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Published: September 28th 2014
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Well, today, due to some visa issues with me having a layover in Dublin on the way here, long story short, I had to come back to the UK from a non-UK or Ireland airport. I decided to fly from Dublin to Amsterdam, and then return to Glasgow from there. I ended up having a longer layover than I originally anticipated, so when I arrived in Amsterdam, I took the train to the Amsterdam Centraal station, from which the Anne Frank House was only a twenty minute walk. I walked there (after getting a little lost) and knew I was close when I saw a huge crowd of people. What I was not expecting was a huge line around the block. Not knowing what else to do, I decided to hop into the line and see how long it took. After about an hour and a half, I finally made it into the (now) museum. It was really an incredible experience seeing all of the artifacts and being in the space that they had actually hid out in for so long.
On the way into the secret annex, which is where they actually hid, we got to see and pass
behind the original bookshop that had been propped in front of the door to help disguise their hideout. Once we entered, they explained that it was empty because all of the furniture and belongings had been removed by the Nazis after the hideouts were arrested. Otto Frank decided that he wanted it to remain that way. However, they did have pictures that showed what it would have looked like with the furniture and belongings in it to give you a sense of what it would have looked like when they were living in it. You could still see a lot of the posters and magazine cutouts that Anne had posted on her bedroom wall to make it less bland. The space itself was a bit larger than I had expected it to be (probably due to the empty nature of the space), however it's still so hard to comprehend how they could have lived there for so long and how hard that must have been on all of them. It makes it even worse that they weren't able to maintain their hideout, and so heartbreaking that Anne died only a month before their camp was liberated, not knowing that her
father was alive. Anne's friend, who was interviewed in a video that was shown, stated that she thought Anne would have lasted that month if she had known her father was alive; she claimed that Anne simply didn't have anything to live for at that point. The whole story is tragic, and it is amazing that Anne had the foresight to put all of her thoughts and activities into the diary that would become such an amazing artifact from this terrible time period.
We weren't allowed to take pictures in the house, due to the emotional content, however I took one of the outside once I had left and then a few along the canals on my way back to the station and airport. The city itself was very quaint and beautiful, and I was really glad that I had the opportunity to walk around it a bit.
I'm now back in Glasgow, exhausted from getting up this morning at 3 for the flight to Amsterdam, and starting to prepare for another week of class.
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