They'd welcomed us into their home once before - a year ago exactly, to be, well, exact. Astute readers may recall our post about Queen's Day 2008; well, we had so much fun we decided to come back for more. Day one was spent unwinding and regrouping before the party began on April 29, Queen's Night, with a fairly low key celebration that took us to Eamon's house - another friend, but one we hadn't met before - where we also met up with Erwin - a friend we have met before. Some Guitar Hero and Buzz quiz video games took us through the night before retiring early in preparation for the morrow.We started the day off right with a flongers before scraping together whatever orange we could find (though I had specifically bought an orange Oktoberfest shirt back in September in preparation for this eventuality) and hustling out to the
train station around 1PM. Huge lines, but we got tickets and, luckily, seats on the train. Key, as that allowed us to drink our first beers of the day in relaxed style. Definitely a good start to the day.Once we arrived in Amsterdam, we promptly commenced with a hardcore wander. See, there seems to be a theme with Queen's Day where the entire day is spent moving from one meeting place to another. We, like the Dude, abided. The only thing is, you gotta surrender to it and just go with the flow, not worrying about anything other than having a good time. So we wandered past the locals hawking anything and everything (Queen's Day is a freemarket day where anyone can sell anything anywhere) to a square with music and food...
though it took us quite a while to get to the food (loempia, bapoa, and fries), what with all the beer and dancing. We eventually made it over the Westerpark, which is a pretty cool park that we'd never been to before. Oh, and before the square and before the park we went to the anti-squat home of a few friends of friends - an anti-squat is set up because in the Netherlands, squatters have lots of rights and it's hard to kick them out of places so owners will rent places extremely cheap if they aren't up to code rather than let squatters move in.
This anti-squat was ridiculous. Basically a three storey mansion in the heart of Amsterdam shared by only three people who paid a grand total of €100 a month. Ridiculous. Anyway, there was much more to Queen's Day than just that but no room for it here. Suffice to say it was awesome and acquainted or reunited us with many of Avi's friends we'd met the year before; in addition to Nicole, Dries, Eamon, and Erwin,
there was also Analiese, Karlien, Adam, Barynia, and Matt the Russian, among others. Awesome day.We spent a few more days just chilling out with Nicole and Dries, not doing much of anything except for relaxing... though we did make it out of the house for a couple physical activities. Like playing basketball at the neighborhood park... against eight year olds. We dominated them with our teamwork and sportsmanship, showing explosiveness and sticktoitiveness like you've never seen before. We also had about three feet on the tallest kid. And after we mopped the floor with their mutilated remains, Dries broke Kate's glasses with a completely benign but completely errant shot that sailed over the hoop and smacked her
right in the side of the face. We really can't blame Dries though, it wasn't his fault. But it was just the start of Kate's week of hell... but most of that took place in Arnhem where we went for a few days to get out of Nicole and Dries' hair... but more on that later. What else did we do with our 10 days in Utrecht? We played a few rounds of Monopoly and Uno, plus a couple other card games, including teaching Dries and Nicole how to play Yanif. We also got a little more exercise in a soccer game where we met up with Nicole's brother (who is living in Utrecht for the year, studying international law) and his friends from school.
This was a bit more of a challenge than slaughtering 8 year olds on the B-ball courts, proving to me exactly how out of shape I truly am.Also on the agenda was a joint birthday party for Nicole and Dries. They'd invited a bunch of friends to a BBQ in the park and invited us to come back from Arnhem for the festivities. Apparently it's actually not legal to have a barbecue ANYWHERE in Utrecht - something we only know because Dries actually asked specifically for this - but we flaunted the law and did it anyway, grilling up such tasty morsels as burgers, Egyptian kebabs (courtesy of Eamon's mother), and chicken wings. Throw in some beers and some monkey-in-the-middle with the soccer ball and you got yourself an awesome day. Especially when it's topped off with Karlien's homemade strawberry cheesecake... so good... and another round of UNO.
Of course there were some birthday gifts and Kate and I contributed a birthday/thanks-for-letting-us-bum-around-at-your-place-for-a-couple-weeks present of the board game Carcassone, winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award in 2001. This was a game none of us had ever played before but which turned out to be really, really fun (we got the idea for a board game, incidentally, as there are like 10 shops in Utrecht dedicated solely to board games - just packed floor to ceiling with every game you can imagine). I recommend Carcassonne whole-heartedly... and apparently it gets even better once you get the hang of it a bit more.Throw in a few wanders into town for some markets and food
- including the Italian sandwich stand and the Greek gyro place right next to the Dom - and you've got a pretty good idea of our time in Utrecht. We also finally made inside the Dom church dominating the skyline and marveled at the stark white walls and intricate gravestones within. But really our time in Utrecht was dominated by awesomeness with Nicole and Dries. Thanks again, guys...
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