Week 13: Bingen & Amsterdam

The beginning of the week was filled with usual school stuff, followed by an excursion to Bingen that Friday. Here we visited the Museum am Strom, which had an extensive exhibit on Hildegard von Bingen, who was a German abbess and saint. She wrote books on theology as well as books on the medicinal uses different plants, trees, and other things. The museum had also a gallery of her visions, which Hildegard had written detailed descriptions of and which were all quite interesting.

Many students participated in the Bonn Marathon that weekend, but seeing as I couldn't even remember the last time I exercised and get tired going up like 3 flights of stairs, I went to Amsterdam with Chelsea and Ashleigh instead! We arrived early morning and wandered around the city for a bit since we couldn’t check into our hostel yet. We found a cool little market and bought way too many postcards. Then on our way to Oude Kerk, the oldest building in the city (800 years old!), we unknowingly walked into the red light district! At the time, I thought we had just walked through the district to get to the church, but it turns out the church is right in the middle of the district so there’s that. The inside of the church was simple but absolutely gorgeous. The high ceiling was entirely made of wood and there were gold chandeliers, enormous white stone columns, and beautiful stained glass windows. The most interesting part of the church though was the ground, which was made entirely of gravestones! 2,500 gravestones and 10,000 people buried underneath to be exact. This was because the church was built on a cemetery and as the church grew, people had to be buried inside because they couldn't' be buried around it. 

We also toured Ons’ Lieve Heer op Solder (Our Lord in the Attic), a 17th century canal house (now a museum) with a secret Catholic church built into the attic. Later, we went to a museum dedicated to one of my favorite artists, Vincent Van Gogh! Taking pictures was definitely not allowed but I might’ve snapped a few (or 13) and only got caught once! 

The next morning, we visited Keukenhof Gardens and it was the most beautiful and magical place. There were endless fields of different colored tulips and the weather was perfect. 

That night, we visited the Anne Frank House. The atmosphere was heavy and I had goosebumps the entire time. I couldn’t believe I was standing where Anne stood, walking through the halls and rooms where she and her family lived in secret, scared for their lives. Looking at her bedroom walls, covered with pictures of movie stars and fashion icons she had cut out from magazines, I was reminded that she was just like any other child with hopes and dreams. Like millions of others, she was just an innocent person who had done nothing to deserve what happened to her. 

The next day, I went to Stedelijk Museum, a museum of modern and contemporary art. This museum reminded me of why modern art is my favorite. From fauvism, to cubism, to expressionism, to futurism, to abstraction, these paintings weren’t realistic or idealized representations of real life. Instead, these artists painted their own unique views of life. This one, called "Painting with Houses" by Wassily Kandinsky, was one of my favorites:

We ended our trip with a relaxing canal cruise of the city, weaving through the canals lined with house boats and hearing interesting stories of the different buildings we passed.