The Adventures of Frankfurt Freddie...: Amsterdam New Year's

The Heineken Experience was closed for renovations until Spring 2008 and most of the museums were closed during the time we were there—outside of Saturday the 29th (our first full day there), the 30th was a Sunday (things were closed off GP), the 31st was New Year’s Eve and the 1st was New Year’s Day (and we left January 2nd). Yeah, we slept on hitting the museum scene on Saturday (literally and figuratively), but we still saw a lot that day (no pun intended ;-). For that reason, outside of New Year’s Eve, there were no real major occurrences that took place in Amsterdam. Each of the days was pretty much the same…walking around, going in and out of different shops and all in all enjoying all the beautiful scenery the city had to offer. And oh, does it offer a bounty. So much so, that you’ll have to check my photo sharing account (when I post the link) to check out all the pictures. Sidebar: Over the course of the entire Paris/Brussels/Amsterdam soiree, I took more than 1,000 pictures…no lie.

That doesn’t mean that there isn’t anything to blog about. It just means that New Year’s in Amsterdam was really the only “blog-worthy” event that took place during this leg of the trip. I’m also going to follow-up this blog with an “Amsterdam Misc” blog that should hopefully cover all the remaining stuff that happened or I noticed while in Amsterdam that isn’t necessarily covered in this blog.

Our original plan was get dressed up and go somewhere (an actual inside venue) for New Year’s. But after procrastinating for the entire trip (truthfully, we should have called around and checked on stuff prior to leaving Frankfurt), we found that our options were pretty much nil. Still though, that didn’t mean we were SOL. New Year’s in Amsterdam’s Dam Square is pretty packed and chaotic we were told, and we were down for the experience.

Now, to put the evening in the proper context, New Year’s Eve is an all day event in Amsterdam. The morning of New Year’s Eve, we awoke to the sound of what we thought were gunshots, but (as we would find out later and hear about every 30 seconds throughout the rest of the day) were fireworks, set off by the population at large.

The day progressed just like all the other days in Amsterdam (walking around, shopping intermittently, me taking pictures, Kadija exhausted from me taking so many pictures, eating at whatever restaurant we happened upon). The evening, however, was a bit different. It started I’d say at about 10 o’clock.

We walked from the hotel to Dam Square and as we approached, there was a polica barricade at the street entrance to Dam Square. We then saw a sign that said, among other things, no alcohol. Well, we weren’t about to bring in the New Year without popping the bottle of Mo’ we had with us. Our “extensive” walks through this area of the city educated us to another “pseudo-back way” to Dam Square. Now, if this were ANY American city during New Year’s and the police wished to block off or control what comes into an area, you can be sure that ALL entrances (automobile, pedestrian or otherwise) would have a police presence. So Kadija and I found it quite funny that this “pseudo-back way” (which was basically like the pedestrian pathway for the street the cops had blocked off) was completely devoid of police. Needless to say, we passed right through, bottle of Mo’ in tow, and found us a place to stand, with a view of the Dam Square super huge TV screen, right under this monument:

Here's the view:

At about this time, it was around like 10-10:30pm. They had this stage set up in Dam Square where they had various acts performing. One of them that stood out was this kid who was like 12 or something but was playing the hell out the drums. It was basically him and another older dude on the drums taking turns soloing while the other kept time or something. Despite all this, it was pretty uneventful (save for the industrial-grade fireworks that people were letting off IN THE STREET—literally, where all the people were gathered).

(see the smoke trail of one someone just let off?)

It wasn’t long before Kadija and I were hungry, so we went to one of the many “create your own stir-fry” places in Amsterdam…and they were always DAMN good (pun intended). Basically, you choose the meat, vegetables and sauce and its ready in like 5 minutes. I’m sure these type of places have found their way to over NY and are probably all over places like Thailand, but it was new to me…and it hot the spot.

We were done with our food at around 11:30pm, so we headed back over to the spot under the monument we were standing at before. It was around this time that they brought the last act onto the stage—some troupe that played these bass heavy drums (think jungley like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). OK, to me, whoever was the program director for this New Year’s entertainment needs to straight up be fired. Yeah, I’ll concede that the playing of the drums sort of built up the anticipation for the coming year (their playing got more and more intense as midnight approached), but honestly they could of done better in such a New Year’s heavy city like Amsterdam. Secondly, AND THIS REALLY PISSED ME OFF (ask Kadija)…THEY ONLY SHOWED THE CLOCK 5 MINUTES AND 10 SECONDS BEFORE NEW YEAR’S. THE REST OF THE TIME THEY SHOWED THESE SORT OF MOVING SQUARES IN RED, BLUE AND ORANGE ON REPEAT (LITERALLY, THE WHOLE “MOVEMENT SEQUENCE” WAS LIKE 15 SECONDS IN TOTAL). You know, I could understand if it was a cultural difference thing where in America they always show the clock so you have an idea of how much time is left while over in Holland they feel the showing of the clock only matters for the countdown. But when you usurp my clock viewing time to show me moving squares (and I don’t care if it was part of the drumming troupe’s act/show)…I’m pissed, I’m sorry. And yeah, you could say that many of the people out there were on some sort of drug and the intent of the “moving square sequence” was to accentuate their high…but I guarantee, more people were blown than blown away…feasible?!

All right, I’m off my soapbox.

So, if the fireworks in the middle of the street weren’t enough then you had people climbing onto the monument we were standing under and around. The view from up there was spectacular I’m sure, but I mean, seriously, this is like the equivalent of someone climbing on the Lincoln Memorial during the 4th to get a better view of the fireworks and/or the Mall. And the police did nothing…as they did with the fireworks. And climbing up there was no cake-walk either. To get up there, you had to either jump or get pulled up to the ledge which was like (and I’m being conservative here) a good 12 feet high. This picture gives an idea of what I’m talking about…

So the countdown happened, 2008 started, fireworks went off like Beruit and it wasn’t until like 5 minutes into 2008 that I was finally able to pop the cork on the bottle of Moet (it was stuck in there some kinda serious). But we had a ball nonetheless…

Earlier, when we were researching last minute New Year’s options, someone told us that the fireworks in the red light district were where it’s at. So after the Dam Square countdown, we headed over to the PACKED red light district and lo’ and behold, dude was right. And the thing about these fireworks was that there was this neighborhood aesthetic to it. Of course there were random people just letting off fireworks by the canal (along the packed narrow sidewalks, mind you). But the piece-de-resistance were these 3 or 4 dudes who had a docked flat-bed boat upon which they set off these spectacular fireworks every 5 minutes for like a half an hour to 45 minutes. And these weren’t no kiddie fireworks, these were the super load, super high, even spiraling fireworks I had never seen before. And for it to be happening no more than just 100 meters right in front of me made it all the more brilliant.

When it seemed as if dudes were out of fireworks, and the thunderous roar of applause from all of the red light district’s residents and tourists had subsided, Kadija and I walked through the streets and alleyways of the red light district in its most frenzied of states…