World Cup Final, Red Light District and Van Gogh

Let me first recap the last 24 hours of my life. Yesterday afternoon I was pounding the pavement in Amsterdam with my brother Kyle, Heineken in hand amid a sea of orange football fans. The weather was peaking into the 30s, with sporadic rain providing some respite, but I had already sweated through every piece of clothing I had packed for the short weekend visit to Holland. We swelled with the crowds towards Rembrandtplein, a secondary choice for World Cup Final viewing as Museumplein had been closed off at 3pm, a full 5.5 hours before the first whistle would blow. Kyle and I found my friend David, who traveled in from Den Hague for the event, and his colleagues from the International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY), prosecutors donning red, white and blue facepaint, an orange cowboy hat and a Netherlands football jersey. We crowded around a flatscreen television on the patio of a bar and contemplated the absolute madness around us. Then 8:30 came, the crowds quieted to an almost anti-climactic concentration, and the World Cup Final between Holland and Spain had begun.

Roughly 45 minutes later it was a scoreless half-time. I hugged Kyle and David, said goodbye to some new friends, and sprinted off to Waterlooplein to catch an intercity bus down to the Eurolines bus station. For the second half of the game, and the apparently very tense overtime, I listened to the almost incomprehensible Dutch play-by-play from the inside of a bus that would take me overnight from Amsterdam to London. Despite the intonations from the announcer I was still unsure what the outcome was. Not until we stopped to pick passengers up in Eindhoven around midnight did I notice the dejected orange fans moping around the city, collapsed onto front stoops and unenthusiastically lifting their flaming vuvuzelas to their lips. I was really glad I wasn’t in the middle of the Rembrandtplein mob and I wondered how my brother would make out.

Kyle was on Day 6 of a ritualistic post-uni European backpacking trip. The first stop had been in London to visit me, where he proved to be very anti-tourist, having been to the city multiple times, but humoured me with some Soho pub visits and spent time with our British cousins. With Holland advancing into the World Cup Finals and Kyle’s intended next stop after London being Amsterdam it seemed only fitting to accompany him on the second leg of his adventure.

Sure, most 29-year-olds would be weary of a 6:15 Saturday morning flight out of Luton, two days spent in a stifling, tourist-filled Amsterdam capped off with one of the worst hostels of all time for €55 a night, and then a Sunday to Monday overnight bus across Holland, France, the Chunnel and southern England before arriving 10 hours later at the office for a very productive day of employee benefits features writing. But, you know what? You only live once. How often do you find yourself in the very country competing in the quatro-annual biggest sporting event of all time?

So, Saturday morning found me in the Red Light District at 9:30am, sipping an ice-cold Heinie on a patio overlooking the canal. The middle-aged prostitutes were out in full force and the city appeared to be swarming with Brits. I was happy to be in Amsterdam again but wondering what I had gotten myself in to. Kyle was arriving mid-afternoon on the train (he has a Eurorail ticket and youth card so must make the most of it) so it was up to me to find us two beds to sleep in. The city, as seems predictable now, was filled to the limit, hotel and hostel prices were through the roof, and it was looking likely we were going to have to sleep in shifts leaning against our backpacks in Vondelpark.

And then I stumbled upon the sorriest excuse for a hostel that ever was (though truthfully, in my six months on the road back in 2004, I did see worse, and a lot of it). It wasn’t the best way to introduce Kyle to the hostelling life. However, I reminded myself that it could only go up from here. His reaction, upon his arrival at 3pm, made me slightly concerned that this kid was a bit too high maintenance. Granted, we did get charged €55 each to share a dormroom with six other boys, one communal toilet/shower room and ventilation that left a lot to be desired. But we were centrally-located in the RLD on perhaps the biggest weekend in Holland’s history so I think we should feel lucky with what we got. (The next night Kyle endeavored to find a different accomodation but to no avail, and had to instead take the train out of the city to Rotterdam following the match where he hopefully settled into a 120-bed dorm for €12.50 a night.)

Anyways, before the kid arrived, I managed to take care of my tourist-tendencies. I wandered around the RLD, the canals and Nieumarkt to reacquaint myself with the city I so loved. Since navigating is not my strong suit, I wanted to get my bearings before Kyle arrived so that we wouldn’t be constantly lost. I also took the tram out to the Van Gogh Museum which, three visits later, I had still not managed to see. I swallowed the rather inflated price (still stinging from my €55 hostel bed) and enjoyed a couple of hours among Vincent’s masterpieces such as my favourite sunflowers, a few self-portraits and the scarecrows over the cornfield.

Back to the Centrum in time for Kyle’s train and right into the swing of a much-younger traveller’s plans, and all that goes with the quintessential Amsterdam visit. The city was still throbbing with tourists and football fans amping up for the following day, and I was afraid that Kyle was going to be disgusted by the crowds and whores and sex-tourism. He sort of was. But we wandered outside the city centre as the sun set and the humidity took a break. We didn’t have the wildest Amsterdam night, which I feel guilty about for Kyle’s sake, but we spent a good quality evening together. We were both fading fast, having each slept for three hours the previous night, so returned to our sketchy hostel for cold showers and our threadbare beds.

Hours of much-needed sleep later we emerged into another scorcher, expertly maneuvered the growing crowds of orange people, and ventured out of the downtown core to book Kyle a hostel for that evening, plus find the Bloomeinmarkt which I love. The first project, though attempted intermittently throughout the day, was fruitless, but we strolled through miles of tulip bulbs and found less busy patios to enjoy our sparse, but delicious, diet of Heineken, Amstel and chips with mayonnaise. Mid-afternoon we concocted Kyle’s plan to flee Amsterdam for greener pastures (Rotterdam) and arranged a meeting spot with David Gault.

At this point our plan was to check out the once-empty green field that is Museumplein but were definitely noticing that fans decked out in all sort of orangery – wigs, fluorescent overalls, knee-high boots and simple t-shirts – were flowing down Dam Rak to that exact location. It turned out that the police had to close the place off around 3pm because it was busting at the seams. So, instead, we joined David and his friends in Rembrandtplein. I was full of hope for Holland, but didn’t really care that much about the actual football game. And it turned out that it was best that I didn’t stick around. I’m not sure yet if the crowds rioted when Spain was declared World Cup 2010 winner in overtime but I sure hope that Kyle and David made it out of there in once piece.

It is still not 100% official that I did. I made it through an 8-hour workday (one that I thought I was a half-hour late for until I turned up at the office ready to apologize and realized that I was the first one in – and still on Amsterdam time) after sleeping randomly on a bus with a serious snorer right next to me. But at least I made it through a really wild weekend with moments of great fun. Loved spending time with my brother, though not at all envious of his impending adventures. I know he is going to have an amazing time but I also know that there is a time and place for backpacking journeys, and that is in your early 20s outside of the brutal tourist season. I don’t hold Amsterdam responsible either. I have had 10 amazing days there over the course of 10 years and I intend to have many more. Maybe just not over World Cup Final weekend next time.