18th January 2012 – Amsterdam!

18th January 2012: 

I’ve waited almost 6 months for this trip to start. Everything went very fast, but  it was worth every second.
We arrived in Amsterdam on January 18 as scheduled.
We got off at Central Station (picture) and took a public transport. But soon we left it, afraid to make a fine hahaha. At the bus stop we asked a local how to get to our hostel, very friendly she taught the way. At the end of the conversation, she said goodbye and a “Welcome to Amsterdam”. We walked much, much more than we expected, at the cold and drizzly, but we finally packed up and we check in.   The hostel was very nice and different. And luckily got a room only for us three, because it was empty. The first day we walked around town, we saw canals (picture), cute and similar houses. At night we ate Döner and went to a more touristic Amster: Red Light District.

 19th January 2012:

Unfortunately I do not remember the details as I wanted, but I know that the next day we woke up and went to visit The Van Gogh Museum (picture). This was the most expensive museum from the entire trip costing 14.50 euros, from what I remember. Very close to it there was the Amsterdam’s Letters, where we took photos. I do not remember the exact order of events, but I think after that we went to the Heineken Experience (picture). The museum tells the history of Heineken and it is still possible to taste their own beer in a bar. After this experience, we went to the house of Anne Frank, which unfortunately had no discount for students, but it was not as expensive as the Van Gogh.
For me it was amazing to go in there and imagine spending two years confined. After reading the book and beying there, we can understand a bit more of the sufferings of a War.

>> http://www.stayokay.com/index.php?pageID=3207&hostelID=356022 our hostel 

Next time I wanna stay in a boat and visit the countryside to see the Tulips and windmills!

Book: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank

The Diary of Anne Frank (German: Das Tagebuch der Anne Frank. In Dutch, the language of the original diary: Het achterhuis – Dagboekbrieven 14 juni 1942-1 augustus 1944. In English: The Diary of a Young Girl, as they say in the book , or The Diary of Anne Frank, as in the movie.) is a diary written by Anne Frank from June 12, 1942 and August 1, 1944 during the Second World War.
Hid with her family and other Jews in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands, Anne Frank, with thirteen years old, tells in his diary, the life of this group of people.

On August 4, 1944, agents of the Gestapo arrested all the occupants who were hiding in Amsterdam and took them to various concentration camps. On the same day of the arrest of Anne’s parents, gave her diary to her father Otto Frank Heinrich. Anne Frank died in the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen at the end of February 1945, after her sister had died. The cause of her death was typhus. Although inexpensive and easy measures of prevention were already known, the Nazis left hundreds of thousands of prisoners in their concentration camps, including most Jews died of disease during World War II.
Otto was the only one who survived hidden in a concentration camp. In 1947, the father decided to publish the diary as Anne wanted in life. The diary is at the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation. The Anne Frank Fund (Switzerland) was heir to the rights of the work of Anne Frank. Heinrich’s father Otto Frank died in 1980.
In the preface to the first American edition of the diary, Eleanor Roosevelt described it as one of the greatest and wisest comments of the war and its impact on human being I have ever read. The Ukrainian writer Ilya Ehrenburg later said a voice speaks for six million, the voice not of a sage or a poet, but a little girl as usual. Hillary Rodham Clinton in his speech to the Elie Wiesel Humanitarian Award in 1994, read the diary of Anne Frank and related to contemporary events such as occurred in Sarajevo, Somalia and Rwanda.
After receiving a humanitarian award from the Anne Frank Foundation in 1994, Nelson Mandela drew a crowd in Johannesburg, saying he had read Anne Frank’s diary while in prison and that the book brought him much encouragement. His struggle against Nazism and apartheid, explaining the parallel between the two philosophies: because these beliefs are patently false and they were and always will be challenged by people like Anne Frank, they are on the edge of failure.

Controversy over the authenticity of the diary of Anne Frank.When he died in 1980, Otto Frank left his daughter’s manuscripts to the Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam. As the diary’s authenticity had been questioned since its first publication, mainly by French revisionist Robert Faurisson (author of Le Journal d’Anne Frank est-il authentique?, 1980), the Institute for War Documentation has ordered a full investigation. So that was given as authentic without any shadow of doubt, the diary was published in its entirety, along with the results of an exhaustive study, articles on Frank’s family background, the circumstances surrounding his arrest and deportation and the examination of handwriting Anne, of the document and the materials used. The allegations that several pages of the diary were written (after the war or not) for another (s) person (s) thus found a decisive refutation.

The museum is located in Amsterdam: http://www.annefrank.org/en/

Netherlands

Today I will post here a opinion of a friend who is working in Netherlands: “Knowing new cultures is always a good experience. I work for one of the Naspers group companies, Movile from Brazil, and I was invited to participate on a 3 month staff exchange program, so now I’m in the Netherlands (Rotterdam) working for another company from the group, called Nimbuzz.
Here I am having a really nice time! I’m developing a new msn/Facebook/gtalk/yahoo/etc… client for iPad in HTML5, a new standard for web programming, which I’m learning even more.
It’s being good because not only I learn technology and work/career related stuff, but also people culture, try to learn a little bit Dutch…just try…
Once in Europe, I have the opportunity to visit the countries around. Everywhere is near here! There are cheap flights and low costs hotels, so a one weekend trip to a different country costs around 250 euros. Going by train is a good idea too.
What to say shortly about the netherlands, in my point of view: a great place to live, beautiful, the economy is solid, but the prices are not so cheap if compared to other countries, people are nice (and the ladies are pretty), always help when you need, and besides Dutch they speak English very well! (Completely different from France, where people don’t like to help you, and don’t know/like to speak English at all). The public transport works fine! And don’t forget: 12:27 is not 12:30! With the trains, trams, metro, bus, is possible to go everywhere in the country easily, very easily. Having bike is mandatory! The structure for bikes is great, there is special bike path beside the streets (and probably more bikes than habitants).
The food is quite different from Brazil. The Dutch eat bread for lunch…so don’t expect a hot meal with steak, salad, rice and beans (beans? What’s this?). My normal lunch here is bread with ham/cheese and sometimes with tuna. But milk, cheese and yoghurt are the best here!
Anyway it’s being an awesome experience. I feel my English and other languages, knowledge, culture, friends network, mind and way of thinking, everything is improved. I feel I grew up a lot, professionally and personally.
Thanks God for the opportunity and I’m grateful to my friends, family and people who supported me for this internship.”

Really nice text, huh?  http://caminhoseestrelas.wordpress.com/2009/10/19/conhecendo-a-europa-amsterdam/