King’s Day: A Lesson in Organized Chaos
The Dutch are a people who understand the art of organized chaos
There is no other term for it. Come King’s Day (or Koningsdag if you wanna be that guy at the party) the good people of Amsterdam and the surrounding area… and for that matter, every bachelor party surrounding the surrounding area, flood into the normally orderly, cobbled, picturesque streets of Amsterdam. If you’re one of those people and would like to know why you’re donning your finest orange and chugging beer at ten in the morning, it’s for King Willem-Alexander’s birthday.
I’d like to say Koningsdag is like America’s Fourth of July, but that really doesn’t do it justice.
Now, I’m blessed enough to have been staying with my friends who live splat in the middle of Zeedijk, which meant that as soon as I stepped foot out of the door, I was dropped into the middle of the mess. First mission of the day was to fuel up on some grub. King’s Day is a marathon, not a sprint, so fill your belly with food before you fill your belly with… everything else. Luckily, finding food isn’t hard or expensive, just roam around and grab quick bites. Amsterdam has some of the tastiest restaurants of the countries I’ve visited and come Koningsdag many of them erect stalls for grab and go.
Mission number two was to grab a cup. Stalls are set up and in abundance. Drinking outside is not only legal, but seemingly (?) encouraged, so when you buy your first beer, keep your cup! You pay a deposit on the cup and rather than swapping euros and cups all day long, just keep the cup, get it refilled, and return it at the end of the day or don’t if you want a souvenir.
As the day wore on and the aforementioned booze flowed more freely than the boats full of stag dos drifting along the canals, we indulged in the other specialties that Amsterdam has to offer, strolled through a makeshift carnival of sorts, and found a spot on a bridge to park ourselves for a few moments.
These are my favorite travel moments. The ones where you find a perch, feel invisible and watch the world fly past you. Boats blasted music below us and orange clad crowds pushed past us. The clouds hung in the sky, and though it was April, and slightly chilly, the rain clouds were kind enough to spare us a few hours before sending a few showers our way. For the time being, breathing in cool, fresh air and snacking on the fries and mayo was the respite we needed from the commotion.
Eventually, we did have to move. There’s only so much time one can spend with a bridge-tethered bicycle lodged into their side before discomfort sets in and you want continue exploring.
We merged into the steady traffic flow of the highly inebriated and wove our way back into the labyrinth of high-hooked buildings, tightly bricked sidewalks and entered into a new dimension and my personal favorite — the bizarre.
Earlier, I said calling King’s Day the Dutch version of America’s Fourth of July wouldn’t do it justice. That’s because in my experience on July 4th, the events that unfold typically include some form of binge drinking and my cousin’s husband’s cousin sneaking fireworks illegally over the border from South Carolina. Now, that is absolutely nothing to sneeze at and I enjoy a somewhat over-grilled hot dog as much as the next girl, but if you took that level of intoxication, people with the same penchant for fireworks, but threw in street food, random children playing classical instruments and the odd yard sale, then that would ratchet the whole 4th of July thing up a couple degrees to Koningsdag!
Seriously, there was a kid beating the crap out of a drum kit, there was a girl playing to her heart’s content on the violin, some other child had busted out a cello. I think King’s Day might grant parents some sort of pass on child labor laws. More puzzling, were the little makeshift markets (I reiterate, yard sales?) happening everywhere. Streets that aren’t particularly wide to begin with and were especially bustling on that day became quilted with blankets as select residents set up shop offering up old and, in some cases, peculiar household items. I’m looking at you, lady with one mannequin leg.
King’s Day was crowned for me several hours after these moments when the skies opened up on us (the weather of Amsterdam doesn’t care who’s birthday it is, so pack a rain jacket).
I don’t mean getting drenched was particularly exciting. I was starting to freeze and we thought we would head back to my friends’ apartment for a quick pit stop, but en route we took a wrong turn (you wouldn’t think it’s possible to get lost going to your own place of residence, but there we were). The crowd grew busier and squishier by the moment. I know, sounds cozy, right? ’Twas most cozy.
The new herd of human cattle and I moved along at a zombie like pace, forming a somewhat unenthusiastic gliding mosh pit. There was something up ahead though; why else would people amass in such a manner? So I did what any good Bostonian would do. I treated this crowd of people as I would a group of angry commuters at seven in the morning trying to board an already overcrowded green line train and ruthlessly shoved my way in. My friends and I surged forward, artfully weaving and bobbing beyond the crowds until the distant thumping of drums came within earshot.
As we continued to stumble forward, giddy from the cold, the excitement, the beer and at this point just exhaustion, we plodded along, our steps inadvertently keeping time with the balanced beat of what turned out to be a drumline.
They thumped in time and carried us forward, the couple next to us broke into dance, encouraging the gaggle of friends next to them to break down their own steps into random hip jerks and head bobs.
However, all things must come to an end. As our drumline-led-mobile-mosh-pit continued on, my trance was broken. I’d become accustomed to the homey, dependable beats of our leaders, with an occasional individual drummer making his instrument sing a little louder than his contemporaries. But one drummer was offbeat it seemed. That was until I realized someone else had something else to say. That someone wasn’t in our drumline. It was in someone else’s drumline.
Before we knew it, we were embroiled in an epic battle to the dea- drum-off. It was a spectacle to not just witness but feel you were a part of. Being about ten feet away from the action, dueling drumbeats don’t just reach your ears, they transfix.
Though the display carried on for quite a spell, sadly all battles have a victor and a loser. As we stood on the less fortunate side of this particular skirmish, our drumline diverted right, meaning to carry on elsewhere. Now, we had been with them for blocks and fought our way to a front row seat, we felt moved by their performance, and if you thought we would immediately abandon them for a nominally more successful drumline… well, you would be absolutely correct.
Look, King’s Day, Koningsdag, whatever you want to call it, is a long day, made longer as it’s preceded by a long night, King’s Night. The sun was peeking between the clouds and the horizon, meaning night was fast approaching, we had all been drunk since roughly ten in the morning, and the winning drumline was leading us towards my friends’ favored steak house.
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and what we had to do was eat steak.
And so ends my tale of organized chaos. The next morning we awoke, walked out onto the very same Zeedijk. Cyclists rode by and hungover pedestrians calmly meandered to whatever cafe would have them. The streets were bare and clean and you would never guess that nearly two million people had traversed the roads just twelve hours before. It was as though nothing had ever happened, which leaves us with one question. Could the Netherlands actually just be an alternate Black Mirror universe?
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