Chapter 2 - Garage Sales and Techno, a.k.a. Queen's Night
music|in the reins - calexico & iron and wine

And the saga conitinues... Actually, it occured to me that breaking my adventure into chapters isn't making my entries any shorter, but rather is giving me poetic lisence to blab on more than usual. Sorry. That being said, I think I'll stay the course. It's far easier to apologize and to continue doing what you're doing. Y'know.

First, let's introduce the city, and then the hodgepodge of people I wound up passing the majority of time in Holland with. Utrecht is a charming Dutch city south of Amsterdam with a beautfiul little canal running right through the centre of town. This was somewhat of a homecoming for Helene, as this was where she spent her exchange semester last year. We were hitched on the idea when we discovered that Kiran, a friend of my close friend of Shannon who were both on exchange in Utrecht the same year as Helene (this is the sort of the convoluded connections that to me meeting Helene), was coming back to Amsterdam for a wee visit, to enjoy the glories of Queen's Night. Coming with her from Toronto was her friend Leah, and in Utrect we also met up with a bunch of Kiran's friends that she made hosteling in Poland. Kate, an Aussie who'd been in Europe for a year or so, bartending in Austria among other things, and two Brits, Ashley and Sean, Ashley being a policeman and Sean the guy on the dispatch radio for the cops as well. Here's a photo of enjoying a nice simple communal meal cooked in the hostel kitchen of.... pasta and tomato sauce. Oh hostel life. Meet the gang!


So we arrived in Utrecht, and I have to say the first thing that struck me were quite simply the bikes. Rows upon rows, whole three story parking garage's dedicated to bikes, bikes locked to every rail pole and fence imaginable, and the constant impression that, walking on the sidewalk, you were going to be run down by a dutch bicyclist. These things are far more scary, not like cars, you can hear those fuckers coming, bikes are silent killers! Helene tellls me that everyone gets hit at least once while in Holland (she, of course, had been hit twice). Here, meet the bikes, meet the canal, meet Utrecht.

Our first night was a thursday, the traditional student party night, and Helene was dead set on reliving a tradition of the year before : that of partying hard at Tivoli, the local student club, concert venue. OK, it's here that I must exorcise my one regret from the trip. We arrived that day, and Helene took me see the canal strip before we ate, drank, and prepared for the night. And by fluke, an Iron & Wine / Calexico concert had been rescheduled for that night! I was incredibly excited, but no one had heard of them and the 30 euro pricetag wasn't all that enticing. Plus the concert started early so the club could function as a nightclub that night... I had one chance to convince everyone we should go, my iPod, to play some of the album they put out together and get everyone on board. AND... my fucking iPod crashed, right there and then, and it's been COMPLETELY fucked since. So needless to say we missed the concert, but I would've really liked to have caught it, and so In The Reins sits as my music for this leg. Give it a listen, you won't be disappointed. Luckily my concert bug would be satisfied in Paris, but that's two chapters away...

Anyways, we had another problem for that night, in that our hostel had a curfew of 2AM. This curfew was luckily lifted for the next night's Queen's Night celebrations. However for that night, the Tifovi didn't really get going till around 1:30, so we had two options - come back to the hostel and recharge our batteries, or give 'er everything we had until we could get back in to the hostel at 8AM the next morning. In the club, the girls and guys opted for plan b, but Helene was dead set on staying out (especially in that by coincidence literally all her friends from the exchange last year had all come back from all over Europe to the same club at that moment for the celebrations). So Helene and I had to find somewhere to crash. And that's where Benjamin came in. Meet Benjamin, partying with Helene (I'm gonna get shot for posting that pic). Benjamin, a native frenchmen now living in Utrecht who was buddy's with Helene last year, was gracious enough to lend us the mattress on the floor in his one bedroom appartment to crash the few hours between 5AM and the opening of our hostel. However, Benjamin got more than he bargained for, cause the English boys, embarassed at being shown up by their arch rivals the French, and a boy from the 'colonies' on how to party, came flying back in full form an hour later to giv'er everything they had. It was a great night, but poor Benjamin wound up putting all of us up in his one room appartment, and took so much good hearted abuse on the 45 minute walk to his place from the club that I think he may have regretted his generosity at several points on the walk home (the rendition of La Marseillaise was particularly touching). The video of us all stuffed into this little room, strewn about and completely wrecked is classic, hopefully the boys'll get that posted soon. But a big thanks to Benjamin for puting up with us.

The next day was a severe recovery day and we needed to prepare for the big celebrations coming that night, so what better way to do it than get some street Vietnamese grub and go hang out in a beautiful chuch courtyard. The peace was definitely appreciated. Next thing we knew, it was time to gear up for Queen's Night, the Dutch celebration of the Queen's b-day. Not the current Queen, changing days continuously would be too confusing, so they took the late-Queen mother's birthday (why the Queen mother? dunno, makes about as much sense to me as mayo and fries), and stuck with it. Little would prepare me for the giant street party that broke out, somewhat similar to my memories of the Red Mile but even nuttier (and less breasts). It was a mix between concerts, techno, percussion groups, dance groups, choir groups, plenty of beer, density on the streets like the busiest club you've ever been to and... garage sales? Yes, it seems that this is the only night that the Dutch do garage sales, and all through the streets you could see people with blankets laid out trying to sell the most useless shit in the entire world. Also, everyone is completely outfitted in orange, a strange choice considering the country's flag contains aboslutely no orange whatsoever, but when you discover that when the Netherlands got their independence from France in the 19th Century they were governed by the House of Orange, it all starts to come together. Plenty of Heineken (which is cheap cause it's domestic!) and celebration all night, just a crazy good time. I've uploaded my clearest photo of the scene (most of my photos are pretty dark) of a crazy choir group that was singing their hearts out, just to give you a sense of what was going on. Again, I got some pretty good drum troup videos, anyone knows how to upload videos onto blogger let me know.

Well we partied all night again, and the next morning it was time to slowly pack our bags and head to the nation's capital to celebrate the actual holiday, Queen's Day, in the heart of Amsterdam. I leave you with a little photo of the most recognizable of Utrecht's landmarks, a giant jackrabbit. Why a jackrabbit? Why not? But if Holland was ever interested in distancing itself from the central point for druggie, alice in wonderland type tripouts, I think this staute would have to be first to go...

Actually, I better upload one embarassing photo of me to keep the scales even with Helene. They were giving out free crowns in the club we were at Queen's night, and I couldn't help myself. Until next time!