Tuesday 24 August

Another day that did not qualify for the adjective "summerlike". Not that it was particularly cold, wet or windy, it just did not feel like summer. It certainly wasn't summerlike in Amsterdam on Monday, when a tree outside the Anne Frank House was toppled over by strong winds. The tree had already been marked as unsafe a few years ago, but as it was mentioned in Anne Frank's diaries as a tree of hope, it had been sured up to prevent it being a hazard. The horse chestnut tree, now 150 years old, went down in a summer storm.

I have never visited the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam - I do not particularly like this sort of venue becoming a tourist trap. Anne Frank, who was killed at Bergen Belsen concentration camp in Germany in 1945, epitomised the 110,000 Jews in Holland who lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. Whilst I fully endorse the fact that the memory of all those folks should be kept alive, and their suffering remembered, I don't fancy the idea of hordes of people trooping through the premises who perhaps do not appreciate the severity of what happened. Yes, that's what the House is there for, to educate. Still, I'm not too happy about it. . Apart from that, I have also made a decision that I would not visit Auschwitz either - for the second reason (apart from the above) I would not visit Anne Frank House. Way, way too evocative. I do not think I'd be able to handle the experience, if I'm brutally honest. Visiting a place where more than 1,000,000 people were killed? In a process that had been industrialised? Oh heavens, no.