Experience Europe 2015: Holland

It was a cold morning.  We loaded up on our bus with our trusty drivers, Bart and Damien, and went to FLORAHOLLAND!  This is one of the largest trade fairs/auctions in the flower business out there.  And we got to do a self-guided tour through it!  We walked on pathways close to the ceiling and got to see all the action down below.



These large carts of flowers travel like the robots do in Wall-E.  In that first picture, you can see the track that they travel down, but then, depending on where they're going next and how many flowers there are, they sort themselves into different lines.  It was CRAZY.



And there are many, many employees riding around on these cool segway contraptions.  It was so busy, efficient, businesslike... for pansies and marigolds.  It was so interesting to me!!



There were also a couple of these auction rooms.  Here, people representing business and companies would bid on flowers for sale.  Their auctioning system isn't like the one we usually think of, where the price starts low and people make their best offer until it's sold at the highest price.  It's kind of the opposite way.  Look at this picture and I'll explain:



So, for each product being sold, something like this slide shows up.  All of the flower's information is at the top and left of the screen.  The circle is what's important, though.  A mark will start at the top of the circle, then travel around the whole thing in about 2 seconds.  The farther along the circle it goes, the lower the price becomes for the product.  The people in the auction have to press a button at the point on the circle where they'd buy the flowers.  So it's more like a race, instead of a contest on who can pay more.  If you want to buy the flowers cheap and press your button to bid near the end of the circle, chances are, someone will beat you to it who's willing to buy the flowers at a higher price, so you loose them.  If you bid too soon, however, you may have beaten everyone else, but risk paying more than maybe you'd have to.  It's kind of cool.  Not sure if that made any sense.



Next, we traveled to a traditional Dutch village, took touristy pictures, and toured a windmill.



The weather was perfect.




Next was Volendam, a very picturesque city just on the coast.  Lots of touristy places to go and shop, so it was a fun little stop.





It was here that I first experienced mini pancakes.



We walked around for awhile, payed a euro and half to use the restroom, then took a bunch of fun pictures with each other on the beach:

After this fun visit around Holland, we went back to Amsterdam for a free evening.  It was at this time I realized that Amsterdam is a cool and fun place to be, but there would be more to do if you were really interested in integrating yourself via hemp, drinking, and truly experiencing the red light district.  We weren't really about that.  So, my friends and I got chocolate covered waffles, chatted with the pastry shop employee while she was on her smoke break, then walked around, soaking up the chill vibes of the city.