Alright! So obviously the main reason I went to the Netherlands when I did was to attend the Redhead Days festival that is held annually. This year was it’s 20th anniversary (though only their 19th year since they didn’t hold one in 2020 for obvious reasons) and it was a blast! I’m going to try not to go into too much detail but this will probably be one of my longer posts because I had so much fun! I will definitely be returning for years to come!

Tilburg

I arrived in Tilburg pretty early since I left my hostel in Cologne before the sun was even up. Even with the delays I ran into, I was still there by around 11:30/noon. After dropping off my bag at my new hostel, I headed out to explore and get some food. I wandered around the town for hours, leaving my phone (and Google Maps) untouched in my pocket. I just went wherever I felt like walking. I would get to an intersection, look around and pick a direction. This was how I traveled all the time before I got a smartphone and before international coverage was so affordable – and honestly, I’ve missed it. I really enjoy just getting lost in a city. It’s one of the best ways to really learn a place. While my own afternoon wandering wasn’t enough to completely learn it, I was able to get around the area immediately surrounding my hostel and make my way to the park the festival was taking place in with no issues.

When it was finally time to check into the hostel, I made my way back and that began the whirlwind of the Redhead days weekend. I hadn’t been in my dorm more than 3 minutes when the door burst open with the woman who checked in behind me. She took three steps into the room and goes “You’re here for the redhead festival!” pointing at me. I laughed and said yes. The front desk worker had told her I was also here for it. Abigail and I immediately hit it off. A fellow American from Minnesota, we spent most of the rest of the night talking before she went to bed to fight off jet lag and I read, still tired from my early morning (I’m so not a morning person…)

A couple of other people in our dorm were there for the festival as well – not surprising considering how many people come to this thing – but probably the funniest interaction was Márcio who was sleeping when we got in. He woke up long enough to squint at us for a minute before getting wide-eyed, sitting up, and pointing at us and exclaiming “gingers!” and demanding a picture. Abigail and I laughed and told him tomorrow. He mumbled about going to the festival and then dropped back into sleep. We got a good laugh about that.

Festival Prep

The festival didn’t start until 2pm on Friday, so Abigail and I knew that we had time to kill. After breakfast we were discussing what we wanted to do next when Márcio started talking to us. He mentioned that he has always kind of wanted to dye his hair red out of appreciation of redheads. This is the moment that we all learned Abigail is a bit of an enabler (to be fair she warned us). In 5 minutes she had figured out where he could find hair gloss and we were off to the store to buy it. 20 minutes later we were setting up in the large shower area and dying his hair red. He was so nervous! It turned out great though and he spent the rest of the weekend asking everyone if they thought he was a natural ginger. Best ask of the weekend by him was when he suddenly detoured into a salon and asked the stylists there if they thought it looked natural. They were trying not to laugh, we were trying not to laugh, he was completely serious and there was Abigail behind him nodding at them to say yes. I’m sure they got a laugh out of it after we left – I know we all did.

When it was time to head over the festival, we picked up another hostel goer on the way, Oliver, and made our way over so that Abigail could check in to the camping. One of the cool things that this festival does is rent out tents and an air mattress to people. I didn’t sign up for it as it was more expensive than the hostel, but it seemed like a great solution for people! As long as they brought, or bought, a pillow and good blanket. Apparently it got cold there at night!

There wasn’t much going on yet as much of the festival was still getting set up (the real first day is Saturday) but we still managed to meet a decent number of people and it wasn’t long before our core group for the weekend was decided. Granted there was a pretty large number of American’s in the group but that isn’t too surprising considering that it’s pretty natural to seek out others speaking in English when everyone else is speaking a variety of foreign languages that you don’t know.

The day rounded out with the kickoff party and so much laughter. It may not have been the busiest of days in terms of the festival, but it was definitely a lot of fun and so worth it.

Redhead Days

The next two days were filled with meeting more people, seeing the different exhibits that were at the festival, and hanging out with our group. It was great that some of us were staying at the hostel, we ended up spending time in the evenings after the festival mostly closed up playing pool, card games, and just talking in the community areas of the hostel. There were campfire and hot tubs at the park where the festival was taking place, but most of our group didn’t participate and I don’t think anyone ended up doing the hot tubs at all.

Honestly, there was so much that was going on at the festival it’s tough to mention everything. There were a variety of booths setup with different things to do from about noon until around 5pm on both Saturday and Sunday. There were various physical activities (yoga, stretching, tai chi, etc.), various arts booths (get your portrait drawn, painted, or picture taken), arts and crafts (both for adults – like splatter painting – and for kids – coloring), in addition to classes about photography. There was an entire section for make-up and hair braiding, a kids zone, and a stage where a variety of shows were put on throughout Saturday and Sunday. That’s not even mentioning the bar and food trucks, and a variety of areas to meet and hang out with people. They taught Dutch games, took people on tours around Tilburg, and had beer/wine tastings. Everywhere you turned there was more to do, and I heard from a couple people that this year was slightly smaller than last year.

I totally took a turn on the bounce house – much to the amusement of not only my group of friends but also the volunteer who was watching it. By this point my group had learned that short jokes are just a part of my life and that I tend to lean into them – tough not to when you grow up with a 6′ 5″ Dad. What I didn’t expect was the volunteer to jump in when they were all acting like I was a kid and reminding me to be safe (spoiler alert – I was one of the oldest of our group haha) and ask me if I needed help getting up onto the bouncy house. We all about died laughing when he asked that.

A couple of us got our hair braided, and then Abigail, Lovisa, Ryan, and I all got our face painted. And I’m pretty sure that us getting in line ended up bringing them a lot more than kids to get their faces painted because by the time we were finishing up there were a lot more adults in the line than there were kids. The best was by far Ryan’s who got Mike Wazowski drawn over his eye!

Saying Bye

It was so much fun and saying bye was difficult. Our group started to split up between Saturday afternoon and Sunday. By Sunday night most of the group was starting to leave with only a few stragglers staying on Monday. We all exchanged numbers (and created a group) to stay in touch and plans are already being made to meet up again throughout the year and for everyone to return next year!

Monday was nice though. There was 4 of us that were still around and not leaving immediately. Abigail, Oliver, Kameron, and I spent the day hanging out. Which honestly mostly consisted of getting food and then Kameron and Oliver hanging out while Abigail and I got tattoos. But we did have a brief stop over in a park on the way to the tattoo shop and had a blast acting like kids again (not that it ever stopped…)

Finally on Tuesday, Abigail and I headed to Amsterdam, Oliver headed towards France, and Kameron was sticking around the Tilburg area another day so he could go golf at a nearby country club (or whatever they call it there – from how he described it though, it gave off clear country club vibes).

Thoughts

It was such a fun weekend. I cannot wait to go again next year and meet up with everyone . These are the type of friendships that I’m looking for on the road and I’m so glad that I found a great group to spend the festival with. I will be back again, and again.

Honestly, the most annoying part of the entire weekend was that I kept getting bit by bugs. I don’t know if they were mosquitoes, gnats, ticks, or what – but I had so many bites by the end. I think there was around 15 bites – honestly not too many in the grand scheme of my experience, but I swear they itched more than normal. Nothing will top that one time that I ended up with over 70 in Mauritius. That was miserable. I still have a couple, though thankfully they’re just in the healing stage and look more like bruises now. The most annoying one was one on one of my new tattoos (not the one I got here though!). I was so happy when it finally stopped itching so I didn’t risk damaging the ink. I had to do research to figure out what the European equivalent to Benadryl was though since they don’t have that here and I knew I would end up running low (I totally did) if I took it as much as I probably needed.

Once I left Tilburg I only ended up with one additional bite, I don’t know if it’s because of how much time we spent in a park, or something else – I just know they weren’t bed bugs, I was the only one at the hostel who go bit, and I kept finding them at all hours of the day/night so it wasn’t even consistent on where I got bit!

Oh well – they love me clearly. I could do without that type of toxic love – but what can you do?

Well I’ll go into the rest of my time in the Netherlands in another post as this one is already long and I wanted it to mainly be focused on the Redhead Days.