Couples tie the knot during a festival on an Amsterdam ring road
AMSTERDAM — Securing a coveted slot to exchange wedding rings on Amsterdam's usually traffic-choked ring road seemed like a good omen for Zuzanna Lisowska and Yuri Iozzelli's future life together.
'It just seemed like super fun idea,' Lisowska said. 'And, you know, statistics were on our side. There were 400 couples who wanted to do it, so we feel really lucky to have been chosen.'
Friends and total strangers cheered and clapped as they told each other 'I do!' as part of a day-long festival on parts of the A10 highway that circles the Dutch capital closed to traffic for the day.
'It's a nice party we didn't have to organize,' said Iozzelli.
Their only regret was not being able to bring their pet rabbit. 'It was too hot,' Lisowska said after exchanging rings with Iozzelli.
The city that is known for partying said that some 600,000 people tried to get access to the ring road festival last month when more than 200,000 free tickets were made available.
Curious city folk, from parents pushing strollers to students and grandparents, stopped to watch the weddings and enjoyed the one-off opportunity to see the road without the usual cacophony of cars.
Among them was communications student Kyra Smit.
'It's really fun because it's a once-in-a-lifetime thing,' she said. 'It's so fun that you can say to people, wow, I'm married on the rings, so I really like this.'
The day was packed with events from music performances to readings, meetups and a fun run, shortened because of the heat. Organizers even placed a temporary forest of more than 8,000 trees on the blacktop.
The municipality laid on extra water taps and places where revellers could slap on sun block as temperatures soared to 30 degrees Celsius (86F) and upwards on the road surface.
The city's official birthday is Oct. 27, reflecting the first time a variant of its name was used in an official document, and is staging celebratory events in the year leading up to that date. The festival on the ring road is the biggest so far and gave Amsterdam residents a new view of their ring road.
'It's quite strange because normally you drive here and now you're walking, so that's a totally different situation,' said Marjolein de Bruijne, who works close to the A10.
Mike Corder, The Associated Press
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