After a short night in Enschede, Hanno, Jamie, Max and David hop into their fully-equipped and fully-packed Defender, and find a parking place and a grateful audience in Amsterdam.
Although they can only drive about 80kph, the four boys quickly arrive in sunny and bustling Amsterdam. There are tourists everywhere you look, supposedly making it really easy for them to sell t-shirts and CDs. It turns out, though, that French and Spanish tourists are not that interested in English hip-hop. The euphoria of making a lot of money in Berlin slowly dies away.
Feeding their GPS with the address of the hostel they can stay in for free – in exchange for a gig – they end up in a really small alleyway in the middle of the city centre. An approaching policeman makes it pretty clear to the boys that they are not allowed to leave their Land Rover where they parked it. A stressful off-loading of tons of equipment starts, leaving the four boys with red cheeks and moody faces.
While Max runs off to the next internet café in order to announce their upcoming gig on Facebook – at very short notice – Hanno and Jamie triy to find a relatively affordable parking spot for their enormous car. Not an easy task in an expensive town like Amsterdam.
After driving around for almost an hour and 10km outside of the city centre they find a park & ride spot, which is free at night and €2.50 per hour during the day. However, the friendly gatekeeper immediately informs them that this is not a secure place to store their car for the night – they always get broken into.
With no alternative at hand and a growling stomach, they load the rest of the valuables off the car and head for the centre by train. Another €5,50… The general atmosphere? Low. The pressure of the upcoming gig, a broken keyboard and missing cables don’t help.
At the end of the day, there was no need to worry though. The club was packed, the masses screamed for more and the moody faces were all gone, replaced by big smiles. Jolly Jay and H-to-O played an amazing gig, supported by the fully working keyboard of David and Max behind the decks.
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