De Parade (pronounced par-ah-der) is a festival ground full of performance tents and trailers, each concealing a potential treat. Visitors queue to buy tickets for short performances, which happen at regular times throughout the evening. The whole thing goes on for a couple of weeks in Amsterdam each summer. The festival brochure gives a vague description of what to expect, but you never really know until you turn up and take your place on the bench inside of one of the tents (and if last night was anything to go on then it's also the chance to make friends quickly with your neighbours....there was a good deal of 'shuffling up' to pack us all in there).
While you wait for your performance there are plenty of cozy cafes and bars set up, strung with little lights and offering temptations such as tapas, a decent bottle of wine or lovely Italian icecream. The atmosphere last night was fantastic (helped by the fact it was one of those rare evenings this year when it didn't rain).The whole idea of going to De Parade was to check out a show by Spinvis, until I realised that the last performance was last Thursday (another great piece of organisation by me). Instead we saw two shows, randomly selected from the brochure. Both were completely daft; one was great and the other was pretty bad (a couple of people mucking around to various records, but it made me laugh anyway... mostly due to the fact that we'd be quaffing wine the whole evening). The second show was hilarious: 'Schuif es Op' (which I think translates as 'shove up') by a 'Mr Bean-style' cabaret artist called Eric Koller who entertained us all with some clever visual sketches, chosen jukebox-style by the audience.
I regretted the wine today though - marathon training is just getting to that point where the body complains if you ask it to run in the heat for a couple of hours with no water and a hangover. Surprise surprise....
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