I was in! With the thwack of the stamp, I smiled giddily and offered the immigration officer a heartfelt “Hup Holland Hup” before skipping through to the arrivals lounge. He returned serve with a surly, haughty smirk, the kind normally reserved for lightning quick West Indian fast bowlers after a tail-ender has inside-edged a corker to the fine leg boundary. No matter, I was in. My spiritual homeland. Amsterdam. It’s more of a place that I happened to live and study in for half a year, than a spiritual homeland, but what can I say…I like the joint. A lot. (The double meaning of that sentence didn’t escape me - take it as you will.)
From the cesspool of Roskilde (via a short detour in the dentally-challenged UK), I’d wrangled my way back to Amsterdam in time for the Football World Cup Final. Two hours before kick-off, if we’re getting precise. As I eagerly emerged from Centraal Station, I was engulfed by the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and rectal violations that I’d fallen in love with a year ago. And the place was pandemonium. Pure, unadulterated, orange-tinted pandemonium.
Over at the tram terminal, a gaggle of wiry street teens sat on crates of Heineken, downing them faster than Tamara Jaber’s time in the Top 40. Perched canal-side, a clutch of greying, long-haired Dutchmen, swayed, arm-in-arm, chanting some garbled war cry, like a bunch of private school boys at closing time at the Sheaf. And of course, sunk deep into the couches of the Reggae Times coffee shop across the road, were the usual bleary-eyed, faux-rastas, taking their daily sacrament, utterly oblivious that the world’s biggest sporting showdown was about to crack on.
I did a little heel-click jump (which just looks unco with a 20kg pack on), and started inching my way through the heaving masses and down the Singel Canal. I dropped my pack (and my guts) at my old ‘dam pal Ant’s and legged it to the nearest souvenir shop flogging every imaginable sort of orange, Netherlands tourist tack. T-shirts, flags, beach towels, posters, snowdomes. Snowdomes! Who buys a snowdome as a display of patriotism on their country’s biggest night of the century?
“Who are you going for, mate?”, a burly, boozed-up Dutchman would shout to someone across the sweaty, shoulder-to-shoulder, drinking hole.
*The other guy shakes his snowdome, then turns it upright, the snow gently floating down to reveal the word, “Holland”*
“Mate, the only goals you’ll be kicking tonight are in that rainbow bar across the street. Fuck aaawwwwwffff.”
So, after swiping me a nice fluro orange toe ring (8 carat!), I scuttled out onto the street to get amongst the action. I had less than half an hour ‘till showdown. I quickly realised that nobody could see my shiny new toe ring, cursed myself, apologised to a dear old lady who thought I was cursing her, and went back to bag a t-shirt. ‘twas a shame really. Such a nice toe ring. Such a nice toe ring.
The night was a turbulent, balls-out mess. Kids leapt from bridges into the festy murky canals, Moroccans on orange Vespas doughnutted around town, girls’ questionable skirts rode higher than Babylon, and inebriated foaming Dutchmen tried their best to stand upright while answering nature’s call in the open streets. Bart Venzetti would’ve watched on with glee.
Until Spain scored. The entire town plummeted into a deathly silence. I swear I could hear Kim Clijsters’ groan all the way from Belgium. I could also hear Lleyton Hewitt being a cock all the way from Oz. But you can hear that most days if you put your ear to the ground and listen hard enough. Go on, try it. Yep, that’s him! Now get off the bloody floor before someone walks in and asks you what the fuck you’re doing. Telling them that you were trying to hear Lleyton Hewitt being a cock through the ground, just won’t cut it. Neither will, “the computer made me do it”.
Out on the streets and in every bursting bar, you could sense the faintest scrap of optimism. Could Holland somehow claw back to evens in the dying minutes? It’s possible, yes. But you just knew they were dust. And when it didn’t happen, every neon orange-clad mofo in Amsterdam dragged their heels home like redundant zombies, while the small handful of Spaniards in town, paraded around like Justin Hemmes had just been sentenced to the firing squad (cos surely, that’d be better than winning a World Cup!).
It was actually a right laugh to see the contrast of these brightly-coloured, neon-orange, face-painted souls, traipsing home long-faced and morbidly depressed. Kinda like that weird, alcoholic uncle who turned up to a family funeral wearing a bright, oversized Hawaiian shirt with a repeating Tabasco bottle motif splashed across it. “What? I’m celebrating his life!”, he’d defensively assert. “Dude, he was a stillborn”, a relative would counter in horror. “Meh, he had a good few months in the womb”. The relo would reply, scornfully shaking his head: “yeah, you’re right – pathetic. The prick lived his whole life without ever lifting a finger”.
But for me, Ant, Benni, Lu and Carina, we weren’t letting no goddamn stroppy Dutch ruin our revelry. We had partying to do, for I, the former King of Amsterdam, posted from the heart of black Africa, was in town. A welcome back spectacle of monolithic proportions, heralding my arrival to all, trumpeting the news that good times lay ahead. Bars would be sapped dry, coffee shops would be calling in fresh shipments from Mexico, and whorehouses would have the medics on standby.
Of course, it was a Sunday night, so everything shut at 12, and we were tucked away under our Smurf blankets before the church bells struck 1.
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