Aalsmeer Flower Auction

This morning, Sofie and I woke up especially early (6AM!!) to go to Aalsmeer for the world's largest flower auction. It was freezing cold, and we rode our bikes to Lelylaan to meet Lennart, a guy from work who was giving us a ride there. The event was organized by the Young Banker's Association of ABN AMRO (also the ones who hosted the volleyball tournament from last October). By the time we reached Lelylaan, my fingers felt like there were thin icicles piercing thru them and I could barely feel my hands!! It was SOO cold!!!

Anyway, we arrived in Aalsmeer at 730am and went on a tour of the place (which was the size of Monaco, according to our guide)! It was really cool, cuz there were trolleys and trolleys of flowers, and the whole place was like a Costco warehouse with nothing but flowers! Not just tulips, but all kinds of flowers. The way it worked was, growers would bring their flowers to the auction, and they would be sold there to bidders in the 'dealing rooms'. It was really quite interesting, because I always thought that the wholesalers would just put in an order for, say, 1000 red tulips or whatever. Instead, in the room full of bidders, trolleys of flowers would pass through the room on tracks, and bidders would fight to buy the flowers, by pushing on a lil button in front of them. If they pushed too quickly, they risked paying too high a price, and if they pushed too late, they wouldnt be able to buy the flowers.

And so, each morning from 630am-930am, the flower auctions happens from Monday to Friday. It's mind boggling to think where all those flowers are coming from. The flower auction had an annual turnover of over 1 billion euros, and something like 6 million flowers get sold each day and are exported all over the world!! Can you believe that?? SO amazing... Anyway, it was a great time and at the end of the tour, we were fed fresh squeezed OJ, tea, coffee, buns, toast, cheese and sandwich meat! Yum yum!