Apple Pie Update: Winkel 43

This weekend, my roommate and I pilgrimaged to the alleged best apple pie in all of Amsterdam at the café Winkel 43. And it did not disappoint:

Now that I’ve truly tasted greatness, I’ve realized past appletaart was a joke. Winkel bakes their pies deep dish and adds raisins for extra sweetness. The crust tastes somewhere between a crumble topping and a yellow sheet cake. I don’t know what’s in it or how they make it, which is bothering me, but I’m willing to overlook that since the pie is so delicious. And the slice was so big that I couldn’t even finish it. 5/4 stars.

There is one main thing I learned this weekend: Amsterdam is a city that’s pretty much impossible not to have fun in, but it’s an unsustainable amount of fun. People here stay out so late, which ruins the magic experience of a weekend morning. I love getting up semi-early on a weekend and going out to get coffee before the city is fully awake and filled with tourists, but this is a nearly impossible feat when it’s commonplace to stay out well past 3:30 am, the time I finally called it quits and also the time that some Amsterdammers seemed to just be getting started. I had to cancel my 10 am appointment at the Cat Café because Lord knows I wasn’t getting up for that. Luckily for me, this program is only three weeks!

But despite my unfortunate sleeping schedule, I managed to cram as much exploring into this weekend as humanly possible. We started out with a picnic with our professors in the park on Friday. I cannot express through words how different the professors are here than at Wheaton, the bastion of Evangelical learning that I attend. I love my Wheaton profs, but there’s something nice about academics who let you call them by their first name and who buy you beer and drink it with you while chilling in the park. I didn’t take any pictures, but here’s one that I stole from my classmate:

On Saturday, a group of us took the train to Zandvoort beach on the North Sea. It was probably the only sunny and warm day that has happened my entire time in Amsterdam. Something that I want the people of the world to know is that the weather in Amsterdam is HORRIBLE. It rains essentially everyday, meaning I get soaked whenever I venture out on my bike. It’s not what I expected, but the Dutch people seem to act like it’s normal so I guess it’s typically like this. It’s a sham of a summer.

Because of the terrible weather, the beach was absolutely packed but much nicer than I expected. Any place that sells appletaart on the beach is a place for me. I took a nice nap and caught some rays.

At night, we all went out to have dinner in Chinatown. The people in the program are always down for doing things together, to the extent that I’m not sure that I could do something by myself even if I wanted to. It’s kind of nice. After the dinner, we went to this terrifying canal-side bar where I sat on the edge of a picnic table and gripped on for dear life. There was no barrier protecting me from slipping back and plunging into the 10 ft deep canal. Here’s a picture of me thinking about all the possible ways I could die in this very moment (also stolen from a classmate):

On Sunday, I woke up rather reluctantly at 11:30 am and then set out with my roommate for the aforementioned apple pie and to visit the Anne Frank house. My last time at this museum was 7 years ago, but after spending a week in Anne’s city, living just a block away from the old Jewish quarter, and seeing the square where all the Dutch Jews were rounded up and taken to internment, it just seemed to have more magnitude this time. Especially eerie was seeing a picture of Anne standing on the sand at Zandvoort beach as a child, where I just was, and reading that Jewish people used to be banned from the beach prior to WWII. It’s just too much.

There is no tasteful way to take a picture at the Anne Frank house, but here’s me at 13 with artificially blonde hair, unsure of what face to make:

After the museum, we explored a bit more of the fashionable Jordaan neighborhood and then headed back to our apartment for dinner of fresh, still-warm baguette and brie cheese. Dutch food is largely disgusting (weird sausages and buttermilk to drink), so it was nice to go French for a night.

Also, one of my classmates is basically the group paparazzi, so here’s a collection of photos from the week that I’ve stolen from her:

The “biking while wearing an unfortunately short shirtdress in the rain” series:

And I’m learning things, too! Here’s one of me being studious:

And here’s one of me at a night lecture that wasn’t even required :

My time in Amsterdam has been enormously busy and jam-packed with activities, and the city itself somehow has a big city pace with a small city feel at the same time. I kind of like it that way, and am looking forward to two more non-stop weeks.