Prinsengrachtconcert - Amsterdam Pulitzer

The Prinsengrachtconcert.
If you know how to pronounce it properly, you’ve basically already earned yourself a ticket.

I still don’t know whether there was some kind of mistake with the invitations, but we somehow ended up in the front row of the stands, three metres from the pianist.

So naturally, we got our ball gowns out.
I didn’t have one.

But I did my best. I put on nail polish and lipstick.

For anyone who isn’t from around here, the Prinsengrachtconcert is a huge classical music concert held on the canal, right in front of the Pulitzer Hotel in Amsterdam.

The stage is on the water.

Boats are tied together in front of it, packed with very chic people.

Everyone else watches from the bridges, the windows of the canal houses… or from their sofa, since the whole thing is broadcast on NPO.

And there we were, right in the middle of it all, trying our best to blend in.

We may have mumbled a few enthusiastic “tof tof topie”s with our neighbours, but I’m pretty sure it was still obvious that we were neither locals nor exactly members of Amsterdam high society.

We were probably missing a few pieces of jewellery. A proper command of the language.

And about 20 centimetres in height compared with all those tall Dutch people.

At the end, everyone started singing Aan de Amsterdamse grachten.
So we sang too. Well… sang/yoghurted our way through it.

The only word I had identified with absolute certainty was:

AMSTERDAAAAAAM.

But we definitely weren’t pretending to be enthusiastic.

At that exact moment, I felt more Amsterdam than the Amsterdammers themselves.

It was all so beautiful I actually had tears in my eyes.

The music.
The canal.
The lights.
The setting.

And then afterwards, I ate petits fours and drank wine in the gardens of the Pulitzer, so really, the evening was complete.

There’s very little chance we’ll ever be invited again.

But just in case, I’m already learning the lyrics to Aan de Amsterdamse grachten.

Just so I’ll be ready.

It really was TOF TOF TOPIE.

And if you want to see us looking very elegant while pretending to know the words, the concert is available to replay on NPO Start.

You can spot us very clearly.

Well… relatively clearly.

We’re just slightly hidden behind a pianist.