Amsterdam — Trash City

The Amsterdam central station has been a dump for weeks now. The beautiful old building has never been this dirty and even has a nasty smell to it nowadays. The reason; the garbage men (and women) are on strike.

And the same fate awaits the whole of Amsterdam starting from April 30th. This date sounds familiar?!?!? Of course it does, it's Queensday for gods sake. It's the one day a year where our small city gets turned into one big party. And on this day - of all days - the garbage men have decided to start their strike.

On queensday over 500.000 people find their way to Amsterdam to celebrate the queen's birthday. All these people leave tons of empty beer bottles, food, urine and other waste in the streets of Amsterdam. Normally the garbage men start doing their cleaning duties the night after queensday. It takes a full crew of 300 people a whole week to clean up the whole city after queensday. But not this year. If they get their way the garbage men will leave a very large statement starting queensday. Because they will not be cleaning the city at all. Which basically means we will be living in a garbage dump starting april 30th. I am definitely not looking forward to this.

Amsterdam is not a clean city to begin with. Compared to other major cities there's so much crap on the streets you sometimes wonder if it is even being cleaned to begin with. But trust me, we will think the streets are squeeky clean compared to the mess that awaits us after queensday.

I am still kind of undecided of what to think of this stunt. On the one hand I salute them for standing up for their rights and needs. If only more fields would stand up like the cleaners, perhaps some professions would be highly upgraded (nursing staff for example) in both salary and rights. I also find it a very well timed strike (and I truly admire them for that). And it amazes me how much power these cleaners have over our city being able to leave us in such a mess.

On the other hand I think they should find other ways to sort out their issues. Its like surgeons saying: hey, we're going on strike. So all the people that come in from now will just have to wait and die because we want better wages (or whatever... they make loads so they probably have something else to complain about). It's not quite as dramatic when cleaners say they won't clean. But I still question if queensday is really the day to start this strike. Especially since the week after queensday we celebrate the 65th anniversary of the freeing of Amsterdam after the second world war. The cleaners say they will keep dam square garbage-free out of respect, so I think I will put up my tent and camp out there until the rest of the city is cleaned again.