Amsterdam Day 5 - The Last Day

Today we didn’t have much on our agenda. We just knew that we wanted to go to the Anne Frank house and we wanted to go to Dam Square to walk around/souvenir shop. We decided Anne Frank first would be a good idea. We got to the house expecting to wait in line, and we did. We waited for probably around 30-40 minutes, but it wasn’t too bad. The house was actually a lot different than I expected. As far as I can tell you can’t see the actual outside of the house anymore (unless I just missed it) and it is more of a museum than a tour of a house. They don’t have any furniture in the rooms, but they have a model inside that shows how the house would have looked. Throughout the actual rooms they lived in they have signs and quotes telling you what it is and what happened there. Then at the end there are more rooms with information about the people that lived there and displays of Anne Frank’s diary, etc. It was crazy to walk up the stairs past the secret door bookcase and know that that was where those people actual lived. I have always been fascinated by Anne Frank and her story, and I was really glad we got to go to that house. After the “huis”, we walked over to Dam Square to walk around and see what was happening. Dam Square is like their Times Square or Trafalgar Square- it is just a big open area where there are a ton of people, stores, and street performers. Oh, and I love the ridiculous jokes you can make here. They not only have Dam Square, they have The Dam Hotel, Dam Bicycle Rentals, Dam Canal Cruises, and a million other things like that. Marissa got a huge bruise on her leg from climbing on the huge I Amsterdam letters that we refer to as her “dam bruise” because she got it while we were taking pictures of the dam part of Amsterdam. Dumb, but fun. Anyway, we had only been at Dam Square a few minutes when we decided to leave and come back later when we had more time. We wanted to go to a session at the Conference and since there was lunch before and it was free, we decided to hit that up first.


We went and ate lunch and found the room we needed, then eagerly awaited the first presentation about mediation and arbitration in the Malaysian legal system. Oh. My. Gosh. It was pretty much the most boring thing I have ever heard. The second presentation was the reason we were there- it was a lady who did a topic similar to the one our group did and we felt obligated to go because she had talked to us/came to ours. Again, oh my gosh. In both of these presentations they had super boring powerpoints with tons of text and lame-o clip art, if any pictures at all. They both just basically read word for word from the powerpoint. I tried so hard not to fall asleep, but I must admit that I failed a few times. After that second presentation we left because there was NO way we wanted to stay for the last presentation on something even more boring than the first two. After seeing those presentations I felt so good about what we had done in our presentation. We spent a lot of time making the powerpoint look good and making sure we only put minimal information on it. We had a lot of media (maybe even too much), but that was so much more exciting than listening to me read what is on my powerpoint! Talk about boring! We decided after this that if you want to excel in your field in academia, you basically just have to be an interesting person who does interesting research + (and this is the important part) you know how to present things in a way that other people understand you. I’m sure if I knew what they heck they were talking about I might have been interested by those presentations, but they were just horrible. The end.

How we felt after listening to those presentations.

After getting away from the conference as fast as possible, we went back to Dam Square to shop. I got some stroopwafels, which are these really good wafer-like cookies with caramel-like stuff inside, to give to people I really like when I get home. Or people that happen to be around me when I am eating them. I also got a cute little windmill for myself. Marissa also got a bunch of stuff, so after this we decided to go back to the hotel and drop our stuff off then maybe find Laura/other people and go to dinner. Luckily, we ran into Laura as we were walking back from the tram so we dropped off our stuff and went down the street to get dinner. We got döners, which are basically pieces of lamb meat with lettuce and onions and sauces served in a bun. John had been eating them all week and absolutely loves them, so he made us get one. Afterward we went to this fry stand and got some fries. Amsterdam is actually famous for their fries, and after eating those it is obvious why. They hand make them instead of just using the frozen pre-cut ones we have here, and that makes a huge difference. The gross thing they do though is eat them with mayonnaise. Yeah, you read that right. And to add to the grossness, instead of just dipping them in mayo, they put a huge glob of it on the top of your little bag of fries and so about half of them are just covered in it. Yuck! When we asked the guy to give us no sauce (if you ask for ketchup they glob it on the same way), he looked at us like we were crazy. It was great. After eating we went back to the hotel to pack and get some rest for our early morning the next day. I can’t believe the trip is over! It has been so short, but so fun. I am definitely glad I did it!

I just love this picture, and I think it epitomizes Amsterdam quite well. You can't see the whole thing, but it is definitely a 3-level bicycle parking garage. Yes.