-( My time here is going to fast, it needs to slow down!

Even though I had just came back from a weekend in Berlin, the tourism never ends! On Monday, March 23 I went out with Carly to see more of London! First we went to the changing of the guard. The whole thing is pretty anti-climatic. There are so many people there it is really hard to see anything.

































































But it reminded me of a nursery rhyme Nana use to sing to me so I googled it and found it right away!!

Buckingham Palace
by A.A. Milne

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terribly hard,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
Says Alice



Ahhh it makes me so happy to find this. It really is so cute!

After the changing of the guard we went over the British Museum. The Egyptian, Greek, and Roman stuff is by far the best part. They have a massive Egypt collection and I am pretty sure they stole at least half of the Pantheon haha. One thing I really like was a 5000 year old body, it was so fascintating, I think I looked at it for 10 minutes. Poor Carly, she hates bodies/dead people/ crypts so she had to stand aside and wait for me. We are started to get museumed out though so wed left pretty soon after that.



























































































My friends Hillary and Ashley are trying to get me to branch out on my food tastes so on Tuesday, March 24 we met after work and went to a sushi restaurant near our dorm in South Kensington. It was okay, I think my most enjoyable experience with sushi yet, but its not my favorite.

Wednesday, March 25 I saw Swan Lake at the Royal Opera House. It was amazing and so well done! I loved it especially because I could see the orchestra and I love watching the strings.

Thursday, March 26 I went to see "Confessions of a Shopaholic" with Carly and my co-intern Masha. It was such a fun, cute movie!

Friday, March 27 Masha and I went to the other KPMG office down in the "The City" to help at a charity event. The event was a 25,000 meter rowing race! Each KPMG department had a team of 4 people that would rotate the rowing until they had finished. The event was really fun (with lots of free food for volunteers!) and raised 19,000 pounds for alzhiemers. That is almost 30,000 dollars! I really respected KPMG for the event and thought that it was a fun way to get employees involved and raise money in a fun way.

Even though it was Friday, I stayed in to rest up for my trip to Amsterdam the next day!

Berlin Weekend

Very early on Saturday March 21 my friend Hillary and I headed off to Berlin!

Berlin is simply an extremely historic and interesting city. Every corner seemed to have some story, church, sqaure, monument, or building where something happened. The architecture is fascinating because WWII devestated over 90% of Berlin. The city rebuilt most of the historical building to be replicas of their pre-war appearance. But, office buildings, neighborhoods, and shopping centers were all rebuilt (and are still being built) in very modern and new styles. The city still has a lot of construction on it and only a year ago Berlin decided what to do with the old location of the SS office. (Their decision was absolutely nothing, no one is allowed to build anything on it because of the horrible decisions and deeds carried out there)

We had a 6:30 am flight leaving from Standstead (1.5 hours away) so we left the dorm at 2:30 am! Needless to say, I passed out on the bus to the airport and on the plane. After landing in Berlin we immediately found our hotel which was only 3 train stops away from the airport! We stayed in the Park Inn in Alexander Platz which turned out to be a great hotel with an amazing location.































The Park Inn is located right next to the Berlin TV tower (4th largest free standing structure in Europe) and one could basically see both of them from anywhere in the city so we began to them "the beacons". Despite a room a 12th floor, we had a crappy view due to a construction site.

We freshened up and then headed out for a day of sightseeing. About 2 minutes out of our hotel we saw a DUNKIN DONUTS!!! We were so excited we literally jumped up and down and shrieked...people looked at us funny. (There are none in London!) We obviously stopped for coffees and they were amazing! DD really does taste different...it is so good! :-)


































With coffee in hand we walked past the TV tower and into a park with pretty fountains and churches.




















We grabbed and Italian lunch in St. Nicholas' quarter which was filled with cute little streets. We meant to go back later in the weekend but never got a chance.

We walked down the Unter den Liden which is a main street in Berlin. Frederick the Great loved Paris and modeled it after the Champs-Elysee in Paris. We walked all the way down it to the Brandenburg Gate to the meeting place of a free walking tour. The tour lasted 4 hours and was incredibly interesting and fun. There were about 120 of us so the tour guides broke us up into 4 sperate groups of 30. Oh and right near our tour meeting place was a Kennedy Museum! The Germans LOVE John F. Kennedy!

Our tour guide's name was Maria and she was extremely charismatic and passionate about Berlin! First, she told us about the Brandenburg Gate. It was built in the 1700s sometime and Napoleon actually dismantled it and sent parts of it to Paris to celebrate his conquest of Berlin. It was eventually returned to Berlin after the Battle of Waterloo. It was also one of the only structures to completely survive WWII.



































Next Maria gave us a 10 minute version of the history of Berlin. She told us about the legend and reality of Berlin's name. The legend is that some fisherman way back when saw a cute little bear near a river and cried "Berlin!", because "ber" is bear in German and adding "lin" to something implies it is cute and feminine. But in reality these fisherman were Dutch and in their language "Berlin" means swamp.

She pointed out to the the brick line that runs along where the Berlin wall stood across the city. Apparently, the Berlin Wall was all thanks to the Soviet Union who put up it up literally overnight to keep people from the Soviet Union from escaping into the West. It was a huge surprise, literally seperate friends and family.
















Maria took us the Holocuast Memorial which was just down the street. The memorial was built by an American Jewish architect. The Memorial is difintitely very different so people asked the designer what his message was and he refused to say because he wanted everyone to form their own opinion. Maria told us that it is always cold in the center of the memorial, even in the summer, due to all the cement. We walked through the memorial and it would not be good for people who are clastrophobic.































Around the corner from the Memorial was the location of Hiltler's Bunker which is basically a residential neighborhood now. Maria told us the story of Hitler's last night and how his body was found by the Soviet Union. The Bunker was destroyed and no signs of it were left, not even a plaque or tourist panel for people to read. Maria said that tourists would come looking for it and bother the residents to ask about its location so they finally put up one sign disignating the area. However, it was very plain and I would never have noticed it if Maria had not pointed it out.

Next we visited the only standing Nazi building in Berlin, the headquarters of the Luftwaffe. Maria was very cute as she said to us, "the building remains a very sinster and dark one. They turned it into....THE TAX OFFICE". Infront of the building was a famous square where a masacre took place in the 1950s, I beleive 109 protestors were shot by the government.

Around the corner from the dreaded tax office was the old site of the SS headquarters which now is an empty construction lot. Apparently after lots of debate the government has decided that nothing should ever be built there. Then, we saw a real chunk of the Berlin Wall! I couldn't touch it or anything because people were steading parts of it and to preserve it the government put a fence around it.





















From the Berlin Wall we moved onto Check Point Charlie (total tourist trap) which is where Americans could cross into the West of Berlin and come back through with the appropriate paperwork. The whole was totally torn down but now there is some tourist trap thing where it use to be.

After a quick break we walked to Paris Square and on the way saw an amazing chocolate shop. Its name was Fassbender & Rausch and it was amazing! To prove they were the best they built a chocolate Reichstag, Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtnis-Kirche!, and a TITANIC! It was so cool!
































Paris Square was built in honor of the French Huguenots that immigrating into Berlin after they were expelled from France. There is a French Protestant church there and the Berlin Concert Hall as well.
















Just around the corner from Paris Square is the infamous Bebelplatz where Hitler's notorious book burning on May 10, 1933 occurred. He burned about 20,000 books that he deemed inappropriate and had them banned and then burned. Now, the only book banned in Germany is "Mein Kampf". There is a great memorial there now. First, one can look down through glass into an empty library, and nearby there is a plaque with a quote from Heinrich Heine in 1820 stating: "This is just a beginning, when they start by burning books, it ends with burning people". Its ironic because the he was one of the authors whose books were burned by the Nazis 110 years later. It was one of my favorite memorials and stops along a the tour.















One of our last stops on the tour was a memorial for "Victems of War and Violence". It was inside a pretty building and was very moving in its simplicity.




































The tour ended at the Berliner Dome so Hillary and I headed inside to take a look. It was very pretty.







































Oh and FYI:the Germans LOVE the "its okay to cross the street guy". He has his own name
(which is really long and I can't remember), shops and restaurants. No joke, its hilarious. Here is a picture of Hillary with him...




















So Hillary and I both really don't like traditional Germany food like sausages....so we decided to go out for asian food at Pan Asia. It was so good! And I experimenting because I am trying to expand my food tastes. The first experiment, absinthe, was terrible. I did not realize it tasted like black licorice so I had one sip of a mixed absinthe drink and then had to send it back. But my good experiment was trying Japanese Tempura. I really liked it! Hillary got Pai Tai and loved it!































After our delicious dinner we of course needed a dessert...so we went on a hunt and found a Haagen Dazs! We both ordered full out desserts and split them. It was amazing!

Sunday, March 22 Hillary and I woke up early to go up the Reichstag. Apparently the Reichstag can have a line of an hour or two in the winter and a few hours in the summer! Obviously we stopped for some more Dunkin before arriving at the Reichstag around 8:30. The Dome is gorgeous! The Dome is representative of democracy; it is open to the public and looks down into Parliment. Therefore, if the German government ever needs reminding who is in charge, they can just look up and see the people. Inside the Dome there is a great structure covered with mirros and a pathway to walk up to the roof of the Reichstage. I really enjoyed it! It was very pretty and interesting architecture.

Hitler supposedly hated the Reichstag because it represented democracy and he never entered it. One night during the Nazi regime it mysteriously burned down in a fire that started in 5 seperated places at once. Hitler blammed in the communists but historians are pretty sure Hitler organized it. It was rebuilt after the war.

































































After the Reichstag we headed off to Schloss Charlottenburg which was a royal palace for a couple hundred years. We took the audio tour which was great and very informative and then explored the gardens.




















































After the palace we headed back into the city. We accidentally came across Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gadachtnis-Kirche, a church that was torn apart by the WWII bombings and never repaired. It was very moving...










































From the church we went on to the Pergamon, which is the German version of the British Museum (a museum of stuff jacked from other coutnries). Hillary and I chose this museum because it hold the Gates of Babylon and we were told it was one of the 7 wonders of the world. However, when I got home I reserached it and discovered that the Gates of Babylon use to be one of the 7 wonders of the world until someone in the 700s replaced it with the Lighthouse of Alexandria. It was still very pretty and I am glad we went. The museum also held the Pergamon Alter (which the museum is named after) and the Market Gate from Miletus.













































The museum was our last big tourist thing. We headed back to the hotel and grabbed dinner there.


Overall, Berlin is one of my favroite cities. The changes Berlin has gone through is remarkable and its history is so complex. Events in Berlin really did shape the last 100 years and I am so glad I went.

I have heard that it has this huge youth culture and club scene but I did not have a chance to experience it. Hopefully I can experience the next time I go back!