by Gill Davies

I just returned from a weekend in Amsterdam, where it was 18 degrees and the sun was shining and the city was glowing bright in red and brown and yellow.

I was invited to the second Spotters Weekend ever, again organized by lovely Sanne & Bart, the founders of Spotted by Locals. I was a bit apprehensive about the second round, partly because we were more people than the last time (SbL is growing, which is a good thing), partly because I thought it might be hard to replicate the magic that was the first weekend in 2012. Everyone was so enthralled and excited about the first edition that it would be hard to replicate the amazing atmosphere of the mother of all Spotters meetings, I thought.

But this year was equally magical. Again, I found myself part of a an amazing positive group of people. I went to a bookshop with a ghost cat (confirmed by the owner) to get scary books to give away to the other Spotters on Halloween; drank schnapps from at least five different cities in Europe including Pfeffi from Berlin and my preferred poison salmiakki from Helsinki; slept on the creaking ‘Flying Dutchman’, walked around autumn Amsterdam in a hungover daze, drank coffee in a theater from 1793, went to a squatted house with a large snake painted on the outside to play ping pong, fed my Dutch snack vending machine addiction, read a story about Berlin and Midsummer on a boat, listened to the Ukulele and Johnny Cash, danced to cheesy dance radio until three in the morning and fell asleep to an a capella version of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ reverberating through the cabin over my head.

At one point I found myself standing in a squatted house in Amsterdam, hungover and tired; surrounded by a hundred amazing humans drinking beer and playing ping pong and dancing and laughing, and I could not stop smiling and thinking ‘This is so nice!’

Today it is the same as two years ago: I’m sitting here endlessly tired, adding new friends on Facebook and looking at the photos they took all the while again convinced that I was part of something tangibly good and positive.

Fellow Spotter Tiago mentioned a ‘happiness hangover’, and this is how I feel today. Well done again and thank you, Sanne and Bart. We will be back.