Comments on: Me In Berlin & Amsterdam

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….

By: Randy Syring

Randy Syring — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:55:21 +0000

“On vacations my evenings tend to be underscheduled.”

Uh, thats the point! ;)

By: tp

tp — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:45:01 +0000

Ian -

Brasserie Harkema - http://www.brasserieharkema.nl/ - Trendy, expensive, but actually quite good. You’ll need a reservation, and yeah I’ll say it again it’s expensive. However, I liked that my wife and I were some of the only American’s in the place.

My wife and I took a canal tour with these guys (http://www.amsterdamboatclub.com/). It’s not your run of the mill canal tour (zillions of tourists in a huge boat). You’re in an open air boat with a small number of people. You can bring food, drink and smoke. Not only can you go places the big boats can’t but you get to meet cool people. Captain Rod was our Captain, he’s great.

A tip on the Anne Frank House - go toward the end of the day if your schedule permits. The mornings and afternoons are packed, but at the tail end of the day you can go through it at your own pace and not have to deal with heavy lines. Another food note - the Pancake Bakery is touristy but a nice place to eat afterwards (http://www.pancake.nl).

One more - http://www.pregorestaurant.nl/ - this was out of the way and incredibly tiny in the Jordaan, but amazing.