I wanted to sit at a pavement café and had a panic attack

When I heard that the pavement cafés were finally allowed to reopen, I jumped for joy (who didn’t?!). My own balcony is nice, but not for a year and a half. Last weekend, after months, the weather was finally beautiful again and I decided to sit outside. But it didn’t exactly go smoothly…

You won’t believe it, but this weekend was the first time (!) I went to a pavement café. I had skipped the diagonal rain and gale-force winds that FavorFlav’s Adeline had to deal with. But a few days ago, it finally happened—the sun was shining!—and I decided to go to the lively Ganzenmarkt (a street in the centre of Utrecht).

From 1 stimulus a day to 1,000 a minute

When I arrived at Utrecht station, I immediately noticed: what a crowd! ‘It’s the station, crowds are logical, so I’ll just survive Hoog Catharijne and then it’ll probably be quieter again,’ I thought hopefully. Well, no. It soon became clear that I wasn’t the only one with the brilliant plan to sit outside. So. Many. People. In a year and a half, I hadn’t seen so many people in one place.

Unaccustomed to it? Absolutely. But more than that: panic took hold of me—my brain had been functioning on 1 stimulus a day all that time, and now it had 1,000 per minute to process. ‘Keep breathing calmly!’ I encouraged myself.

Chaos everywhere

Walking along the canals: queues, huge queues at the sports and shoe shops. There were hordes of people waiting at Utrecht’s tastiest sandwich shop, too. McDonald’s had undoubtedly had its best day in ages. Overstuffed rubbish bins and empty McDonald’s bags everywhere. In short: chaos everywhere.

A cola, please

And then there were the pavement cafés—you can guess: there were queues there too. When we finally spotted an empty table, we quickly went inside to ask if we could sit there. We could. Relief all around. I’m not exaggerating when I say I sat there like someone who had just run a half marathon without any training. I ordered a Coke (regular, for the extra sugar).

Half an hour later, thankfully, everything was back to normal. Drinking rosé, people-watching, eating cheese sticks, all of it in the sunshine. Oh man, I had missed that. I’m going to try again tonight.

Also read:

• Typical Utrechters: Marjolein pizza—with two croquettes
• 8 favourite spots in Utrecht
• 5 of the best sunny spots in Utrecht