"The Impact of War: Exploring Dutch Resilience and the Anne Frank Huis"

After a 4 week postponement; from the 24th of May 2024 to the 28th of May 2024, my family and I departed from home through London St. Pancras International on Eurostar service 9114 to Amsterdam Centraal, capital of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

On our journey we stopped off in Brussels and Rotterdam before arriving into Amsterdam at 13:18 CEST; before transiting by Uber to our hotel; the XO Blue Tower. After dropping off our baggage, we took the metro and a commuter service back to Amsterdam Centraal onboard a NS VIRM (Verlengd InterRegio Materieel) or in English, Lengthened interregional rolling stock; which was a double-deck commuter train operated by NS or Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the national operator of all rail services in the Netherlands outside of private entities.

After a while, we decided to venture outside of the Amsterdam metropole, towards the cities of Haarlem and Delft; Haarlem being famed for the Windmill de Adriaan, originally constructed in 1779, burnt down in 1932 and rebuilt in 2002. Delft however, was famed for a particular brand of pottery Delft Blauw or in English, Delft Blue which was produced by the company De Porceleyne Fles.

On Monday 27th May 2024, the main aspect of the day was museums; seeing the enamour of the Netherlands' Golden Age, from Vermeer, Rembrandt to Van Gogh and how the country weathered colonial empire within the Rijksmuseum, a Rijksmonument built by Pierre de Cuyper who also designed the facade of Amsterdam Centraal station in 1889.

Afterwards comes the more harrowing and sobering, if not hopeful vantage point into the mind of a young girl in hiding; Anne Frank. At Prinsengracht 263 was the Anne Frank Huis, an afterhuis showcasing the Franks' lives in WWII Amsterdam, resisting against a heady Nazi invasion. And now we fast forward to the present: 2024, where multiple wars have erupted around the world, from Ukraine to Gaza, but one thing that the Anne Frank Huis taught me amid the reflection on life; you can always hold out hope to change the world.

Aft of the museum was a visitor's guestbook, in which I wrote this: "This world needs more people like Anne Frank, a beacon of light in a dark abyss."

Unfortunately on the return journey from Amsterdam, things didn't necessarily go to plan, as when we reached Brussels Midi, our Eurostar to London was delayed by 2 hours, meaning we were stranded in Brussels for that time however thanks to a combination of a loophole in Eurostar's Conditions of Carriage and an EU law dictating that if a train is delayed by 2+ hours, you are entitled to a 50% reimbursement of your tickets or a free Eurostar e-Voucher.

But outside of the technical details, we made it home in one piece.

See you on the other side. :)

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A short gallery of images related to the horrors of World War II, particularly related to the Nazi occupation of the Low Countries in this instance, Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam, the house occupied by the Frank family and the Gieps family.