What a long day it was. Celebrating Queen’s Day on two cities packed with events.

I spent my early midday in Amsterdam strolling around the pedestrian streets and malls which were lined with second hand stalls and temporary kiosks. I headed towards the city centre as i usually do by Haarlemmerstraat. Instead of being congested with bikes and cars, it was the pedestrians has taken over the street even if most of the retailers on usual days were closed on yesterday’s public holiday.

The Dutch were in orange invading the city centre with its bright hats, shirts, wigs, balloons and bags; pretty much any material they can get their hands on that day. I didn’t wear anything orange ‘coz i don’t have anything in my closet. But the closest thing to getting an orange ‘fanfare’ was a can of fanta at my disposal after my quick meal i bought in Chinatown.

I left Amsterdam around 1.30PM to travel to Leiden for a party i was excited to attend. It was called Citymoves and it was a free outdoor festival well known DJs such as Armin Van Buuren, Jimmy E and Markus Schulz. It is quite rare for these international DJs to play for free on a public holiday. But what made this city special was that it is Armin’s home town. He was born here, grew up here and probably went to uni here when he studied law.

The party started at 2PM and it went on till 10PM.

ElSandro 14:00 – 15:00
Erick E 15:00 – 16:30
Blake Jarrell 16:30 – 18:00
Armin van Buuren 18:00 – 20:30
Markus Schulz 20:30 – 22:00

The festival filled up quite quickly and the locals pretty much embraced the festivities. Parents with kids, the teenagers, uni students, the yuppies and curious people all arrived in the town centre. I only found this party when i thought ‘there has to be trance DJs in Holland playing on Queen’s Day. So i surfed the net in every possible Dutch DJs i know and found out that Armin was playing in Leiden for free.

The festival itself was small, around 10,000 crammed inside the fenced up perimeter sheltering themselves from a temporary circus tent shaped white net in case of sudden burst of heaven precipitating onto the army in orange. Ahh yes, the heaven’s were not kind to us. There were instances of rain and at that split moment, people crammed under the net to an already crowded place. Some braved the rain with their hoodies on and others didn’t care at all and would not dare it to spoil their special fun.

This is my 7th time i saw Armin Van Buuren and 4th in Holland. But by far that Armin came to be so emotional. He was cheering for an unusually small crowd all chanting his name, sticking their hands out some women wide on top of their boyfriends to get Armin’s attention.

He grasped his headphone on his hand and sticked his arm up high and on many occasions bowed to the cheering crowd who has done so much to him.

Erik E

Markus Schulz