Amsterdam — Mokum

Everything worth seeing in Amsterdam is less than a 20-minute walk from the boat. We really lucked out this time with AirB&B. It’s very comfortable too. The deck has been our sanctuary. We spend lots of time sitting out there watching all of the boats on the canal. The set-up inside is great. We each have a bedroom below deck on each side of the kitchen, and the beds are surprisingly comfortable. Although we’re docked in the city center, it’s pretty quiet for sleeping. An American couple walked by as we were leaving to head for a bus tour, and, thinking we were the Dutch residents of the houseboat, the husband said, “Life is good, huh?” We explained we were renting but acknowledged that, in fact, life is good on a houseboat. The tour showed us the areas of the city around the perimeter of the crowded center but the rest of the day we walked around the canals and over the bridges. I bought a t-shirt that has the word “mokum“ under the city’s name so I asked about it. The woman said it was a nickname for Amsterdam. I looked it up later to find that it means “safe haven” in Yiddish and was used by Jewish communities to refer to several Dutch cities, but over the years Amsterdam’s people adopted it as a way to warmly refer to their city. “Mokum is the city. Amsterdam is Mokum,” the woman had said in the store. And we were feeling it. From our little houseboat on the canal, Amsterdam is Mokum. Our plan for the day was to walk around and find something interesting to do between the morning bus tour and our tour of Anne Frank’s House later in the afternoon. We had lunch at a place that offered typical Dutch cuisine, and we ordered stamppot. It was kielbasa and a meatball on top of mash potatoes mixed with spinach — really good. The Rembrandt House was nearby so we took a really informative tour of his 4-story townhouse complete with art workshops, teaching studio, and a menagerie of artifacts from exotic places. We walked from there to the Anne Frank House. Ronnie had booked the tickets weeks in advance to make sure we could get in. The museum was incredibly sad but thoughtfully put together. I read the book as a kid and included Anne Frank in many lessons as a teacher, but the way the story was told in this museum, Anne’s father really came into focus. He was the one with the foresight and the courage to make the plan for the family to first escape to Holland and then to hide in the annex. His plan nearly worked. Sadly, what seemed like the mokum he had hoped for in Amsterdam turned into a nightmare. Of the eight people in hiding who were discovered by the Germans, he was the only one who survived the concentration camps. After the war, he dedicated his life to telling Anne’s story and having her diary published to fulfill his daughter’s dream of being a writer. I’m in awe of Otto Frank and I want to learn more about him.Read more