The thoughts & opinions of Sassarella, the Queen of Sass as she cavorts in 's Gravenhage & beyond. Brought to you by CES's (Chief Executive Slaves) of Big Skanky Ho Inc.
The Dutch must love their Queen. Once a year, on April 29th and 30th, the Dutch pay tribute to their Queen, by first getting really drunk, then by having a city-wide garage sale. While this is a major improvement over the human sacrifices of the past, the ritual of Queens Day is no less bizarre for it’s relative bloodlessness. (I kid. Of course there was no human sacrifice. It was goats. Cheese-producing goats).
I spent Queens Night (the night before Queens Day) in Amsterdam with one person I sort of knew and an assorted group of complete strangers. I’d spent most of the day in Amsterdam as well, and, let me just say it right now, I was stoned out of my tree. I spent a considerable amount of time in the Coffeeshop Pink Floyd, which, despite its rampant potential for lameness, was not that bad. They serve a lovely vanilla tea there, as well as various forms of weed. You can get joints, space cakes, little baggies, marijuana tea (which doesn’t do a thing if you don’t add milk. Something to do with milkfat and THC.) They don’t play any Pink Floyd, though their logo really says it all. It’s a picture of a pig, with the caption “Wish you were here.” So lame. Yet less lame than the Doors coffeeshop, of which there are two, both of which I avoided like the plague.
Afterwards, I immediately went in search of food. I found it at a café called Meneer Pannekoek, where I sampled the greatest Dutch food known to man, poffertjes. Little, silver dollar-sized bits of pancakey love, poffertjes are served with a little bit of syrupy filling and then covered with powdered sugar and a huge glop of butter on the side. I found the powdered sugar a bit excessive, but goddamn if they weren’t the tastiest things ever. And not only because I was stoned.
Eventually, Queens Night got into full swing. Apparently, the party is crazier in the Hague, where the Queen lives, which, if true, means that I probably made a wise choice in going to Amsterdam, which was plenty nuts, thank you very much.
I met up with a bizarre Swedish guy, wandered the red light district, in search of a) a bar, and b) chinese food. We ended up in the cheesiest bar known to man, notable only because the men in there were real drunks, and I was the only non-prostitute in attendance. This is the kind of place where drunken men wait for their buddy, who has fallen for the lures of one of the red light whores, to be finished. But they served Heineken and that was pretty well all my companions wanted.
Still, this gave me an opportunity to see the red light district at its best. On Queens night, the streets are packed. This much of a crowd apparently brings out the best of the prostitutes, who, dollar signs in their eyes, pose ridiculously in red lit windows. I have to say, a lot of these women were pretty sexy, which is something of a surprise if the only prostitutes you’ve seen are the Parkdale junkies. They’re probably a lot more expensive, though. At the time, I was theorizing whether, since they were one of Amsterdam’s biggest tourist attractions (canals, schmanals), the government subsidized them at all. Pretty doubtful, but it would be kind of funny.
Chinatown is right next to the red light district. I’m not sure why, but there it is. We ended up in a dingy, flourescent hole in the wall, which unsurprisingly, had a really decent hot and sour soup. This is where I met two (other) Swedish guys whose names currently escape me. I spent an hour or so debating the relative severity of anti-pornography laws in Sweden and Canada. Apparently, while Sweden is a fairly conservative place, Canada’s laws are way stricter. We are losers.
As the restaurant was on its way to closing, the guy at the next table over, a huge, bearded, aging hippie started telling lame jokes (most of which culminated in a lame pun). He asked us for advice on how to have sex with his wife, and then proceeded to recommend the skunk at a coffeeshop called Mellow Yellow. How cool am I; I had no idea what he was talking about. Anyway, huge bearded aging hippie left to go get his skunk and we continued on our way. After a short stop at a coffeeshop that served beer (not that common) where I spent a good ten minutes watching one of the Swedish guys smoke a joint that looked like a small club, we headed for a bar called Da Diepte (the devil). Decorated with hot rod flames and black walls, we were in rockabilly heaven. A pretty decent band was playing (in Dutch, so I don’t really know who they were), but it was so packed that there literally was no room to move.
At this point, we’d lost two of the Swedish guys, but had picked up a third, who appeared to be certifiable, and for some reason couldn’t talk to me without whacking me on the side of the boob to make his point. We also met up with a Danish woman, whose name may have been Fritz, and a Korean woman named Song, who had spent nine years living in Montreal, working as a circus performer (vertical rope—you tell me). Space considerations forced us to leave this place, which was down so many back alleys that there’s probably no way in hell that I’ll ever find it again.
Several bars later, everyone packed it in for the night. I ended up on the train back to Den Haag. 4:30am saw me crawling into bed, tired, smelly, and hoping never to see beer again.
The next day was Queens Day. For some inexplicable reason, Queens Day is celebrated mainly by taking the day off, but secondarily by taking all the crap that’s built up in your garage and selling it. In Scheveningen, where I’m currently living, this seems to mean all the stupid children’s toys that you can’t bear to throw out, but don’t want to keep. I bought a stupid vase for 1.5 euro and went back to my bed. Apparently, Amsterdam is a lot more fun on Queens Day because there’s a lot more people out and about. Most of the sidewalk on the 29th was marked with chalk squares with “bezet” written in the middle, meaning held. You’ve got to love a city where people can actually mark their territory with some chalk. Sadly, I didn’t see the entire city of Amsterdam transformed into a flea market, but I definitely intend to next year.
Since Queen’s day, it’s been pretty quiet here, aside from going to work and finally signing up with a makelaar (rental agent), whose job it is to find me an apartment. When I settle into one, I get to pay them one month’s rent, on top of first and last to the landlord. Bargain.
One thing I have noticed though, is that most of the apartments I’ve seen here are white. Not only that, there are usually no holes in the walls either, as if drywall was some rare and precious commodity, never to be tampered with.
Anyway. I’m tired, rental agents don’t make for interesting reading, and I’m sitting here typing this in the dark. ‘Night.
