Discussion
there’s something charmingly Amsterdams about how Saint Nicolas is being formally received into the city by a visibly Muslim deputy mayor
It’s also very Amsterdams that the very last drawbridge between Sinterklaas’s parade boat and the ceremony is having a technical issue and the water police have been deployed to pick up Sinterklaas on a smaller boat that fits under the bridge
Just like the costumes destroyed in a dry cleaning fire, the news has clarified that the jammed drawbridge was a genuine technical issue and not a planned plot twist 😂
I suspect that specific bridge only gets opened a few times a year, since it controls access to the Seafaring Museum dock where they have the historical wooden ship. You can see that once they gave up on getting it open, they let the crowd onto the bridge for a banger view of Sinterklaas passing underneath
@0xabad1dea the Kortjewantsbrug and the Scharrebiersluis just past it open dozens of times per week since that is the access to the Amstel from the IJ and inner harbor.
@th that one also looks like a simpler mechanism, since the one that jammed has no visible hoisting structure over it
@0xabad1dea scaring the kids is part of the thing, but this would be too much…
Me: “it seems like a big security risk that we built the whole city with a master key for Sinterklaas to deliver presents, and then they zoom in on the master key on the news”
My husband: “that’s a good start for next year’s plotline”
#amsterdam #sinterklaas