Day 14

Amsterdam. We dropped off the camper without major incident,our bags at the hotel and headed to the nearest train station which was at the airport. The trains are the best in Europe. Modern, clean and smooth. But they are the only sanctuary in Amsterdam that is. The canals and streets are filthy, the acrid stench of cannabis regularly accosts your nostrils as you walk through the streets and the obvious depravity evident.I have never seen so many bicycles - there were not hundreds, but thousands! This is supposed to be the ultimate city of freedom as the social liberals would have it in society and it made me glad I am regarded as a conservative. I fail to see the romance in the 'freedom' that enables a fairly well dressed young guy in his mid to late twenties, sit on the step of a doorway, obviously stoned out of his mind,and oblivious to the world, having urinated on himself, while his toddler son, no more than 4 years old tugs at his trouser leg, crying for him to wake up.

We never went to the Red light district. None of us are that sad or desperate, but even the windows in the normal parts of the city are lined with posters and objects that pander to any sort of desire. It is telling that in the euphoria of freedom, where the so-called restrictions of the 'oppressive social constructs' of religion have been so thoroughly removed and judgement eliminated, that the first reaction to this freedom is to engage in experiences so self-harmful in their nature that the only way to still the pain is to dull the senses and seek refuge in drug-taking. I had heard it before like everybody else, but never realised before so starkly how drugs are such a necessary component of prostitution and why they almost without exception go together.

In the midst of these seedy streets, there is a hidden 'Church in the Attic'. When the Catholic church was suppressed in the 1600's and worship forbidden by the Protestant rulers, a man built a Church in the attic of his and two adjoining houses and it has been preserved intact as it was to this day. It looks like a normal house and you go up narrow flights of stairs to a room that opens up to reveal a surprisingly large and ornate church. It has been preserved as a museum for over a hundred years.

We then headed to Anne Frank's house and it is quite a chilling visit: it is a bit more commercialised than I had expected and all the rooms remain bare as they were emptied after the family was rounded up and taken to the concentration camps. Our visit to Dachua a few days earlier, providing a rather real context to the implications that would face them, when they left. Not everyone felt it, but having read her diary some years back, one could not but mourn the cruel loss of a vibrant young girl who loved life so much and wanted to live so desperately,that was simply snuffed out. Perhaps it was my obvious connection to Kirtsin that trigggered those feelings, but even Carmen and the others who have not read the diary picked this up as the tour gave a sense of who Anne Frank was.

We had a final supper at a lovely little restaurant and recalled all the amazing things we had seen on this trip, before catching the train to our hotel. It was so nice to return to a hotel.... Oh what bliss after 2 weeks of the camper! The camping was an experience, but while a road trip is nice to a point, there comes a time when one longs for a real bed again. Yeah - we're city soft people. Overall, though, Amsterdam was the first city that we encountered on the trip that I have absolutley no desire to return to.

I am writing this at 30 000 feet on KLM0591 back to Jhb where we will spend the night before the last leg early tomorrow morning back to Cape Town. It has been an amazing holiday. We were 6-2 this time: it was the first time our other regular travellers, Boet and Melissa were unable to join us because of work commitments, but there will be a next time... Thank you for joining us and reading. Goodbye from European Tour 2009. A final goodnite. Rodney, Carmen, Richard and Kerry. (And Russ.)