Dublin or Nothin'

When I signed up to study abroad in Ireland, I knew that meant that I would be travelling to several other countries in the four months I would be living in Europe.  I went into the experience knowing that I wanted to travel to Amsterdam to visit Anne Frank’s house. I first read The Diary of Anne Frank in the fifth grade. I remember taking the diary off of the book shelf in my schools library and noticing right away that the first entry written by Anne was June 12^th. It caught my eye because I realized that we shared the same birthday. Needless to say, I immediately formed a connection with this young girl. We were required to read her dairy in school, but I had already bought the copy and began reading it before it was assigned. Her story is fascinating and her writing is even more compelling. Her intelligence at the age of thirteen was crazy for me; I still don’t feel as if I could ever write as eloquently as she. Her maturity and her grasp on the entire situation is eye opening to so many people.

When my cousin had the opportunity to visit her house during her study abroad experience, I knew that I had to do it during mine.  We made it to her street on a rainy Saturday to a line that wrapped all around the building and a couple of streets over. I instantly thought that we weren’t going to make it in. I feared that nobody else in my group would find it worth the wait. Luckily I was not the only one that thought it was important that we did this one activity while in Amsterdam. 

Walking through the house is unexplainable. The first room you enter is a room with four blown up pictures of Anne’s smiling, innocent face. On the wall reads her quote, “One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be.” That quote was written by Anne in 1944, she was 15 at the time and already spoke with the maturity of a wise 51 year old. She has to be the world’s most compelling teenager. 

What was even more eye opening about the experience was how Otto Frank had made the decision to leave all of the rooms completely unfurnished. He wanted to keep them as they were the day that they were discovered, after the war was over and the Germans had taken everything. Walking through the houses there are random pictures and quotes on the wall and models to show what the rooms once looked like. On some of the walls you can still see where they marked how tall the children grew over the course of their hiding. It was overwhelming existing in a space where a family once spent years of their life fearing discovery.  It’s nothing you can fully describe.

Several times throughout the experience the museum reiterated how important it is to bring awareness to global acceptance to those of us who are different; whether it be your religion, race, or sexuality. The Anne France House is a living reminder of how narrow-mindedness and the inability to practice tolerance can have the treacherous power to destroy.  For two years the Frank’s lived in fear of deathly discrimination. It is scary that even in the present day the world still struggles with the idea of tolerance, if only they could all visit the Anne Frank House and feel how I felt walking between its ghostly walls.  

I think it’s safe to say that Amsterdam will be one of the more defining trips I take while I am staying here in Europe. We experienced so many extremes while we were there. We saw art and diamonds. We were lifted by the cities beauty and temporarily deflated by the intensity of Anne Frank’s House. We saw the Red Light District (which can only be described as unreal). The city was eerie, beautiful, and captivating, with so much history. I hope to find myself there again.

Memories

 For the past four months this has been a common question between my friends and I. This whole experience has blown our minds on numerous occasions where we literally have to ask ourselves and each other, “Is this real life?” Sometimes it is really hard to believe it, when I look back on these four months I spent living in Ireland and travelling Europe, I literally cannot believe some of the things I was able to do. Coming to Ireland wasn’t necessarily a culture shock, but living here was nothing like living at home. Hello responsibility and money budgeting. Living in a city where Easy Mac is virtually impossible to find, that cannot be real life? Traveling to Amsterdam for a weekend, hoping on trains in Italy; that cannot be real life? I feel privileged and honored to be able to say that this has been my life for the past four months.  I have fallen in and out of love with Dublin. I can confidently say that I experienced the hospitality and generosity that Ireland is known for, and I can say that I’ve witnessed the average cruelties you will find anywhere you live. What I’ve learned: the good will outweigh the bad.

The most important realization I am going to leave Ireland with is the ability to just go with the flow. To drop all the “what if’s” and “maybes” and “I don’t knows.” Things that I would have struggled with at home have now been overcome through my personal triumphs. I have learned to release all the worry and let what happens, happen. I’ve learned how to let myself go and become more outgoing. Before coming to Dublin I was never really one to go out of my way to make friends with people. I knew who I wanted in my life and I was more content with keeping things comfortable rather than stepping out of the box and giving myself the opportunity to branch out. Why shake things up if their good the way that they are? Well life can get pretty boring if you always keep things the same. Now I will be leaving Dublin with some of the best memories of my life.

A couple of weeks ago I made friends with a random Irish fella. And when I say made friends, I pretty much twisted the guys arm to add me on Facebook. However once I did many great conversations preceded and we were quickly on our way to a nice friendship. I finagled my way into receiving an invitation to his 21^st birthday and two weeks before heading home, on a Friday night my roommate and I grabbed a taxi and headed off to a random Irish kids party. Needless to say, the entire night was great. His group of friends were hysterical and spent the majority of the night participating in some great laughs with us. I had sloppy but great conversations with his family, and found my way squeezed in yet another taxi on the way to his house for the after party. His mother quickly provided me and my roommate with a beverage and some food and then we squeezed in on the couch and talked like we had known each other forever.

 The entire night Heather and I would look at each other with mutual understanding, this is not real life. How did we find ourselves twenty minutes away from our apartments in Dublin at some random Irish family’s home, hanging out in the front yard laughing at each other’s accents, and delivering funny antic after funny antic? My life has never seemed so spontaneous like it was that one night. I am usually the pro/con list girl (except it’s all only written in my head) who is constantly weighing the odds of every situation. Back home, I never would have walked into such an open ended situation. I never would have gone to a formal birthday party having only known one person out of the fifty or so that was there.  I just don’t do things like that, and waking up the next day I couldn’t stop talking about how much fun it was and how great of a memory it is to have with me to bring back to the states. It makes me think about all of the opportunities I have missed out on because I was too afraid of the unknown. However this is a turning point for me, I hope to keep this sense of adventure when I head home. I don’t want to constantly be this person who lets the “what if’s” keep the good times from happening. I like having to ask myself “is this real life?” because for me it’s almost all too good to be true.
 

Heading back home will be bittersweet. I have made myself a home here, left little pieces of my heart all over this city and random cities across Europe. How do you say goodbye to a place? It literally feels like I will be parting from a new lifelong friend. Who knows how many years it will be before I can come back and visit this place I lived in for four straight months? All I know is, I plan to keep in touch.  

“You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.” 
— Elizabeth Gilbert                                                

Ever since Thanksgiving break everything has really shifted into gear. Since all of my travels outside of Dublin have been completed I thought that the last three weeks would drag, but I was wrong. They’ve flown by so past, and now here I am two weeks left and I feel like there is still so much that I have yet to do. There was sometime during this experience where things in Dublin started to just look grey and uninviting, but the fact that I’m leaving soon has opened my eyes again and everything is back to looking new and exciting.  

Last weekend pretty much all of my friends headed out of the city for another weekend trip away, I took this opportunity about a month ago to convince a couple of my friends from home to come to Dublin. Tickets were around 200 dollars both ways and I honestly didn’t think they would be able do it, who flies from the states to spend a weekend in Dublin? Well I have pretty great friends, so they did of course. It didn’t feel real that they were going to be here visiting me, in my city, seeing where I live, where I walk to school, where I shop, and all of that great stuff.

 I met them at the airport early last Friday, there flight was a bit delayed due to the sudden snow storm that hit Western Europe (first time in like thirty years Ireland has seen accumulative snow). I knew that they were coming and I was prepared for it, but sitting in the airport I couldn’t believe that they were actually going to be here. The moment I saw them I jumped up, huge grin on my face and ran to give them big hugs. We were the typical airport cliché.

I have to say I think my friends handled the jet lag better than I did when I first got here. Once all their luggage was dropped off we quickly headed over to Grafton Street to get a bite to eat. I took them to Bewley’s Café which is one of my favorite restaurants because it is so beautiful inside; we had delicious Cajun ciabatta bread sandwiches, melt in your mouth delicious! We then walked by Trinity College, Molly Malone, shopped a little, and ate dinner at the Purty Kitchen.  Had to take them to the Purty Kitchen to enjoy the ten euro burger, chips, and a pint deal. I have to say taking them out to eat was probably my favorite.

That night I took them out to the Mezz to experience some legal Dublin fun (they are both not yet 21). I knew that they would love the Mezz since it is one of the places I enjoy the most because they always have great live music and a very entertaining/friendly bar tender. This place has consistently been our go to place and I am really going to miss it when we head back to the states, it was so liberating sharing the experience with my two of my oldest friends. We laughed a lot, met some funny/quirky Irish lads and walked home slipping on all of the compacted ice.

The next day we woke up bright and early and I took them to Dublin City Castle, I went here earlier on in the semester and loved it. They have this section of the guided tour where they take you underground to some of the remains of the old castle tours and the river that flows beneath the city. It was the coolest thing and I really wanted to show my friends, unfortunately because of all the snow and ice and such, this part of the tour was closed. Trinity College was also closed over the weekend, I was determined to show them the great hall since I have yet to see it and apparently it has been used in scenes of the Harry Potter movies. The weather didn’t keep our morale down, we headed on over to the Guinness Factory and later on the Jameson Distillery. Sadly I could probably give a tour on the Jameson Distillery considering I’ve visited four times, what is this country doing to me!? However, they were all justified visits.

After Jameson we headed to the Brazen Head where you can always expect one of the most delicious meals in Dublin. For their last day in Ireland I took them to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, since I had yet to visit, and it is a must do in the city. We then completed some shopping on Grafton Street and then hopped on the DART to Bray. I wanted them to see some of the coastline and get out of the city so I thought this would be a nice place. It had started to get a bit sunny after a pretty gloomy and cold weekend. It was a great way to end their trip. It had been almost three months since my first trip to Bray and so many things have happened since, in such a short period of time it is hard to believe that so many things can happen. We linked arms and walked up and down the beach reminiscing about how lucky we are to be such great friends after so many years. Although my circle of friends was not complete, we were missing three, but it was still nice to share such a great moment with the girls. I kept reiterating to them about how these are our times; our time for adventure, for mess ups, for lessons learned, for good times had. I was so filled in that moment with ambition for life, which is what I had expected to be my biggest realization out of this study abroad experience.                                                                                                                                          We stood on the lower part of the mountain in Bray overlooking this beautifully lit city surrounded by mountains and rolling green hills and all I could think about was how this world is ours to see and we have  to make the effort to get out there and make friends with it. I’ve seen a little corner of the universe in my four months here and I know I’m going to be headed back to the states starving for more. Although the end of this chapter is approaching fast I know that it really (as cliché as it sounds) is only the beginning of more and more adventures to be had.                 
 

My friends left early the next morning as I headed off to my last full week of classes. It wasn’t too hard of a goodbye considering I will see them in less than two weeks; my friend Arielle left me with, “Now when you don’t visit me at Geneseo I can say I flew across the Atlantic Ocean to see you.” She’s got me there, and without all my jet setting weekend adventures next semester I’m certainly going to have to visit my friends all over New York to keep me busy!

One thing about being abroad is that it’s easy to forget that life in New York still goes on without me. I remember when my Mom started telling me about the weather changing; getting colder and the leaves turning into their beautiful fall colors. I remember thinking “wow that happened fast.” In my mind everything was still the same way that I had left it; with bright sunny, humid, vacation like days. I felt this feeling again as we approached Thanksgiving Break. Hearing about plans back at home stung my heart a little bit to know that I wouldn’t be there to experience it. Thanksgiving would still go on, the family would still meet together, and delicious turkey goodness would be eaten without me. The good news is, I would be in Italy.

I still have a hard time believing that this is my life right now, that it was even possible to have a full eight days to frolic around Italy as well as hop on over to Spain to bask in Barcelona sunshine. Looking back it was a great trip filled entirely with some of the best food I’ve ever eaten, some of the biggest laughs I’ve had in awhile, and some enjoyable city wandering. We stayed in some of the most beautiful places, we saw down pours and rainbows, sunshine and dreary skies, beaches and oceans, the Statue of David, and the Sistine Chapel. It literally is a dream come true and I don’t know if it will ever really feel like real life that I was able to do all of these amazing things.

What is almost as great as the places we’ve traveled to, is the people we’ve traveled with. For Thanksgiving break I headed out of Dublin with a handful of people I never could have guessed I would be travelling to Italy and Spain with. Each of us went into the trip with an open mind ready to get lost and make mistakes, it made for a relaxing atmosphere and made decision making a whole lot easier. We sure had a lot of room for mistakes on this trip, here was our itinerary: two nights in Rome, two nights in Lucca, two nights in Florence, and two nights in Barcelona. This meant a lot of hotel booking, a lot of train taking, and a lot of running around.

For the first time things seemed to slow down a bit. Nothing was rushed, everything was enjoyed. Saturday and Sunday night we stayed in the beautiful Medieval, Toscana town of Lucca. Our hotel was this beautiful little inn outside of the walls of the city. We arrived late at night and had to let ourselves in with a code the manager had given us only hours before over the phone. The inn was a simple rectangular shape with three floors and brown wooden windows. Inside our room the walls were also stone along with wooden accents. We thought it would be nice to treat ourselves to a petite authentic Tuscany inn. We opened our windows at night and the stray cats would come running jumping on our window sills purring their cute little purrs. They provided some great entertainment.

The only downside to Lucca was the amount of rain. There were moments it was just rainy, cold, and miserable. However our first discovery of the little city was a farmers market located near one of the churches within the city walls. We became so preoccupied with the amount of great stuff this market had to offer that we quickly forgot to continue sightseeing. Instead we spent an hour and a half walking around this farmers market looking at all of the vintage jewelry, old cameras, furniture, dishes, and instruments. It was so nice to just enjoy this little piece of culture, neither one of us felt at all regretful for not venturing out to the rest of the city. We had the opportunity to speak with a man selling some of the most beautiful rings I have ever seen (my roommate and I each bought one and since I’ve put it on I swear it has brought me good luck). The rings he was selling were Nepal and Tibet, each of which he collected himself. When we asked him how much they were he said, “Usually twelve, but ten because it’s raining,” he said this as if it made the most sense in the world, with a little nod of his head and a shrug of his shoulders. He was a nice guy.

After delicious pizza, wine, and hanging out at the Tower of Pisa we made our way to the city of Florence. Just as we were leaving Lucca the sun began to shine, to us this was very promising and we began to hope that it would set the tone for the rest of our trip. The sunshine followed us into Florence making for some of the greatest city wandering and site seeing. The girls and I began our mission searching for the perfect leather boots in between gazing at the Statue of David and eating one the most delicious calzones I have ever had in my entire twenty one years of existence. We walked up and down, through and around, the entire city of Florence and allowed ourselves to get caught up in the small side alley ways and lost in the Christmas carols being sung by people in the streets. Rome was just as glorious but was mixed more in with gelato, the Spanish Steps, the Vatican, and more delicious wine. Our finale dinner in the country of Italy was probably my favorite meal. I got a simple plate of spaghetti and enjoyed every moment of it, pasta will never be the same for me again.

Our final stop was Spain. By the time we reached the ridiculously sunny city of Barcelona we were pretty worn out from all of our site seeing that neither one of us really jumped at the idea of racing around the entire city seeing everything there was to see. Instead we took our time at the hotel, got settled in and relaxed a bit. Our hotel room had a roof top terrace which was pretty neat. My fondest memory of this trip occurred when we were each napping before we ventured out into Barcelona’s night life. Just as we began falling asleep we saw the street outside our window fill with smoke lighting up from red flashing lights, and music started to play.  It took us a minute to realize that this wasn’t exactly the norm so we ran to the window and outside we see this crazy massive dinosaur machine walking down the street with a large crowd around it. We had no idea what was going on so we ventured out into the street and it was seriously one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. These people had built a dinosaur bike thing and were riding it through the streets while it spewed smoke all over the place. It was the most bizarre thing, I think showing my pictures will be the best way for me to describe it.

Barcelona was a good end to our amazing trip. My entire Thanksgiving trip in general was a great way to end my European travels.  I came back and breathed a little sigh of relief that the hectic weekends away were now at their end. It made me anxious and excited to enjoy my last three weeks on this beautiful island. Now is the time to soak everything up in preparation for the final goodbyes. 

Scotland Photo’s 

            Last year I took a Consumer Behavior Marketing class. My teachers name was Meg Frenzen, she was great. At that end of the semester she presented us with a power point she put together about “stuff your teachers should be telling you.” It was all about her life advice for us. She told us to be careful who we listen to and who we take advice from. But my favorite part about it was where she told us not to be afraid of fear. She told us if you’re about to embark on a journey you better be “scared shitless” and shaking on the plane. It was the perfect thing I needed to hear when I was making my decision to come abroad. Sometimes things just don’t fit and I wasn’t sure if I was the type of person who could say “see ya later” to a home that held all of my comfort.

          Had it not been for that advice I wouldn’t be here and these memories I have would still just be possibilities and “what if’s.” But what really makes me bring up this whole idea of being scared out of your mind to embark on journey is the emotional rollercoaster my mind goes through every week before we head off on these European adventures. Since our first trip to London I have experienced this moment of panic before each trip where I think, “ah what the hell am I doing!?” My mind goes back and forth with stress about how we will get to and from the airport, how we will find our hotel, how much it will all come to, and oh God how will I get through the weekend with that little of sleep?  It’s the unknowns that often have each of us guessing about what we’re doing with ourselves, and it turns out that at the end of every trip we’re all talking about how badly we wish we could stay, or how we could postpone heading back to Ireland. It just goes to show how fear really does have the potential to hold us back from opportunities that have the ability to show us life changing things.

            I was feeling these sorts of doubts before I headed off to Scotland for the weekend with my roommates Cait and Heather. It had been awhile since we’d just had a weekend to bask in Dublin life (we’re such jet setters). We felt as if we were missing out on things here in the city and we were all stressed with school picking up and a little bit of homesickness. Packing is what gets us every time; what do we bring, how cold is it going to be, and What. Do. I. Wear? These are all the thoughts that occur the night before we head out, and it’s surprising about how much power they really have to bring us down with regards to our excitement to head off to these amazing places.

            We flew into Glasgow on a semi early flight, we got a decent amount of sleep, cat napped on the plane, and really began to enjoy the fact we were heading off on a mini vacation. Since it was just the three of us there was an aura of relaxation that had been missing from the other trips we had taken. We didn’t have too much of a game plan other than the Highlands tour we would be taking on Saturday. Once we got into the Prestwick airport there was no rush to immediately figure out how we had to get into the city, there was no fighting over which bus to take, it was a simple decision and a ten minute wait for a train to take us into the city of Glasgow.  We spent the forty five minutes on the train relaxing and just talking good old fashioned friend talk. It really set the tone for the rest of the weekend.

            When we got into the city we headed off in search of our hotel that really wasn’t that hard to find. Glasgow is small and really is a walking city. Its size reminded me of Dublin as far as the tourist district went. We checked into the hotel and then headed off in search of some sightseeing. We did the whole hop on hop off bus tour thing and saw all of the major attractions. It began to rain so we stayed on the bus for the entire tour; there was no hopping off for us. It gave us a chance to rest and we even dozed off for a couple of minutes. After that we walked around, went to eat at a restaurant, and then headed to Europe’s tallest movie theatre.  There were eighteen theatres and I think it was something like eight floors tall. From the outside of the theatre at night you can see all of the escalators lit up. We saw the movie You Again, and then Let Me In. Yes, we watched five hours worth of movies while we were in Scotland. BUT, it was relaxing and just what we needed. After that we headed back to our hotel to get a good night’s sleep for our early tour the next day.

            The tour that we took was with the Highland Experience. There were only five of us on the tour in a small little tour bus. The bus drivers name was Frank and he was full of positive energy. He loved his job, and he said his favorite part was meeting “good people like all of you.” It wasn’t what I had expecting at all. The tour took us through the majority of the Highland region and we spent the trip driving by these massive and beautiful mountains. Most of the tops of them were snow covered which made the sights even more breathe taking. The entire time I was on the tour I kept thinking about how lucky I was to be seeing all of these beautiful places. It brought me back to that initial stress we all feel before we head off on these adventures. It was that moment that made the entire trip worth it for me. I had never seen such beautiful sights before and I couldn’t help but bask in it.

            We stopped in a couple of cute little towns, did some whisky tasting, and ate delicious soup. We saw the Harry Potter train they film in the movies and we saw the countries native animal, the Highland Coo (basically a harry cow with tusks). It was this country, again, that made me thankful that the world has such nice people. The receptionist at our hotel was a sweet old lady, and our tour guide was a genuine, jolly good fella. It was a good trip. It was quick, relaxing, and beautiful. Now I only have one big finale of a trip planned for my entire experience left here in Europe. For Thanksgiving break I am heading to Italy for five days and then spending the tail end of the trip in Barcelona, Spain. This time booking the hotels wasn’t too stressful once we actually sat down as a group and made the moves. We will be staying two nights in Rome, two nights in Lucca (a smaller city in Tuscany), two nights in Florence and two nights in Barcelona. It will be the most consecutive travelling I do. I know it’s bound to be stressful but I’m determined to not let that fear surface that temporarily holds me back from experiencing something good.

            All that’s left between me and this fabulous vacation is a fifteen page science paper on the St. Lawrence River, a couple of classes, some presentation tweaks, and a couple of small papers. I must say I think I am the most excited to see Italy. I knew that Amsterdam was a city I had to go too, but Italy is what I am hoping to experience the ultimate level of relaxation and enjoyment. I plan on drinking lots of Italian wine, renting a bicycle in Tuscany, skipping around the Colosseum, hanging out on the Spanish steps, and checking out the statue of David. I think it will be a great time, and I hope I will return with lots to write about!

            ”We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure—your perfection—is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the buy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence of the heart.” 
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

Amsterdam Pictures

After the great four day weekend Holiday in October the majority of us Champlain College kids could breathe a sigh of relief. The weekend of travels gave everybody, what I think was, a necessary breath of fresh air from the stuffiness of always hanging out with the same people. Once my parents left Ireland, and I was back enjoying the time with my roommates and our group of friends, it was not hard to see that the little break away from each other helped bring us all back to a better place here in Dublin. After a crazy Halloween weekend it was time to prepare for our big shebang weekend trip to Amsterdam.

Amsterdam was one of the first group trips we all bought tickets for towards the beginning of the semester. It took us awhile to choose between Berlin and Amsterdam, but eventually Amsterdam won out and we were all booking our flights on Aer Lingus (a nice little break from the chaos that can be Ryanair). The tickets were a little pricier than we had wished, but we were all pretty positive that it was a city we all wanted to see before leaving Europe and heading back to the States.

Despite our excitement for the trip, our first challenge was finding a hotel that would comfortably fit the ten of us that wanted to go. I don’t know what it is but booking the hotel always seems to be the most stressful part of the trips I’ve taken so far. We booked two rooms at the HEM Hotel Amsterdam just outside the city centre two days before we were to fly to the Netherlands. We flew in on a Thursday evening so we didn’t get to our hotel until around 10 or 11, by that time we were all tired and figured it’d be best to just hang out at the hotel and have a fresh start the next day. However we did decide to hit up the hotel bar before we headed to bed.

It was there that we met Yvon. Yvon was a crazy Dutch woman, who we proclaimed was “our kind of bartender”, who surely gave us some fun things to remember Amsterdam for. She quickly began talking to us like we had known her forever. She told us the story of her spontaneous marriage to a man in Barbados and subsequently their spontaneous divorce. She proclaimed that she didn’t see the need for a man in her future, considering she was so fine on her own. I loved her independence. She also told us what we should and should not do while in Amsterdam. She pulled out a map of all of the major tourist attractions in Amsterdam and then excitedly flipped it over to show us the map of Amsterdam’s night life. She also gave us an unlimited supply of bar peanuts which we easily scarfed because we were all starving, the hotel restaurant was closed, and the area we were staying in didn’t really have much to offer with regards to food. Shocker: there wasn’t even a McDonalds in sight.

 We ended our first night in Amsterdam with some good laughs with a new friend and a stomach happily filled with the good taste of Jupiler beer. Yvon also gave us all free Coca Cola glasses to take home with us. It’s nice to also have people to attach to these places that we visit. When I visited Belgium, Marissa’s aunt Sonya and her cousin Cindy are people that I can attach to the experience that I otherwise never would have known. This woman, Yvon, is now engrained in my memory as a part of an experience I will never forget. She is now a character in the stories I will tell my future friends and family of my trips abroad. I think that it was one of the coolest things about this entire studying abroad experience. Meeting people from all over the world really puts into perspective how similar we all are. Sometimes I think we are all more similar than we think.

The next day we woke up fairly easily and headed out in search of the city. We immediately bought our I Amsterdam passes the second we hit city centre. We then made our way to the famous Van Gogh museum that houses some of his most famous pieces. Some of these include : Sunflowers, The Potato Eaters, and The Bedroom. After that we headed to the Rijks Museum which included some of the finest works from the 17^th century. One of the exhibits was devoted to Golden Age. This is where they featured works of art on the Dutch Republic, Frans Hals, Rembrandt, and Johannes Vermeer. My favorite exhibit in this museum happened to be in this one room that had on display four or five different illustrated  children’s books. The exhibit had on display the process it took to create the characters that were featured in these various Dutch books. They also had on display the final product so that you could flip through and gain a better understanding of how it came to be. One of the books was called De Boomhut (The Tree House). This book was illustrated by a father and a daughter by the names of Ronal Tolman and Marije Tolman. The book has no words, it is all pictures. I fell in love with this book and had to buy myself a copy in the gift shop. If you have time you should really check it out, it’s about how a brown bear and a polar bear grow to be great friends, but the illustrations are up to you to decipher, (if you want to check it out:http://www.lemniscaat.nl/Jeugd/Prentenboeken/titels/9789047702290/De%20boomhut).

When I signed up to study abroad in Ireland, I knew that meant that I would be travelling to several other countries in the four months I would be living in Europe.  I went into the experience knowing that I wanted to travel to Amsterdam to visit Anne Frank’s house. I first read The Diary of Anne Frank in the fifth grade. I remember taking the diary off of the book shelf in my schools library and noticing right away that the first entry written by Anne was June 12^th. It caught my eye because I realized that we shared the same birthday. Needless to say, I immediately formed a connection with this young girl. We were required to read her dairy in school, but I had already bought the copy and began reading it before it was assigned. Her story is fascinating and her writing is even more compelling. Her intelligence at the age of thirteen was crazy for me; I still don’t feel as if I could ever write as eloquently as she. Her maturity and her grasp on the entire situation is eye opening to so many people.

When my cousin had the opportunity to visit her house during her study abroad experience, I knew that I had to do it during mine.  We made it to her street on a rainy Saturday to a line that wrapped all around the building and a couple of streets over. I instantly thought that we weren’t going to make it in. I feared that nobody else in my group would find it worth the wait. Luckily I was not the only one that thought it was important that we did this one activity while in Amsterdam.

Walking through the house is unexplainable. The first room you enter is a room with four blown up pictures of Anne’s smiling, innocent face. On the wall reads her quote, “One day this terrible war will be over. The time will come when we will be people again and not just Jews! We can never be just Dutch, or just English, or whatever, we will always be Jews as well. But then, we’ll want to be.” That quote was written by Anne in 1944, she was 15 at the time and already spoke with the maturity of a wise 51 year old. She has to be the world’s most compelling teenager.

What was even more eye opening about the experience was how Otto Frank had made the decision to leave all of the rooms completely unfurnished. He wanted to keep them as they were the day that they were discovered, after the war was over and the Germans had taken everything. Walking through the houses there are random pictures and quotes on the wall and models to show what the rooms once looked like. On some of the walls you can still see where they marked how tall the children grew over the course of their hiding. It was overwhelming existing in a space where a family once spent years of their life fearing discovery.  It’s nothing you can fully describe.

Several times throughout the experience the museum reiterated how important it is to bring awareness to global acceptance to those of us who are different; whether it be your religion, race, or sexuality. The Anne France House is a living reminder of how narrow-mindedness and the inability to practice tolerance can have the treacherous power to destroy.  For two years the Frank’s lived in fear of deathly discrimination. It is scary that even in the present day the world still struggles with the idea of tolerance, if only they could all visit the Anne Frank House and feel how I felt walking between its ghostly walls.  

I think it’s safe to say that Amsterdam will be one of the more defining trips I take while I am staying here in Europe. We experienced so many extremes while we were there. We saw art and diamonds. We were lifted by the cities beauty and temporarily deflated by the intensity of Anne Frank’s House. We saw the Red Light District (which can only be described as unreal). The city was eerie, beautiful, and captivating, with so much history. I hope to find myself there again.