The Dutch holiday season grows to a close. The cars are back and the good weather left for the far South! I love those quiet school holiday months at home. I can zip back to my house in 10 minutes straight, to can go to work at a decent 9 o’clock in the morning and if you are lucky you can knock off work at a good 5 in the afternoon. There are pleasant meals on the front terrace with the birds in the huge tree before our apartment. There are late evening drink on the rooftop terrace overlooking the lights of Amsterdam and the planes landing elegantly in the distance on Schiphol! There are the music podium on Ledeseplein and there is “mensjes kijken” (people watching) – all those foreign young faces that come to Amsterdam to live it up.
Stop the cars
Roll back the tarmac
Switch off the traffic lights
Sweep away the parking bays
Yippee, it’s holiday time
Shorten the days
Take the phone off the hook
Write silly sms messages
Have look on Facebook
Yippee, it’s holiday time
Take Friday free
Board a cheap fight
Forget where you were going
Find a hotel with a pool
Yippee, it’s holiday time
It has been a fun couple of weeks since my last blog. The summer gay summer tour continues. There were the gay games in Cologne that I had to give a miss this year. There was the Circuit Dance Festival in Barcelona that I missed most of. And there was the annual Canal Pride in Amsterdam that I definitely did not miss.
Since approximately 3 years there is new Mecca for the gay body beautiful in Barcelona. It has grown out a 13 days of non stop parties, sun and if you are lucky romance. All you needs is 200 euro wrist band and bob’s your uncle! The main event is the pool party, with thousands of meticulously manicured bodies descending on what is a normally a kiddies water park along Barcelona beach. And from what I hear it’s no kids stuff! As this event is normally slap bang in the middle of the working week, I have never been able to partake in this baptism.
Paolo and I managed to arrive 2 days before the festival started and leave jus to early on a Sunday to make the first beach party! No worries, we had a fantastic time! Barcelona in the summer is like hot muscled Latino boy: It has the welcoming heat of a sweaty groin. It has the beauty of two perfect pectorals. It has the beach and the sea like a velvet kiss on a hot dance floor. It has the food like a eating a sweet soft behind. It has the cultural delicacies that feel like your hand stroking a full hairy chest! Well, there you have it Barcelona just the way I like it! We rented bicycles again with all the flexibility and freedom that goes with it: Past the packed Ramblas, across Colon Square, over to Barcelonetta, down along the beach, lunch at a beach chiringuito and finally naked in the late afternoon sun in the earthy sand. We also managed to cover Barcelona by night by cycle: up to Martin’s at the top of the Passeig de Gracia, down to the Salvation and finally back again. My big discovery this time around was the NH Calderon hotel. Not that the rooms are any different from any other NH Hotel, not the service is nicer that any other hotel, no, it’s the cherry on the cake that does it all! And the cherry is a pool and a roof terrace on the 17th floor. Its just hat bit higher than any other hotel in the centre and it has an amazing nearly 360 degree view across the city. Needless to say, we had an extensive photo session on the rooftop just before sunset – pictures to dig up year later and to dream away at. The other nice discovery is the new Wing hotel. The beautiful Dubai-like shape is impressive, but it’s all the fitting that come with it that makes it so much fun: There are the 5 slightly twisted marble columns overlooking the blue green Mediterranean on the far side. There is chrome covered letters spelling BLISS. There is the side of the hotel curving up to the sky and reflecting two men on a bike, all small and insignificant in all of this grandeur. There is the Ibiza style beach club in the front that looks out over Barcelona and its Blue Mountains in the distance. There is the pool side on the first floor terrace with its snow white lounge chairs where the in and the fashionable lie out and sip a cocktail or type away at a minuscule laptop! I would not really recommend anyone to stay there (it so far out of town!) but it’s a great experience both architecturally and sociologically!
Next up, as usual during the first weekend in August, was Amsterdam Canal Pride. To all accounts my canal pride was a disaster, but needless to say I had a whale of a time! Nothing like a disaster to get the spirits going! Well, as last year, I (this time with Paolo at my side) secured a place on the Mr. B leather boat. Mr. B has its upsides and its downsides. The upsides are that you do not have to jump into some girly frock, you do not have to dance some stupid little jig, and they will not paint your face to look like some sick blue cat! You can just be yourself, wave a flag, dance a bit, struts around and have a beer or two! The downside is that you have never seen so many eccentrics (and believe me I mean this positively!) in one place, but even that is liberating! It varies from the biggest tits you have ever seen on a man to a ponytail with eyes that looks like Lucifer himself! Honestly, live and let live is my motto and actually, I think that it’s great that people can be themselves. On top of that I have build up friendships with a number of beefy boys that are always on the boat which makes it all the more fun. We stick together most of the time and occupy the one party flank of the boat. So what was the disaster? First of all, it rained most of the time. The weather forecast was intermittent showers, but it turned out to be insipid persistent rain! Second of all, the music system was promptly removed from the boat either having bombed out or the replacement engine of the boat not being strong enough to propel us and power the music! Scary: Just imagine what would happen if we broke down in the middle of the canal in the middle of Gay Pride! We would have been front page news for once! Third of all, quite a number of my beefy friends decided to abandon the effort all together. Well, Paolo and I made up our minds to stay, hoping that the music of the nearby boats would keep us swinging! This turned out to be a vain hope as somehow the organization managed to put us between the youth orchestra and a Dutch folk song singer. I am starting to exaggerate as you can see!
In the long run it all worked out really well: It was amazing to see the 350 000 odd supporters that came out to cheer us on in spite of the bad weather. The crowd made an extra effort to accommodate us music-less sods. They cheered and waved, dived off little boats on the side, and even gave us a couple of really impressive brown eyes! We had one extra beer and huddled together under our umbrellas when the rain really came down heavily. Fun, fun, fun ….. So on Sunday, when the sun was back in full force, we all piled into the Paradiso for a hot and sweaty nine hour lasting Rapido Gay Pride Addition and all was forgotten and packaged in beautiful gift wrap for next years jamboree!
Hey cowboy, where’s your gun?
Hey cowboy, cute party hat!
Hey cowboy, can that leather short be any smaller?
Hey cowboy, can I have a big fat sloppy kiss
Hey cowboy, want a beer?
Hey cowboy, grab the flag!
Hey cowboy, give us a big fat smile!
Hey cowboy, come here and give us a fat sloppy kiss
A kiss to stop the world
A kiss to live by
A kiss to make tomorrow whole
A kiss to bring two world into one!
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It spring again in old Amsterdam. It is still too early for the tulips, but there are already thousands of little crocuses on every roundabout! Spring is such a lovely time. Having grown up in sunny South Africa, with its near eternal summers, one never realizes the full significance of spring in the cold North! The little green dots in the grey bushes, the tiny specs of color in the fields herald a new beginning and a thankful ending.