After chatting till 3 in the morning, transferring pictures, and browsing the net at the slightly-gone-to-seed Christian hostel we were staying at, we finally slept. The irritating part about a Christian hostel is that they had a prayer at 11pm each night. And the next night, when Hrishikesh stayed up, the guy there tried giving him sermons into Christianity, and the meaning of Christ. Blah! At prayer time, we went out and sat on a corner on the canal, clicking pictures of the city, getting gr8 night shots. Canals of Amsterdam is another famous idea. I guess with the city lying under sea level, using canals was the intelligent way to provide transport in the early ages. Amsterdam was the world’s leading city (according to the Dutch) for most part of the 16-18th Centuries. There are a lot of shops selling Indonesian food, I think coz the Dutch share the same relation with the Indonesians as the English do with Indians.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The next morning, Minu and Payal went to Anne Frank house, which the guys were content just to see from outside, (maybe coz we had not read the book) before heading to the Madame Tussads in Amsterdam. Tussads was also very interesting, although I guess it would not have been as big as the one in London. After seeing a lot of life-like wax figures of famous people including Hu Jintao, Gandhi, Dalai Lama, and doing a few crunches with David Beckham, we were given insights into the making of the statues by a sweet young lady. Each statue costs around 150,000 euros and takes 2 months to make, with 35 different technicians working on various different aspects of the statue like the eyes, hands etc. Each hair is sewn into the scalp separately! Imagine that! The eyes are now painted the exact shade of the celebrity, before being coated with fibre to make them life like. A clay cast is first made, into which wax is poured. The wax is only a cm thick, with the inside hollow. The eyes are then inserted from the inside!
We also the saw the Neuw Kerk – the New Church – at the Dam “Central Square”. It isn’t exactly new anymore, dating back atleast to the 1700s. Now it is used as an exhibition hall, with important ceremonies like the wedding of the crown prince, and the coronation of the king taking place here. Again, not worth 4 euros that it costed us :P
We headed to Madurodam in a Peugeot – this time manual transmission – at 1pm. Thanks to Sanjeev for this great tip. Madurodam is simply not worth missing. If you are in the Netherlands to do one thing, do Madurodam! It’s the entire of Netherlands in miniature, with scale versions of important building in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Haag, Utrecht, and other places like the Schiphol Airport. We clicked about a thousand snaps in the 7 hours that we spent here! There were also about a dozen working models of bridges, ships, ship locks, etc. Although interesting, the technology used was quite antiquated by now (as it is every 10 years!), and they would do well to use more electronics than pneumatics, and mechanics they use now. But heck, I am an Electronics Engineer :D
When leaving Amsterdam, I agreed to the statement that I read somewhere – the city is over-rated, not to say very expensive. In the Netherlands, I had ended up spending atleast 80 euros per day, which was double of my intended budget here!
No comments:
Post a Comment