Redhead Day 2010 @ Breda

Hey,

Yesterdaymorning, I woke up at 6am to get to Breda in time. I had no idea what to expect, but I decided that I was going, no matter what, and that I would have a great time, even if I had to walk around all by myself. So, I had to take the train at 7:24am. I wasn’t that happy because I was tired… And I felt even worse when I received some anti-ginger-comments from people in the trainstation. But, eventually, I arrived in Breda at around 10:40am, but I still had to find the market. I thought it would be easy, cause I thought I could just follow the redheads, but it wasn’t like that. At that point, I didn’t see a lot of redheads, so I still didn’t know what to expect. I had no idea how to get there, so someone told me to take a bus and then walk, and that’s what I did. I got lost, but dutch people are really nice, and they helped me out. When I arrived there, I saw a lot of redheads, and I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I was walking around, probably with my mouth open, and just started staring at people, while others were staring back at me. I felt so weird. Everybody was taking pictures of other people, like you take pictures of animals or art. You could see that everybody was blown away by what was happening.

I finally found Stefaan, I knew him from the facebook page, and he introduced me to David, Aaron, Kimberley, Bridget, Beatrice… We hung around a bit, while more people started showing up. At a point, you barely couldn’t move anymore, because there were so many redheads. Then someone gave a speech, which we couldn’t hear because we were that far away from the stage. After the speech we all went to this little street, and they started making a lot of pictures. There were camera people standing on balconies and trying to get us on video, while we were doing ‘the wave’. Up till then, we still had no idea how many redheads there were, cause we couldn’t see it from above… But then we walked to this park, and you had to turn right, and you could see this huuuuuge line of people… It was unbelievable. I just couldn’t believe what I was seeing… After that, we all got together in the park for the photoshoot, and all of the ‘non-redheads’ were looking at us and taking pictures. We were celebrities. It actually took a very long time to get all the redheads at one spot, cause we were with so many. They told us we were with +- 4000.

We didn’t stay very long, cause everybody was getting a sunburn (haha), so we left and went to this pub to drink and eat a bit. There we stumbled across 2 guys from Newcastle (UK) wearing a shirt with ‘JUSTICE FOR GINGERS’ on it. It was hilarious, cause they gave an interview to a camera crew, saying that it wasn’t a joke but a real political view. After that, we just walked around in the city, checked out some stuff, got dinner at this grill restaurant and eventually got to the Appollo Hotel and had some beers with David, Beatrice and Stefaan.

I saw people from all over the world: America, Norway, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, United Kingdom, … And everybody was so friendly. Nobody was mean to anyone. Everybody felt beautiful, and I did too. This was one of the best days of my life, because for the first time, I felt proud to be a ginger, I felt proud to be who I am and I felt pretty. It was the first time that I wasn’t afraid, cause I knew they wouldn’t call me names, judge me or be mean to me and use my reddish hair as the ‘excuse’ to do that. I was really emotional on the inside, cause I kept on thinking about why people act so mean to us, because the people I met in Breda were the most amazing people ever, and they don’t deserve to be treated badly.

I want to thank everybody who came out to Breda. Thank you so much for this amazing experience. I will see you all next year.
For those who weren’t there because they didn’t know about it: save this link so you can get updated about next year: www.redheadday.com

P.s.: I wanted to take a lot of pictures, but my charger died, so I’ll upload some pictures taken by Stefaan.

Love,
Nikki

Edit: To Coppercab: