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Because I was just re-telling the story the other day, I thought I would post a brief recap of a funny event that happened when I was in college several years back.
I took part in a study-abroad program to Germany, and we often took long weekend trips to various places in Europe. One of the early places we went was Amsterdam in the Netherlands.
We had made arrangements to stay at a hostel located above a bar/restaurant. When we arrived, we sat down at a table and went one-by-one up to the owner to sign into the guest book. After I wrote my name down, the owner looked at it and boomed out "A DeWitt from America?" Next thing I know the whole bar (mostly locals) gets in on the deal and all of a sudden I'm a big celebrity. They explain to me the whole history behind the DeWitts in Holland -- i.e. the murders of Jan and Cornelius DeWitt that later made them into national heroes and martyrs. They told me being a DeWitt in the Netherlands is like being a Kennedy in America. We were treated to a free meal and drinks. All in all, a nice way to start the trip. Incidentally, it was this event that started my interest in my family genealogy, since my grandfather had always said he thought we were French Huguenot (turns out he was right in a fashion if you research the Huguenots).
The next day after this grand treatment, my friends and I set out to explore the city. We went to the Van Gogh museum, Anne Frank's house, the Sex Museum (absolutely not worth the time or money; the best part of the whole thing was hearing phone sex in different languages, now that was funny), and other places. One of the last places we stopped was Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. If you haven't heard of it, it is probably the most famous of all wax museums, there is one in New York I believe.
As we were walking through the museum, we stumbled on something that dropped my jaw -- a wax statute scene depicting the murders of Jan and Cornelius!! Needless to say it was quite grisly, with the brothers hanging from a pole by their feet with their innards scooped out from the stomach inward and up through the lungs like they were chip-n-dip bowls. Not exactly the most pleasant thing to see, even it if was done in wax. As a I recall, the rest of the scenery had women screaming, men reacting in anger and other similar things designed to show the outrage that erupted from their deaths. We were all amazed that the museum chose to have that as their Holland-themed display.
Anyway, if you are ever in Amsterdam, you might want to check out the museum and see if they still have the scene (my trip was in the mid-90s). But leave the kids at home, it's pretty scary.
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