Thursday, February 10, 2011

Anne Frank

On my not-long-ago visit to Amsterdam, I fell in love with this city. I called it 'northern Ibiza'. In the streets you can see mostly students and young people with such concentration on one sq.km that it is even hard to walk in the city center, especially during evening-night hours. Well, for that there really is a very unusual reason. But it is not the reason I fell in love with Amsterdam. The reason is its unexplainable beauty. I fell like a doll in a dolltown with dollhouses. The architecture of the city reminds me of old greeting cards or books for little children: you open them and a whole city in carton is in front of you. I took a ride on the canal cruise, did pretty much all the touristic stuff. Went to Van Gogh's and Rembrant's museums, but one touristic place that left a big emotion on me is Anne Frank's house. 

I have read the diary of Anne Frank not long ago. I have tried to read it when I was younger, but I wasn't able to finish it - so hard it was for me. After the book, I saw the movie. After the movie I read a lot about the secret annex and this story gave me many thoughts. Then in Amsterdam the lady on the reception suggested we should go see ..enfranhuis. With her pronunciation it was hard for me to understand what she was suggesting. It was only several streets away from the hotel that I realized that the place still existed and it was possible to see it with my eyes. I won't say that it was the easiest excursion of my life. But 100% it was the most interesting one. Having seen the hiding place by my own and getting to know what happened to those people after they were found was a very difficult thing for me. And the fact that Anne died several weeks before the war was over, was the second shock. After the visit, in every house in Amsterdam I saw the secret annex and imagined how many people suffered from the horrible events of 1940s. Somebody, don't really remember who it was, said that now that we know the story of Anne Frank we have horrible feelings inside. But if we only knew all the stories about all the people who had the same fate as Anne, it would have been impossible for us to live further.

 ps. here is the link to the hiding place in 3d

No comments:

Post a Comment