Queensday / House Party

Hm…
Well…
(Must gather thoughts after rather severe hangover)

Queensday is quite an interesting experience here in Amsterdam-
Basically it’s the queen mum’s birth date,
but its the actual queens birthday your celebrating.
Ah well, after the first few beers… who cares.

So anyway, Friday evening was Queensnight, as in…
you know… night before the queens birthday,
and thousands of people are out and about, in bars, on the streets,
drinking beers, listening to live music coming from every corner
and every ‘plein’ (square), and some (like me)
hopping around vigorously,
trying to not get too cold (it felt like November)
while downing some cool lager…
maybe that was the problem!
Cold outside + cold from inside…hm.

Well anyhow, it was a lot of fun hanging out with Ghislaine and Steve,
roaming the streets of Amsterdam,
getting stuck in big masses/waves of drunk people (not so nice),
and being dazzled by some of the extravagant,
very orange outfits of partying people.
(orange = royal colour – the neon ‘burn you eyes out’ version).
(For some reason all the rest of our friends headed up north
to a place called Groningen…
I’ve never been there,
and cannot remember being asked to come along
(ah the sweet bitter undertone ;) nah, just kidding)
but apparently they had a wild Queensnight there as well-
Tamara sounded like the Godfather when I saw her the next day!
Great stuff).

After a pretty late night, we (me and my Gabe)
kicked ourselves out of bed the next day
In order to prepare about 3 tons of food for our party
that we were giving in combination with Queensday-
Great idea, we thought, as there will be shit weather
(turned out to be chilly, but all in all okay...
even with sunny spells, damn it)
and people will flock to our central location
to get a rest from the Queensday craze-
hm well- it almost worked out.

After getting all the salads and pizza and cheese platter done,
We headed out to the ‘Jordaan’ (very popular,
charming area in the heart of Amsterdam)
And then to the Vondelpark,
where kids where selling some old toys and games.
That’s the whole thing you see, getting a spot on the street
and selling a lot of ‘junk’/old stuff for a Euro or so-
well that, and getting hammered by early afternoon for most people-
Its pretty great! Everyone seems happy!
Which must be why its such a big success…Queensday.

So, after heading back home
and getting everything set up (music and more food)
People came by (mostly hung over of course)
had some snacks and some drinks,
And then left pretty early…
Which is fine for me, I thought- ah, what the hell,
its my party too,
so I might as well get hammered.
So ‘sh-woops’ down went the Vodka
and some of the other toxic stuff in the fridge!
After dancing like I was having some kind of weird seizures,
I had some of the 2.8 tons of food that was left-
Put on my pyjamas, and started watching DVDs with Gabe…

Then the spinning and sickness started… ai…

Just when I though- puh, actually I am happy everyone left early-
‘Drrring’ three more people showed up unexpectedly.
And even though you might suspect that that
was the last thing I felt like-
It was great!
Basically I didn’t really know them,
so spending some chilled out time together,
chatting away, was the best thing at that moment.
I really enjoyed it.

So all in all it was a good Queensnight/day experience,
and if I am in town next year,
I want to be on a boat! That looked like so much fun 