The winter of 1971–72 did the devotees no favors. They went out from Bethaniënstraat 39 regardless, heavy coats buttoned over their robes and brass cymbals shielded from the wet, to sing the holy names along Kalverstraat, on Damrak and at Leidseplein.
Photographers noticed. Young people with shaven heads, some of them barefoot, dancing through cold rain made exactly the kind of picture editors love, and De Telegraaf and Algemeen Dagblad ran photo features. Against a grey, soaked city the devotees looked almost defiantly happy, and a much wider Dutch public now knew they existed.
Indoors, in the narrow garage, the temple president Aksoja—later Aksoyananda Swami—kept up a correspondence with Srila Prabhupada in India. He wrote about the Dutch countryside, the cows in their pastures and the young people who kept turning up curious. Prabhupada answered with warm appreciation, and the community began to think about a visit worth preparing for.
Then Aksoja had his boldest idea. Why not ask Queen Juliana herself, along with Amsterdam’s mayor, Arnold Samkalden, to meet Prabhupada? It was an unlikely proposition—a small, unconventional religious group writing to the very top of Dutch public life—and nobody could say whether it would come to anything. But it gave the summer of 1972 its shape.
Look inside
Browse Chapters Previews
Short previews with videos of the chapters of The Amsterdam Adventure book.