Bori goes to Holland

I set out with only one goal for this year's King's Day (previously Queen's Day): I want to spend it on a boat. That was my only mission for April 26, 2014.

In the past years I've been strolling through the city (Amsterdam and Utrecht) on this day, which is a great but fairly exhausting experience due to the massive amount of drunk people, their children and the stuff that people try to sell to you. So I thought, for a change, I would like to observe this from the safe distance of a boat, floating innocently in the canals, where the only threat is falling into the water, pirates, and being peed on by drunk guys from passing by boats. And to get stuck due to heavy boat traffic under a bridge - which is still not that bad if you have some food, booze, music, and you are stuck with nice people around you. Even if it does get a bit crowded as the following illustration shows:

As a first attempt to achieve this boat-dream, I signed up for a boat-ride that friends-of-friends organized. Honestly, I thought this is the first and last attempt in the sense that what could go wrong with booking a boat? Well, apparently quite some stuff, like the booked boat NOT SHOWING UP. Captain's phone was not reachable. And since it was organized by friends of friends, I didn't even know much about the whole thing, and was just faced with this 1-hour waiting for nothing, where I slowly learned about the pieces of the story only to conclude that they most likely fell for a scam, ruining my boat-mission.

So what do you do when you book a boat for king's day and it never shows up? You START DRINKING. We waited from 3pm until 4pm, then gave up and went strolling into the city. Luckily we found a nice stage with music close enough, had infinite reserves of delicious palinka with us, so we quickly started drinking and dancing our boat-sorrow away.

Few hours pass, we almost forgot the boat-shaped hole in our hearts when I receive a message from a colleague-friend, saying that they are about to go on a little tour with their boat, and whether I wanna join.

DO I???

I could barely believe that I actually got a second chance to get onto a boat on King's day, and I'm thinking to myself: WHOOOOPPIEEEE, we just have to make sure that we don't screw this one up. So I grab my friend Tom from the misty alcohol smelling stage and we start going fast-paced to the discussed location. I am worried that we will be late, and we are also not exactly sober, so we just run and curse across the city, getting closer and closer to finally be on a boat.

Just before arriving at the discussed time and location, I receive another message that boatride is cancelled due to technical difficulties - plastic bag on motor. I'm starting to think this is a joke. Our spirits are still not broken though, at this point we'd do ANYTHING to get on a boat. So Tom and I just decide to stay at a little dock-area on the Amstel, and put our friendly smiles on and start convincing random passing-by party-boats that it would be a great idea if we could join their party. They smile, but in the end they say no. I'm starting to think we should just hop on, I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that, right?

In that moment, a Dutch guy next to me proves me what can go wrong. He jumps onto a boat, uninvited. The DeeJay - who is the Almighty on that boat and had already shook his head from side-to-side on our kind request - gives a look to another guy on the boat, who immediately starts elbowing his way through towards the intruder. As soon as he gets a hold of the stranger, he pushes him with both hands out of the boat - he lands with half his body on the wooden panels of the dock, half his body between the boat and the water. The 'bouncer' guy is not done with him: he jumps onto him and starts pushing him as far as he can away from the boat. They kinda stand up, and then start fighting: they fall over, and a whole crowd starts jumping onto them from both sides to pull them apart. This goes on for a few minutes, then the 'bouncer' victoriously crawls back among 'his' people and the boat takes off, while a few of the passengers actually stay on the shore and nurse the intruder guy who's bleeding from his elbows from his fall.

Tom and I look at each other and conclude, we should probably NOT hop onto a random boat.

Unfortunately, at this point it's 8pm, and boating-time is over - no more shifts, no more parties. And this is how I didn't get onto a boat on King's Day.

I did promise a happy end though, which is the fact just today, 2 days after King's Day, I actually did have a proper boatride, cruising along the canals of Amsterdam.

Thank you Captain Jonathan! :)