Fear & Loathing in Breda

Between Belgium and Germany, Olivier and I decided that it was absolutely necessary that we spend at least one night in the Netherlands. We ended up spending the night in Breda, between Rotterdam and Antwerp.

When we arrived at our hotel room, it was an oven full of stagnant air, little soaps and disposable plastic cups. We had spent the first half of the day broiling inside of our car. We needed a cool place… a comfortable place.

We needed a place that would fully let us appreciate the Netherlands.

We needed a coffee shop.

Within walking distance of our hotel was a place called ‘The Cat‘. We got inside, went up to the counter and placed an order: 2 cups of hot tea and 5 grams of Super Skunk.

After a few minutes, I realized that I was still sweating and that I had been sweating for the entire day. I asked Olivier, “Why is it that we ordered fucking hot tea?”

“Uh… I don’t know,” he said. “What did you want instead?”

“Um… I dunno. Something cold. You know… ’cause it’s like… hot outside.” It was obvious that we were becoming dumber. I looked around, taking in the atmosphere. The place was small and dark with only a few people sitting on couches as they smoked and talked quietly.  We were seated between the counter and the front door. Every couple of minutes, someone would come in, mutter something in Dutch at the counter and would quickly leave.

“This place is dark… and serious,” I said.

“Yeah,” Olivier said, looking around. “Do you want to go?”

“Well, I don’t feel like whispering any more and I would like to be outside where I can have fresh air and feel free to act stupid.”

So, we walked out into the street… looking a little like this:

As we strolled around on perfectly paved sidewalks, we marveled at the clean streets and well-constructed bicycle lanes. Everything was so clean, colorful and organized. I had never seen so many people on bicycles in my life. As we ambled, the shining green streets suddenly went bad. They had turned to desert. We didn’t see anyone, save for a few street toughs and bits of sidewalk litter.

“Are we in a bad neighborhood?”

“Nah,” Olivier said. “It’s just Sunday, so no one is out.”

“This is the scariest Sunday EVER,” I said.

Then we heard the music. In our excited confusion, we were helpless to do anything except follow it to its source, which we found moments later. We found a crowd of people, young and old, dancing, drinking, and twirling about. A heavyset woman was on stage, dry humping an enthusiastic and very skinny man as she growled out some dirty jazz tune.

Olivier and I stopped for a moment, taking in all of the revelry that surrounded us. We were baffled, but entertained. We kept walking and found yet another stage, with more twirling, festive people. Now we understood why the streets a few moments ago were such a fucking desert – everyone was here, jazzing and drinking. It didn’t make any sense. What was this place?

We looked at one another and proclaimed, “Holland is WEIRD.”

It turned out that we had stopped in Breda on the very weekend that the annual Breda Jazz Festival was taking place. Yeah, I know… that makes a lot more sense. How was I to know that there would be a logical explanation? It all seemed too weird for logic. I can see now that our condition might have had something to do with that.

A little while later, after we had spent some time exploring the city and the festival, we stopped near a statue in a somewhat quiet place. Soon after, my ears were attacked by some musical notes that swirled and spun around, sounding as though Mark Twain and riverboats were floating around in them. I got very excited and grabbed Olivier’s arm.

“Do you hear that? Do you hear that?”

“Yes, yes… I hear it. Are you freaking out?”

“Yes! I’m freaking out! I’m freaking out! What is it?”

Then I saw a man with a megaphone, surrounded by people, parasols bobbing up and down, horns playing, people dancing. I was giddy.

We got closer and later, I learned that we were watching the Blue Marble Silver Cornet Band.

After some time, we moved on to explore more of the city and to enjoy our Super Skunk in the park like vagrants. As we meandered back to our hotel, we came across various sculptures…

Between the giant puking head and the ’69’ sculpture, we didn’t really know what to think… was this city’s taste in public art truly bizarre, or did we simply get our money’s worth at “The Cat”?

We finally made it back to our hotel room where we celebrated a truly weird day with chips, candy bars and a 2-person conga line, just like one might expect.

Here’s a brief video of the Blue Marble Silver Cornet Band playing at the Breda Jazz Festival. The peppy old man who makes an entrance at 3:48 makes it all worthwhile – especially since he didn’t die of heart attack before the end of the song.