Comments on: Me In Berlin & Amsterdam

By: Fred

Fred — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:25:51 +0000

We travelled there with our three daughters. We found all informations on amsterdam.info. Amsterdam it is a very beautiful town and the museums are great. But with the exchange rate as it is, we found it very expensive. Some museums were closed for refurbishment, but the views of the canals and hi-lights such as the Anne Frank House and the Artis Zoo (an old-fashioned place with a great array of animals kept in somewhat cramped conditions) are very memorable. The food is awful unless you want to spend a great deal of money and there is a cynical attitude to tourists that is very out of date (e.g. tapas marinaded pork was one slice of fried bacon on 1/2 a bread roll). We stayed in the serviceable but expensive Singel Hotel which was okay but its close proximity to a red light area made going out with the children awkward and there really was nothing charming or liberated about hurrying past the ladies in the windows. The same is true of the legal dope selling 'coffee houses'. The whole bicycle thing is interesting. It is almost, but not quite, the eco-city of the future. Some cyclists are quite anarchic and we spent a fair bit of time dodging pavement mounted bad-tempered riders. Overall verdict was we were glad we'd been but wouldn't go again as it feels over priced, out of date and sleazy - not the cutting edge hip family friendly town it's sold as.

By: meaw

meaw — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 04:18:21 +0000

In Berlin, you might want to see the c-base, the stranded space station….

By: W-Mark Kubacki

W-Mark Kubacki — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 12:57:40 +0000

Berlin and the Netherlands? If you have the time, drop by in Hanover – the central railway station is in the city center, near some spots worth sightseeing: The “Altstadt” (picturesque Old Town), “Altes Rathaus” (city hall, a very popular motif in camera tests), “Sprengelmuseum” (museum of arts) as well as the highly controversial works of Niki de Saint Phalle. Drop me a line if you need a guide to the city.

By: slinkp

slinkp — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 21:51:36 +0000

In Amsterdam, the popular musuems are all well worth a visit and unique to Amsterdam: the Anne Frank house, the Van Gogh museum, and the Rijksmuseum.

Make a point of trying Indonesian food at least once: rijstaffel is delicious, distinctive, and very very rare in the USA. Unfortunately I have forgotten the names of all the restaurants we ate at, but everything we tried was good.

We stayed at the Estherea, which has a great lobby and a great location (easy to get everywhere on foot but still quiet at night), and a very nice staff, but rooms are quite small and quite expensive.

By: Ksenia

Ksenia — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 15:34:12 +0000

If you want a great comedy show in English + dinner, Boom Chicago is located in the center of Amsterdam: http://www.boomchicago.nl/en/

By: Ivo van der Wijk

Ivo van der Wijk — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:48:45 +0000

If you want to taste some good local beer in Amsterdam, visit “Brouwerij ‘t IJ” (http://www.brouwerijhetij.nl/). They close at 8pm (it’s not a pub) so be there in time. Be warned, too much “columbus” will kill you :)

By: housetier

housetier — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 09:54:30 +0000

You might want to check out the crashed space station c-base: https://c-base.org/ (cacert signed certificate). We do lots of different things from playing games, producing movies, to setting up city-wide free wireless networks; from random BBQ sessions to hosting “events” such as Pypy Sprint or Maemo Summit 2008.

contact cultorga@c-base.org if you want more information :-)

By: loveencounterflow

loveencounterflow — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 08:28:19 +0000

yeah cbase, but that is virtual… visit the real ufo, http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/137393339_16899c050a.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/temp/137393339/&h=500&w=465&sz=253&hl=en&start=1&sig2=Vmc91EkSn8mZKc2Q4mKgxg&um=1&tbnid=Mxzfw6JL1KybKM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=121&ei=HtSOSMeLMZmi7QWd3PXABw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dnalepastr%2Bberlin%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN accessible from nalepastr. there’s a club right next to it.

~f.

By: Ben Bangert

Ben Bangert — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 00:08:45 +0000

If you haven’t booked your lodgings yet for Amsterdam, consider staying a 5-minute train ride outside of Amsterdam in Haarlem. The Haarlem city square is quite nice (I really enjoyed the afternoon in the square downing a wit bier), and its a bit quieter at night than Amsterdam so you can be well rested for the busy days. It’s quite a bit cheaper as well, so you get a lot nicer place for the same price as you would pay in Amsterdam, without the noisy drugged up tourists (Or do you plan on being one of them? :).

There’s two different sex museums in Amsterdam, my wife and I found both of them rather entertaining. If you have a Rick Steves book for the Netherlands, its full of good downtown walks that take you through some historic and interesting parts of town. Also make sure to go on a canal ride.

I was tempted to rent bicycles as ludo suggested, but after seeing the rather death defying ways they wove through traffic decided it’d be a bit less stress to just walk, or take the street car around.

Just cause you’re in Amsterdam, doesn’t mean you have to spend your day’s there, there’s lots of interesting towns within a 30 min train ride away.

By: Joerg Baach

Joerg Baach — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 22:30:09 +0000

In Berlin, you might want to see the c-base, the stranded space station....