Amsterdam café: Rowdy crowd boisterous after booze

by: Emma Kwee

Amsterdam café can be found towards the Western end of Jalan Braga, a street known for its somewhat faded colonial glory. Amsterdam café proved no exception to this trend. It has the interior and atmosphere of a café in Amsterdam , albeit one located in the Red Light district.

Upon entering people seem to gasp in amazement at the sight of new and unknown customers. The band who was glued to the bar hurry to the small stage at the back to start plucking their instruments, producing a mix of popcovers and lovesongs.It is brought together with enthusiasm and dedication but sometimes failing in tonescale. Each table is offered a piece of paper on which you can request your favourite song to be performed. None of our picks were actually taken into account. The rather dark and unattractively ‘decorated' place does it's name honour as it resembles an Amsterdam harbour café and the customers look like the Indonesian counterparts of Dutch sailors with their female ‘friends' in tow. A pool table provides some entertainment and brings about regular cheers and outcries from bystanders.

A bar in both atmosphere and menu, Amsterdam café has nothing special to offer. Beer is the diet most customers seem to follow and at Rp21,000 it is quite moderate in price.

The crowd is an unruly bunch of regulars, most of them glued to the bar in the front. There's a sense of seediness shared by most of them, although the atmosphere isn't worryingly shady or criminal. Agewise, most of the customers are at least above 40 and I bet most of them have a lot of interesting stories to tell about the past.

This place is one of the older bars in town, and time hasn't done it any good. It is said that it used to be lively and crowded but with new bars and cafés appearring everywhere, dark and dingy cafés like this lose their appeal except for the regulars who seem to cling on to the bar while the wall paper slowly crumbles down. It has some live music though and might be an option if you're not into the whole clubbing thing that seems to dictate most of Bandung 's nightlife.

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