A guest column by Molly herself
There’s a hokey quote that gets circulated on Facebook about how you can go long periods of time without seeing your best friends, and when you do see them again, it’s as if no time has passed. During my trip to Europe to visit Mariah and Ryan, I found this to be true, hokey or not. Mariah did me the honor of asking me to write a guest column on this travel blog about my whirlwind trip through four countries in 10 days, so everyone’s about to find out how wordy I get when I’m not confined by news writing. (Fans of the Oxford comma, deal with it.)
Amsterdam or “This cookie just ruined every other cookie for me.”
In Amsterdam there are the most delicious cookies. They’re from a little store that does just one thing: Makes delectable dark chocolate cookies filled with a molten white chocolate center. Mariah and I ate those cookies while crossing a canal after having cappuccinos to help me with the jet lag, and I’m pretty sure I felt the ground move, that’s how good they were.
(I have to note here that my mom’s chocolate chip are still better, though.)
Why in the world bitterballen are such a big deal and Van Stapele cookies are not is beyond me.
Bitterballen are fried gravy balls, and are a national food in The Netherlands. They’re, well, an edible thing. I ate one in spite of my life-long hatred of gravy and was unimpressed. I was not disgusted either, so I guess that’s something, but that could have been because they come with mustard, which is one of my favorite things. But hey, more for Ryan that way.
We went next door to Brouwerij ‘Tij, which is located inside one of Holland’s trademark windmills and brews some pretty good beer. While there, Mariah and Ryan regaled me with tales of their lives in Amsterdam and we did our best to get caught up on everything that has happened since August.
Beyond the culinary delights and not-so-delights, we filled our initial time in Amsterdam with museums and other sight-seeing. We visited the Anne Frank house, which was a sobering experience and dredged up memories of reading the Diary of Anne Frank as a teenager. We walked through the rooms where she and her family and the other refugees lived and were eventually betrayed and hauled off to concentration camps.
We also paid a visit to the Van Gogh museum, absent from which was Starry Night because of “some damn Rockefeller,” who put it in the Met in NYC instead, but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless.
Stroopwafel as big as your face
Paris or “There’s that church you wanted to see.”
Our first stop after our hotel in Paris was a nearby restaurant with a good Bordeaux and better ravioli, because why not eat Italian in France? Snails are gross. We followed that with crepes for dessert and then arrived at the Louvre to get a look at ole Mona Lisa.
I confirmed my suspicions that I prefer Van Gogh to da Vinci.
We made our way along the Champs Elysees and had some dinner before starting our trek to the Eiffel Tower, which was lengthy. Along the way, we found a memorial to Princess Diana on top of the overpass where the car accident that killed her occurred. Unexpected but kind of interesting.
We finally got to the tower and realized we’d need to wait longer than we expected to catch the big light show they do there after dark. So we waited and turned down about a dozen guys who wanted to sell us wine and roses in the meantime.
When the lights came on though, it was worth the wait. The tower is always lit up after dark, but every hour they really put their backs into it and turn on a mass of dancing lights that make the whole thing glitter for a full minute. It’s stunning and you can’t take your eyes away from it. Nor should you.
The next day we headed to Laduree for brunch. They served us scrambled eggs that were delicious but inexplicably compacted into a hockey-puck shape, albeit larger. We ordered macarons and went on our way to Montparnasse Tower, a 59-story office building that is located in an area that is definitely not zoned for that.
Because it’s the only building of that height in the area, the views of the city from Montparnasse are incredible, so they turned the top three floors into a visitors’ center. You ride the elevator up and then climb three flights of stairs to get a 360-degree view of the city from the roof. Then you go back down three flights of stairs and eat an eclair where it isn’t quite so windy but you can still see out the windows.
From there we went to Notre Dame, or “that church I wanted to see,” which contained exactly zero hunchbacks performing heroic acts.
What it did contain, though, was architecture from the 12th century and stained glass windows that are incredibly vivid, as are the relief portraits of various scenes from the Bible that line the interior of the cathedral.
At this point, we decided we had really not eaten enough cheese for being in France, so we fixed that by visiting a cheese shop for dinner. We grabbed dessert from a bakery and retreated to our hotel.
During our last hours in Paris, we climbed Montmarte to Sacre Coeur, another cathedral, stopping for more crepes along the way. We did some shopping and then headed for the train.
Aboard the train to Paris
Brussels or “Wow. Wow. Wow!”
I probably could have sat in Grand Place eating truffles for my whole visit to Brussels and been happy.
We rounded the corner into the square, which is 360 degrees of intricately constructed buildings, built in the 10th through 13th centuries. As expression goes, I’m much better at sarcasm, incredulity and snark than I am at excitement and wonderment. Exclaiming aloud about cool stuff just isn’t something that comes naturally to me.
But this place got three (maybe even four) consecutive “wows” out of me. And that’s a lot for me; I think Mariah would back me up on that. (Editor’s note: It’s true.)
Fortunately it was early enough that there weren’t many tourists present, because I would have run right into them with my head craned up toward the sky.
We ate some brunch and then bought chocolate, obviously. We went to see Mannekin Pis, or the fountain featuring a peeing boy. They dress him up in different outfits and people take pictures. That day he was dressed like a firefighter because we were in Brussels on the one-year anniversary of the bombing at the train station there.
Aside from chocolate, Belgium is famous for its beer, so we had some of that as well, at Delirium and at Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen, which specializes in lambics and krieks, which are some of my favorites.
And aside from chocolate and beer, Belgium is famous for frites and waffles, so naturally we had those too, and jumped on a train back to Amsterdam.
Mannekin Pis dressed to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the Brussels terrorist attack at the train station and airport
Amsterdam again or “Is this a tin can?”
We spent a day in between trips in Amsterdam, during which Mariah cooked up a delicious Dutch pancake for me. Later we met Ryan and his colleagues at a speakeasy where they were hosting a guest bartender from Switzerland. We ordered drinks. Mariah got a pretty pink one in a cut-glass champagne flute. Mine came in a tin can. An actual tin can, and it had a rosemary sprig in it that that looked like a tree. In spite of looking like it came from the garbage, it was quite tasty. Good job, Swiss bartender.
Berlin or “We’re back in East Berlin, there’s Ampelmann.”
What Berlin lacks in aesthetics (in my opinion and relatively speaking after Paris and Brussels), it makes up for in history, depressing as it may be, and the best food I had on the whole trip, except maybe those cookies in Amsterdam.
Mariah and I got to Berlin ahead of Ryan, and made use of the time by going to Charlottenburg Palace, which was built by the final few generations of the monarchy there. The exterior of the building was covered by construction scaffolding, which was a bummer, but the interior has been restored after sustaining a lot of damage during WWII.
The surrounding gardens are probably a lot prettier later in the spring, but still made for a nice stroll in late March.
The next day we took a walking tour of Berlin that started at Brandenburg Gate (site of Reagan’s “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” speech, and a slew of other important events) and led us through some of the most historically and culturally significant parts of central Berlin.
We visited the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe, which is a large piece of land with huge gray stones of varying size set so that people can walk among them. The guide explained that visitors are encouraged to walk through it and get lost a little bit, as it is intended to be disorienting and something of a sensory-deprivation experience. The stones get taller as the ground slopes down, so you can’t see over the top, creating a maze of sorts.
We also stopped at the site of the headquarters of the Gestapo and SS, which has been torn down and is a vacant parcel that will never be developed, some remnants of the Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie, as well as some non-war-related sites including churches and concert halls.
You can tell if you’re in former East Berlin or not by looking at the pedestrian traffic lights. In East Berlin, the little red and green guys who tell you if you can cross or not have a distinctive shape and have been dubbed “Ampelmann.” He has his own tourist shops and is kind of a big deal, apparently.
The most memorable part of the tour, though, occurred when our tour guide took us to a parking lot at an apartment complex. Yeah, you read that right. We were standing on some grass that hadn’t started to grow properly yet this year.
He then told us that we were standing above the remnants of the bunker where Hitler shot himself as Soviet troops closed in on him, bringing an end to WWII. After his body was removed and cremated, the remains were scattered into a moving river and the bunker was imploded and paved over. Now it’s just a parking lot, and that grassy spot is where residents of that complex take their dogs to do their business.
It was chilling to say the least, standing there. The tour guide explained that officials at the time wanted to make sure that no one would ever have a place to go to pay respects or otherwise honor Hitler.
However, a nearby sign indicating what happened there means that theoretically there could be a gathering in that parking lot if someone wanted. Or across the street on the SS headquarters site. But I guess they did the best they could in trying to erase the evil that occurred without turning a blind eye and pretending it didn’t happen. It would be a hard line to walk.
After all of that, we needed a pick-me-up, so we ducked into a Bavarian restaurant for helles and hefeweizens, as well as spatzle and strudel.
We visited the DDR (Deutsche Democratic Republic) Museum, which is focused on life in East Berlin during the 28 years that the Berlin Wall divided the city. Hint: Communism is unpleasant.
That night and the next day were mainly wandering around the city and Mauer Park, where big markets are set up every Sunday and bands play for passersby.
We closed out Berlin with lunch and ice cream, both of which we had outside because it was unseasonably warm.
Inside Charlottenburg Palace
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of the Holocaust
Remnants of the Berlin Wall
The East Berlin Stadium (Not the Berlin Wall)
Amsterdam again or “You have packed one Molly’s worth of beer.”
My final experience in Europe was a sitcom-worthy jaunt through Amsterdam with my luggage and the suitcase full of Belgian beer I agreed to escort home for Ryan. He painstakingly packed it the night before and had to help me get it to the airport because it weighed as much as, if not more than, me. But he’ll have a respectable stock of Cantillon when they come back to the states. (Come back soon!)
Editor’s Note: The opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily express those of the main Tauers Go Dutch author. However, mostly they do. It’s why we’re best friends. Tot Ziens!
