Thursday, April 27th was King Willem-Alexander's 50th birthday. We took a fairly relaxed morning, but wanted some food before popping into Vogelpark to see the children's flea market. We had heard that most places were going to be closed, but we headed along our favorite canal (also known as the one right outside our window) for the tents a bridge away.
We passed a hotdog stand and a Vietnamese stand, but no restaurants. However, there were eggs to be had. A group of guys had a flat of eggs and a wooden cutout for a head to go into. A guy with goggles had some goo in his hair, and a tall blond with dried egg literally on his face asked if we wanted to buy an egg to throw at at Goggles for 1€. I was in.
I hit the wood with a satisfactory smack about a foot from his face. I wasn't quite sure of the protocol for egg-throwing (Underhand? Aim for the head or around it?), so I definitely just missed on purpose. (Whether I could have made it had I tried is a different question.)
After my egg, I asked the egg seller if he knew of any restaurants nearby. He suggested eating at the stands around the tents and stalls, guessing that nothing would really be open.
The Vietnamese egg rolls sounded ok, but it was breakfast time (at least for the next hour until noon or so). A short wander led to a poffertjies stand that was just opening. The man with the batter and the egg-carton-shaped stove in front of him had a first batch of very burnt puffballs. We think the waffle-iron-metal-burner was too hot, but he got it down enough for two batches (including one for us), before it started sticking and burning them again.
The powdered sugar and butter made it sometime to eat on the tall tables nearby before moving on, so the bitter wind hit us as we had our food. It has continued to be in the 50s (often starting the day in the 40s), so the outdoor nature of much of Amsterdam is impressive and befuddling. I had two fleece jackets on nearly every day. Today, one was underneath my orange sweatshirt.
We eat grabbed a veggie Vietnamese egg roll that completely burnt our mouths, then headed to Vogelpark.
We entered the park and walked along with a large crowd. A few buskers were right near the entrance (an oboe-led Middle Eastern band and a guy with a harmonica and guitar). It was another quarter mile into the park before the blankets and tarps started covering the grass beside the walkways. Toys, clothes, books, shoes - everything was for sale in this giant garage sale. And it was being overseen by moms with glasses of white wine. Cheers!
Not only were items for sale, but a majority of "stalls" also had drinks, cookies, cakes, and pies with handmade signs advertising the food. I kept my eye out for something tempting along those lines.
The final type of excitement, though, was the entertainment. Ten-year-olds were showing off their violin or saxophone or flute skills. Groups of smaller kids danced to playtime music. Teens had whole bands set up! We were blocked on the sidewalk at one point as pint-sized Irish dancers showed their stuff.
The creative side came as well, with kids advertising polaroids, selfie spots with cutouts of the royal family, nail polish, hair braiding, and henna.
A few of the families had constructed fair games you could pay to play. Plinko could get you different candies; pay and throw a dart on a 5-euro note, and hit it to win it; boxes full of newspaper had prizes you could reach in and grab; more people had sacrificed their faces for eggings.
"Smash the tomato" was one I've never seen before, but clearly a Dutch classic. A tomato is rolled down a piece of opaque PVC pipe, and you get a mallet to try to smash it as it rolls out. I didn't see a whole lot of people trying, but I also didn't see any successes. It looks harder than I'd guess.
A "soda machine", staffed by a kid watching the cardboard buttons being pressed, amused Alisa. I was really impressed by the 12-year-old who was 3D printing Minecraft models at his stand - that line was long!
Overall, the amount of people made it hard to linger anywhere for long, so all we spent our euros on were some pieces of Oreo fudge.
We found our way to a cafe in the center of the park that was "Outer Space"-themed - really only in that the bartenders and staff had some vaguely metallic clothing on. The bounce house for the kids that was a snowman was not really outer space-esque. We sat in the slightly too hot sun (for two heavy layers) to the slightly too chilly wind (when the clouds passed in front), doing some heavy and serious people-watching. It was still a party, so there was a DJ with a wolf onesie on. Maybe it was a space wolf?
Anyway, he clearly realized that his main crowd was the kids taking a break from the bouncy house to do whatever the latest dance wobbly move is. He started inviting (or letting - not sure who was leading this process) kids behind the turntables to essentially play with the volume slider. I was looking away and thought the speakers were cutting in and out. Nope - just a kid given free reign on the up and down slider and jamming with it.
Since over half the people there were families, it made no difference to me. I'll keep watching the kid that was tearing between the dance floor and the bouncy house, both delighted and envious of the other awesome time he could be having. Early onset FOMO.
While Rick Steves hadn't exactly resoundingly endorsed the Heineken Experience, he had mentioned it. And the free drinks available. We had seen its doors open early. Figuring both that other museums wouldn't be open that day and that King's Day, with its revelries, would be a good day to go to exhibits on beer, we walked on over.
We walked along one of the outer canals to get there, and the party was in swing on the water. Boats full of people with beer and blasting music cruised by. They were like extra large dinghies, so not a lot of creature comforts for those aboard. Still, I was a bit jealous of their hookups.
Buying our slightly-too-expensive tickets, we got a rubber wristband with two plastic chips on it, as well as these orange foam crowns with the Heineken logo on them. A large group was gathered in the next room, so we paused at the bathrooms before taking a seat underneath what used to be a silo for barley. The room's interpreter came over and pull a lever for us - but only after I put my crown on for him. A screen and speakers above simulated barley falling on us, then he launched into his script about the building, the Heineken family, and its brand. First brewed and kegged, then bottled, not shipped across the world, it all started... in another brewery outside of Amsterdam. But then it continued not long after in this custom-built brewhouse.
Pictures of the three generations that started and now continue running the business were surrounded by metals, plaques, and certificates for winning at world's fairs and then being the best at marketing after that.
We learned about the only four ingredients that go into beer (water, barley, hops, and yeast). The yeast in particular for Heineken has a pretty cool history. Yeast "A" was grown by their brew chemist at the turn of the 20th century. The colony of it is now held "under lock and key" in their major brewery outside Amsterdam, and it is shipped wherever in the world they are brewing Heineken.
We stared in some giant copper vats before tasting the wort, the pre-fermentation sugary mixture. The next stop was "Brew You", where we were put on a platform that jumped around as we followed the liquid (and a slightly amusing narrator) along the brewing processing. It sprayed us with water during the rinsing stage and had bubbles during the yeast fermentation, and I was utterly delighted in it. Why not a "3D", Disney-type ride in the middle of a beer tour? Sorry, not a tour - an "experience."
We walked along to the stables behind the building, where we chatted with the attendant there for probably longer than normal. They keep six horses on the property: all black shires with white feet and a white blaze on their forehead. They get the typical European six week vacation to pastures outside the city, but they are essentially employed for a dozen years, pulling the Heineken cart around the city during the breakfast and lunch hours to advertise, as well as show off in local parades. Given that the coloring is very important, they aren't all from a single lineage. Instead, whenever a foal somewhere in England is born with the right patterns, the Heineken representative is called up. (Or, at least, that's what Alisa and I joked would happen.)
We got instructed on the proper beer technique in the tasting room: a giant swallow, not a delicate sip that would only get the bitter foam (which, while it seems self-explanatory, I've never been told the foam is bitter before, and yet it makes so much sense!) We all got our foam mustaches on and finished the beer in the next room - essentially 360` of Heineken commercials.
With beer #1 under our belts, I thought we'd be at the bar area in no time. Don't worry, first there was a room instructing us how to pour a perfect beer - given that we had to wait around for others and observe them, I got it the first time. After the pouring, you take a ruler-shaped scraper to skim off the extra foam. All the bars in the area do it, so it is actually a Dutch way to pour their extra foamy beer.
Instead of ending after that, there were at least three different corridors with multimedia exhibits on football (soccer), rugby, and the Olympics. After a rousing match of foosball (best until ten, with at lead one own-goal each; I'll let you guess who won), we made it to... a room with karaoke and photo booths! It just didn't end!
We made our video clip of us riding around Amsterdam, singing some Dutch song, then pretended we were in a copper vat for a picture before exiting down to the elevator lobby to head upstairs.
The bar area was on the roof, with one of the best views over Amsterdam. Given that there's not a whole lot distinctive about their skyline (a couple churches and a museum?), we found a seat on a corner couch with an older couple.
We got our first beers and sat down. As we were sitting and (guilty) using the free wifi to check our messages, we heard a clattering. An extra plastic token had come skittering along the floor towards us! Alisa, much closer to the bottom of her beer, took it under her wing.
We got the second set of beer (all that we were technically owed) and started chatting with the older couple next to us. Their son was a pilot, and they could fly standby. He was doing the Atlanta-Amsterdam route, and they tagged along. Another son of theirs was a restauranteur, for what sounds like a good-cooking restaurant without a lot else around in northern Missouri. Since the wife helps out at the restaurant on the weekend, she and Alisa started talking about the service industry and what pains customers can be.
Given that it was technically my last beer, I was going pretty slow. With a few swallows left, I set my glass down. It got swept up by a circling staff member, and I made a slightly indignant noise. There was beer left!
When the guy walked past up with his stack of plastic glasses, Alisa pointed out the one of mine with a finger or two of beer left in it and loudly commented. Usually, the complaining and question-asking is my role in this friendship, so her forwardness was a true sign of friendship.
It wasn't ten seconds later that the man came over with a full beer and placed it in front of me. "Sorry about that!" and he walked off.
The four of us were delighted at the good service, and Alisa got her third beer to join mine.
The Missouri couple had been treated nicely at the front desk and ended up with a third bracelet, meaning an extra drink each for them. We smiled over their fortune, then wished them well as they got up to leave.
On the padded bench they were sitting lay a single bracelet with a single token left on it. "I wonder if they did that on purpose?" I said to Alisa.
"Well, you see if you can do anything with that. I'm going to the bathroom," she answered.
She left, and I approached the jolly Dutch men at the bar. "So, I know it's King's Day. Could you work some King's Day magic and turn this one token into two beers?"
And that's how we got four drinks for the price of two at the Heineken Experience. It took Alisa a hot second after getting back to our seats before realizing our great fortune.
After just a bit of liquid and just after 5pm, it was time for some food. Just outside our Airbnb was a vegetarian Indian restaurant that I had set my sights on. Thankfully, it was open and we got seated in the half-full dining room right away.
We got a dosa filled with potatoes and raw onions before our paneer dishes. Mine had peppers, onions, and a great curry sauce to go with my mango lassi. The naan we ordered also went well with Alisa's palak paneer. Spinach! Something green!
The restaurant filled up while we had our meal, and there was a line to be seated when we crossed the street to our room for a bit of digesting.
The city didn't seem quite as lively as the night before, and so we posited that the Thursday holiday might mean people would have to work on Friday. What was more true was that many people had been having a good time since the evening before, and everyone has a limit.
We decided that Dam Square would be a good place to walk to, and we'd see what we'd see. We pushed through one giant throng of people, but in general it was just people flowing along all the streets.
The lack of a next step meant that Alisa and I just stood in the middle of Dam Square for a bit, watching the tourists getting photobombed by the inebriated locals. I couldn't discern what year King's Day (which was previously Queen's Day) started, so I asked some men wandering by. At first, the long stare made me think they didn't understand English and the question of "when did King's Day start", but then the words that came next made me realize they were just free-wheeling like everyone else.
"24:00!" said one of them, helpfully. "9am," countered the other. "Yesterday evening?" I offered, understanding their interpretation. They cheers us and went on their merry, merry way.
A bar near the square had seats open up under a heater, so we took a seat. The group next to us had a guy with a t-shirt and shorts on. It was still only maybe 50 degrees out! Alisa saw some Canadian flags on their outfits, which made more sense as to their lack of cold-sensing nerve-endings.
It was creeping surprisingly close to 9pm, so I ducked to the shop across the street to get some cans to put in our bags for public displays of drinking, if desired. Apparently open alcohol isn't regularly tolerated in Amsterdam (which is different than other places I've been in Europe), but King's Day has a special exception.
After dinner and drinks comes dessert, so
I decided the third waffle place I saw we'd stop. This wasn't a bad idea, but the third waffle place was not doing a ton of business. The man behind the counter asked about toppings, and we loaded up the waffles he rewarmed for us. Ultimately, they were still a bit chewy but satisfied the sweet tooth.
We each cracked open a (warm) beer and began our saunter back to the apartment. Not a lot of street parties were out, and people were generally clustered around bars. The waffle guy had said that it was a holiday tomorrow (Friday), so I didn't quite know what to make of the earlier ending, but I wasn't going to protest either. That much time out and about today and over the course of the week made bed a tempting option.
Our walk home had the only true display of overindulgence for the day with someone vomiting against a wall. Unlike America, where the legal thing is to be drunk, in Amsterdam there was a contingent of those that frequented the coffee shops around the cities (and brought their clouds of pot smoke and mellow attitudes back out into the streets). To add to cocktail of influencers, we saw balloons being filled with laughing gas and discarded metal canisters all over (kind of like rifle shells) that might have contained CO2.
Regardless of the many way people got their kicks and celebrated it, it was the end of King's Day.
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