Europe Part 7: Amsterdam goes crazy

We got up relatively early, considering how late the rest of the city had stayed up. We took our time and then stepped out into the empty streets, post Queens Night. Broken beer bottles stacked up like snowdrifts against the buildings. It looked about like you’d expect: a mess. The city was starting to move, though. People were already walking...somewhere, everyone all dressed up in orange clothes and/or accessories. We didn’t have anything orange, to wear, at least not yet. We weren’t sure where everyone was going, but we decided, first, to head up to Dam square, one of the larger open areas in the city. When we got there it was filled with a carnival, all sorts of cheesy rides and bad carnival games. We got another waffle (yum) and some ‘traditional’ mini-pancakes (yuck) and then strolled back to Rembrandt square.


I think it rained trash last night.

The stage that they had been setting up was finally pumping out music when we got back. We stood around a while and listened. It was all fun music to listen to, if a little generic. It’s hard to appreciate the details and musicality of a piece when it’s being filtered through speakers taller than I am. Regardless: fun to dance to. On our way out of that party we found a bunch of shirts being given away. They were orange, with “Jup Holland Jup” written on them. As near as I’ve been able to figure out, it’s just an advertisement for Jupiler beer. But whatever, it was orange! We could blend in.


The stage in front of our hotel.

After that we decided head back down to Museumplace, Museum Square. The big, open area where we went to the Van Gogh and Rijksmuseum the day before. It was a large open space, and the stage they were setting up looked pretty massive, so we figured that’s where everyone was going. On the way there were lots of stalls everywhere, kinda like the flea-market-esque dappermarket had spilled out to cover the entire city. Lots of street food. Also, we passed a whole bunch of Hari Krishnas dancing along and singing their familiar mantra. It matched well with the themes of the day, though: Music, dancing, and people in orange.


I'm still not sure where everyone was going.

After passing by several random DJ booths and more off-brand purse stalls than I care to think of, we arrived at Museumplace. The time was early afternoon, and so while quite full, the area wasn’t completely bonkers yet. Jess and I had lunch consisting of some fries and some sort of meat/potato/fried croquette thing that was really good. Then we hung out with the throngs for a while and watched the stage as what I can only assume was a long line of prestigious musicians came out to perform. There were a couple of singers and a french rapper that we saw, but we didn’t know any of the people and couldn’t understand the dutch. It was still an impressive sight to see. A lot of orange. I wandered through the crowd from one end to the other just for fun.


The BIG party.

Between all the orange, all the loud music, and all the walking (Museumplace was pretty far away) we were getting pretty worn out so we came back to the hotel to relax for a while. After some writing and probably napping, we decided to head back out to try and get some food and find an internet Cafe. We came back down to the first floor and....

Queens day had become *properly* crazy. Rembrandt square had become PACKED with wall to wall people, shoulder to shoulder. It was like an LA nightclub, loud and crazy. We were just trying to get two buildings down and it took us 5 minutes and nearly getting spat on by a Jamacan kid who was clearly too out of his head to know what was going on. And, of course, the place we though we were headed didn’t actually have any internet.

Abandoning the city to it’s own vices, we grabbed some street food from a vendor across the street from our hotel and booked it back up to our hotel room, jostled by pedestrians the whole way. Everyone was trying to get somewhere: I have no idea where, though. The streets were all filled to capacity; everyone could have just stopped moving and the party would have been *right there*. Jess and I sat up in our room, just relaxing, eating food, and listening to the subwoofers kicking out music.

Later on in the early evening, we ventured back out again. The music on the street had stopped, but he clubs and bars were still going, so the throng had mostly thinned out. The trash on the ground had become even worse, but at least we could still move around. I was paranoid about the camera, though. Jess had her camera stolen in South America and I was determined that this time we would get the camera home safe. We peoplewatched for a while; a couple of people brought out little hot-air baloons consisting of a tiny flame and a big plastic bag. They did manage to take flight, though. I was worried they were going to float of and set something important on fire. I worry, though.

Back to the hotel again, where we finally fell asleep to the soothing bass kick of “Soul Sister” and “Poker Face”.

Happy birthday!

-N