from an old journal
Amsterdam 9/23: The sun streaming into the window and a perfectly blue sky awakened us for our first morning here. A meagre breakfast and we were off. The Singel and the flower market was a freakout for Carol as would be expected - bulbs etc. plants, flowers et al along the canal in small boats. The cars really drive fast; they being small perhaps makes them look faster - lots of bicycles and motorbikes.
Went to Anne Frank's house. Very grizzly in the documentation on the Nazi occupation. The house itself has most of the furnishings gone so it is hard to visual live in it but all the photos and writing help out. One room has stuff on how schools and kids use the diary as an inspiration towards their own school work - writings - sensitivity sessions - dramatics, At the end there was a S. Africa Apartheid exhibition. Several books of comments were interesting - in all languages & alphabets. Most were reflective but no solutions offered. Some people missed the connection - some racist S.A.s were appalled by the propaganda!
A sex shop on the henscratchstraat had some incredible gadgets I wonder if people really use them. The pastry shops have good stuff - and there are very many of them - chocolate too!
Overate at Lingham, an Indonesian restaurant near the red light district - 21 dishes of rijsttafel: eggs, "cold saw", 2 ginger meat, liver, cucumber, peanuts, fruit salad, coconut, bean curd, hot cabbage, potato sticks, chicken, 2 peanut sauce, skewered chicken, string beans, 2 bean sprouts, fried banana, bread, meat balls dry white wine. Carol indignant over too much meat.
Red light district groovy. Florescent whores - sex shops - live sex; hard porno; real focky focky! sex museum.