Who wrote this?
Yesterday, me and Mark were trying to take a shortcut from the OBA to the Nieuwmarkt when something weird happened. I glanced to my right while walking and looked straight into the eyes of about 200 plastic dolls. And no, these were not your modern day skinny plastic Barbies, but a whole bunch of vintage ones like you only know from horror classics. Startled, I stopped walking and stared back at them (take that, dolls!). What happened next is even more freaky, but luckily I had my iPhone + attached crappy camera with me.
My first view of the doll house.
We decided to get a closer look and take some pictures through the window to make sure our story couldn’t be disregarded as another one of our pranks. Suddenly, out of nowhere, an older woman approached and asked us if we liked the collection. I just quickly mumbled “yes it’s really interesting..” in reply. She then unexpectedly opened the door next to the window and went inside the house! Fascinated by now, I quickly asked her if the dolls were hers. She then told us she bought them from an 80 year old woman who had previously lived in the house and died, and that this was only a small part of the collection.
Taking a close up
Another street side window
Apparently, the collection consists of over 5000 dolls filling up almost every room of the old house. She invited us in and took us to the garden where an old little shed with glass doors was housing another part of this weird hidden doll community. Decorated with some creepy Christmas lights and just like on the street side, all of the dolls were staring in the same direction (my direction, so it felt).
The woman told us they were trying to put the dolls up on display in the Red Light District where they are changing some ‘working girl’ windows into art displays. And honestly, if you’re going to ruin that part of Amsterdam, there is nothing that will sustain the gloomy, creepy identity of the neighbourhood better.
Five minutes after first seeing the house we were out front again giving each other confused looks. Seriously. How weird is this city?
The little house in the garden
In hindsight, this could also have happened to us:
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