American friends & Amsterdam

Last week I posted a blog about that fact that I can drive. That same day I had yet (again) driving lessons. This time around everything went PERFECT. My driving instructor was blown away. See....I CAN drive!!! Anyways...enough about my obsession with driving! It's probably driving you'll nuts!

Past week has been a crazy week. I worked all week and then on Friday I had to clean the house and do grocery shopping for the weekend, while my friends Sarah & John came over for a short weekendbreak.
Sarah & John are originally from Texas but they have been living in Germany for the last 1,5 years. John is with the US army and is stationed there.
It was really fun to get to know them a little bit better. They also brought their cute labrador puppy Bèni! Makes me want to have a dog too again!

While English is my second language and I normally don't speak it a lot it was good to actually have a chance to catch up on my English! Not to mention that I love having people over. We took Sarah & John to Amsterdam. Both of them wanted to visit the Anne Frank house. I've been in that museum a couple of times already, it's a nice place but after 30 minutes you've really seen it. Although the museum is really cool and it's cool to see that actual diary, rooms and wallpaper. I think it's good way to picture and think of World War II and also about how Anne Frank lived. However the museum about World War II and the jews that made a huge impact on my life was not really a museum but a Concentration Camp called Terezinstadt near Prague (Czech). If you are ever near Prague, you should visit it! It's impressive! It makes you think how bad the war was!

Anyway to go back to the story we decided to let them go in the Anne Frank house and we went off to find a restroom. When they were done we decided to have lunch and the something real Dutch is: pancakes! So we went to a place that served pancakes. Not hard to find in Amsterdam! The diner we ate in was named 'Sara's' and so we thought it was really suitable. Sarah should eat in Sara's, right? It was a really small diner but the pankcakes were really nice! After lunch we took them to see more of Amsterdam including a tour through the redlight district. Although it's a bit of a nasty place to go, it is a big part of Amsterdam plus the buildings in the redlight district are very old. Mainly because it was situated near the harbor and in the 16th century loads of V.O.C ships came in and you could find most fishermen in the bars ( in that district). The city itself was established near 1000 a.c.

Anyways we walked around and showed them bits of Amsterdam. The city is quite big but not as big as London or New York. I wish I could have showed them more but we only had one day. On Sunday Jeroen and I took Sarah and John to the beach here in my hometown Katwijk. After lunch they left again to go back to Germany. It was a short trip for them but hopefully they had fun. We surely did. We hope to visit them in Germany sometime this year or otherwise definitely next year.