Andrew in Amsterdam

Andrew found himself in Amsterdam at the end of August, which is lucky for me on two counts. One and foremost, I got to see a childhood friend I haven’t seen in a while. Two, I got to have two days of summer. London was a cloudbank and barely got into the low 20s (low 70s) and that was in the heat of the day. My two days in Amsterdam were by contrast sunny and warm, I even got to wear a short sleeved shirt (although not in this picture) and didn’t even have to wear a jacket at night! (All right, I got the obligatory complaints about the London weather out of the way, which is required of all London residents.)

Andrew is still a proud dad, husband and senior project manager for Microsoft. As I said, the best part of the trip was seeing him. As we spent every available moment either toking wacky tobacky in the legendary ‘coffee shops’ (which explains my letting him be in charge of the map) or engaged in numerous sex acts in the legendary red light district, there is not much of that aspect of the trip I can share here. If you find that wholly unbelievable, that is because what we really did… a couple geeks in Amsterdam … we actually talked about childhood stuff that would be too weird and banal to post on a blog. Like I said, it was the best part.

The second best part was the hotel that Andrew was staying in. It is called Citizen M. It was awesome. The rooms were incredibly efficient in terms of space and technology. Notice how close together the room doors are. It was incredible. One picture is taken from the door and that other from the bed. As you can see, the toilet and shower are in glass tubes, which are opened in the picture. And there are different mood sequences you can set the room for to enhance it so when you close the tubes they are like giant light bulbs. The bed was huge and there were plenty of clever storage places. If I ever build my own bedroom, it will be almost an exact copy of this room. I absolutely loved it.

It was my second time in Amsterdam. My first time was something like 15 years ago. I visited Hannon in Germany on his postdoc. It is much like I remembered it. There are these concentric canals where every third street would be. It is lovely. And there are bicycles everywhere. We also saw the Anne Frank Museum. The picture shows the bookcase that they built in front of entrance to the hidden apartment: closed to hide the stairs and open to reveal them. It is very eerie to walk behind that bookcase. I suspect most of you are aware that her father, Otto was the only survivor of his family. He said in an interview that after reading the diary that no parent can know what his or her children are thinking because he thought he knew his daughter so well before he read it and realized afterward that he didn’t really. At his request, the secret apartment was left exactly as the Nazis left it, which was with all the furniture removed. There are lots of things on the walls, particularly in Anne's room. The warehouse portion of the building houses exhibits and, of course, a volume of the diary.