No, I dont expect the Hilton, I politely informed the commissioning editor, but I do think that $50 is a little light for two nights accommodation and expenses.
For a guy who writes about flowers all day, this man had a real attitude problem.
Well, thats all we can offer Im afraid. Take it or leave it. Anyway are you sure that tulip bulbs are a big feature of Queens Day, because none of my colleagues here have ever heard of it ?
Of course they are, I lied, a Dutch festival isnt a festival without tulips.
So there it was. Commissioned to write a two page feature on Dutch Tulip Bulbs in the Millennium. I know absolutely nothing about flowers, tulips or the likely effects of the millennium on them, but I do know about Queens Day. First and foremost, its the best possible time to be in Amsterdam. It marks the official birthday of Queen Beatrice, Hollands reigning monarch and takes place from midnight 29th April to midnight 30th April. Queens Day is Hollands Mardi Gras, Beerfest and street Carnival all rolled into one and is celebrated with the kind of ferocity normally only associated with winning the World Cup. It blasts away for 24 hours uninterrupted from the music stages in Rembrantsplein to the fire-breathing transvestites in Leidseplein and is the one time in the year when the police are actually forbidden from interfering with any activity, no matter how debauched. For a major blow-out, you just wont be able to find anything better. I just hoped I would come across some tulips, one way or another.
When it came however, the Queens Day trip started badly enough and ended, like the best laid plans, more with a whimper than a bang.
It started before I had even got on the plane. Two minutes before arriving at Luton airport, the train ploughed into three cows that had strayed onto the track when it was travelling at 40mph. This may not sound excessively fast, but the photos of the front of the train I later took were the only ones that Boots have ever refused to print that didnt feature the genitalia of someone who had passed out at a party.
We just cant print that kind of thing, Im afraid Mr Dakota, the manager later explained. Its sick.
The ensuing one hour delay however, was just sufficient to make me miss my scheduled flight. The one I was transferred to brought me into Amsterdam at midnight which, in turn, was just sufficient to make the hostel I had reserved give up on any chances of my arrival and give away their last bed to a whinging American git. No amount of ranting about how important a journalist I was, nor the fact that I could single-handedly effect the opinion of the West Countrys horticultural society had any effect. My efforts were further impaired by the fact that the six hour gap between my scheduled and my re-allocated flight had entirely been filled by me drinking Long Island Iced Teas with a bunch of Israeli backpackers. Humiliated and demonstrably drunk, I wandered back out onto the night. Queens Day was only 45 minutes old, but already I had a deep sense of paranoia.
There was no way I would find anywhere else to stay. Still, who needs sleep when youve got a 24 hour party to get to grips with ? Music was pumping out of speakers all over the place, albeit bad European house music and people were bustling about everywhere. I grabbed a Heineken and a jumbo hash-cake from a make-shift stall and staggered along the brightly lit canal path that led to Leidseplein.
Here, the sight was extraordinary. The square was covered with flags and bunting and hundreds of people were milling around. Not just your usual late-night low-lifes either, but Dutch kids, grannies and teenagers all strolling about and browsing through the clutch of fair stalls as if it were a Sunday afternoon. Virtually everyone was wearing orange - shirts, dungarees and ludicrous Statue-of-Liberty style headpieces and about half were wearing clogs. Some had even managed to neatly combine the two trends by sporting orange clogs which shone very brightly in the darkness. Almost immediately I started to feel very unwell.
Within fifteen minutes I had been turned away from 3 night-clubs because, variously its couples only, youre too drunk and, more perceptively, youre a pissed-up asshole whos puked on his own trousers and cant even stand upright. Go fuck yourself.
I staggered to the corner of Leidseplein and collapsed. And so my Queens Day experience began. I was cold, tired, utterly disorientated and soon surrounded by an assemblage of Dutch clog-wearing grannies who were coercing me to drink sherry and join them in some kind of Beatles anthology. I threw up twice more, which at least scared them off and passed out. I really hadnt needed that hash cake.
Waking up the next morning was one of those horrendous occasions where you realise that you really should start to act a little more responsibly. It was a little after 7am and the square looked like a cross between a rubbish dump and a particularly untidy mortuary. The sun was out and some people were still drinking. I had lost my bag and wallet, acquired a dubious collection of stains on my clothes and, for some reason, had the phrase I am gay scrawled across my T-shirt in biro. I knew that Queens Day had beaten me and I eventually staggered my way back to the airport and got a friend to pay for a flight home. I had lasted an hour and a half out of the twenty four.
It took a week before I could bring myself to phone the Evening Posts commissioning editor.
Bad weather ruined this years tulip crop, I said, Ill try again next year and quietly hung-up.
dave dakota
For more tales of travel woe, check out www.world-party.com
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