Warning - if your time is short, skip reading this. I'm going to meander.
Crikey on a bikey! I went into the city to see what was going on and have a look at the Koningsdag street markets. It's always a sea of orange as practically everyone is dressed in orange or partially so. You have to be prepared for shut-off roads and thousands of bikes in the way and people cavorting all over the streets. I parked my bike in a quiet side street on the other side of the moat, otherwise you come back and ten other bikes are against yours and they might even be chained together! Yes, this really happens.
I've been among worse crowds on this day, but I left it until 14:30 so by that time all those revellers move further into the city near the Janskerk. Where they play loud, poor quality 'music' and engage in various levels of Heineken-fuelled debauchery. Some of them were still among the markets so they were blocking the streets a bit. As I turned a corner I was faced by an aged man standing forlornly while his wife, I assume, rifled through a pile of books on the floor. He was wearing an orange clown-style fright wig and his haunted face was a horrible juxtaposition to the bright orange; like one of those old clowns or a sort of Ronald McDonald due for retirement. Hideous.
As you snake your way through the crowds you catch snippets of the conversations of passing people. A surprisingly high number of people speaking 'foreign English'. Something which grates on me, because if someone speaks, say, 'foreign' Spanish or German or even Dutch, there are remarks about it, Not necessarily negative ones, but it is noted. Whereas English, the 'world language', can be freely mangled by anyone and it's considered legit. The things people say though, such insincere nonsense for the moment and to just talk. Behind certain stalls, which are outside the people's houses that just hit the street in the centre of the city, people have their little sound systems wired up and pump out that invariable thump x 4 'dance' music which is perennially popular among people here during any sort of feast-day. Bass line just a single note following the relentless bass drum and synth brass 'noises'. Then it has a 2-4 beat break and ploughs on again. Abysmal stuff.
And yet further on you see better in-between. A string quartet who obviously study at one of the music schools, playing Shostakovich. A woodwind trio nearby playing something I didn't identify. Two very young girls, about 10 or 12, probably sisters, playing jazz saxophone and harmonising with great skill. Then those 'bands' with a highly-extroverted little singer who always remind me of things like 'Hanson'. They're peppered everywhere. Like in Paris's 7 and 16th arrondissements this is the rich areas. So all those kids have expensive Nord studio pianos and a full sound system. Also punchable, smooth faces with perma-grins.
If you want an insight into what makes up the 'merchant' character here you must listen closely. About 10 or 15 times I heard people saying, surreptitiously they think: 'yes...I can resell this on ebay/marktplaats !' And as time rolls on people give up their stalls and just abandon the stuff in the street and others pick through it, because a some of it is decent stuff. Eventually the city's trucks will come round and take the lot anyway. Consumer waste. And I saw a mother doing that thing I've seen many times before. Sending out a pack of children like Fagin's gang to overwhelm all the boxes before anyone else can check through. And she was saying: 'all this is free for the taking, if it's in good state we can resell it.' Capitalism is taught from the knee here.
A good thing is starting conversations with people in various languages. You can hear someone's accent and then have a go. Sometimes they even start first. French is always thin on the ground, but Spanish and German is common. I met load of Tanzanians with a colourful stall and braving only my few months of Swahili* I had a pop...
'Hamjambo! (hello all!) Nyinyi ni Wakenya? (Are you Kenyans?). I knew they weren't, but it was just to trigger a response. Naongea kidogo tu... (I only speak a little...). Had to warn them I'd get lost. Then even though we followed in a mix of English/Dutch they were telling me I was doing well. Scary-exciting.
A man sold me a Spanish grammar for a euro and said he no longer needed it having learned Spanish, so I continued in my own imperfect Spanish and he was blank-faced. He said, 'I'm not that good at Spanish, but I am at German..' I thought 'sir, you're playing with fire here.' But I'm a nice person so I thanked him for the book and moved on.
So you know. I walked around a bit. Had a waffle with a bit of cream and jam, looked at records, books, bric-a-brac and stuff. Bought an Indonesian-English dictionary for a euro, four comics for 50 cents then had a cycle round following the moat around to the route back home. Hurray.
*
edit - not few 'months', but few 'weeks' of Swahili!
