By The Anne Frank House is the most popular tourist attraction in Amsterdam. We did not know until it was too late that we should have pre-purchased our tickets 6 weeks in advance. Keep that in mind if you are visiting Amsterdam. On a personal note, it feels weird to call this particular place a tourist attraction but I don’t know of a better general term. Despite that, as much as my heart bleeds for what happened to Anne Frank and her sister, her parents, and all the others in hiding I am glad that their history and story is still being told.
Anne Frank Tour
Since we were unable to get tickets to the Anne Frank House and Museum, Keltin and I decided to take an Anne Frank walking tour. This tour looks at not only the history of Anne Frank and her family but also other Jewish and marginalized people that were in hiding at the same time.
The building pictured below with the yellow trim also hid people during the Nazi occupation. Only one died and the rest survived until the end of the war. The small markers below can be found on the streets of Amsterdam. These markers tell the names of people that were drug from their homes. These markers tell where they died. These markers tell their stores to people that would never have known their names otherwise, they help us remember.
TinType Photography
The Anne Frank walking tour ended at the Homomonument. This monument remembers those of the gay community that were persecuted for their sexuality during WWII. In the square where this monument is located there was a man doing TinType photography. There is a whole explanation of TinType in my long form video below but there are a couple of things to note:
- TinType requires a long exposure time – thus why we weren’t smiling.
- TinType must be exposed within minutes of being taken. Thus the cart in the video doubles as a darkroom.
This took way longer than I expected. There were a couple of people ahead of us getting their photos done and for all that the photos have to be exposed quickly the process as a whole of drying and preserving the image takes a while. Is doing something like this worth it for everyone? Probably not. Is it cool for people that have way too much film photography equipment? Yes.
This was defiantly a history heavy day but it was full of things that need to be remembered. Safe travels.
Additional Amsterdam
- Airport Shenanigans
- Welcome to Amsterdam
- Amsterdam: Hotel and Walking Tour
- Food in Amsterdam
- Amsterdam: Canal Tour and A’dam Lookout
- Amsterdam Street Art
More WWII Information
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McGee Travel Tales 
Sorry you weren’t able to see her actual house but the tour photos still capture the solemness of what the Frank family and others endured. Thank you for sharing some very important historical content.
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