The chemistry begun at ClinkNOORD Hostel launch

Sep 27, 2015 | by Daniella Down | Art, Event, Food, Music

About the author

Excited by adventuring, discovering and exploring everything. If like me, you’re curious and excited about new trends finding their way to Amsterdam- then read on.

What had been a tricky start for the Irish family founders and the Mayor of Amsterdam has ended in a success story at the official launch of ClinkNOORD Hostel. Opened with an explosion of culinary experiences, cocktail chemistry and live music that left no one standing still.

You have to get in, to get out.

Major uproar from angry Amsterdammers at the hostel’s original proposed site lead to a disguised blessing. It was built instead in a disused Shell oil factory. ClinkNOORD aims to cozy in with and develop the creativity in Amsterdam North. Noord has been labeled as one of the most up and coming neighborhoods in Europe. Reputed as an art-hub, renowned by the likes of IJ-hallen, festivals and derelict factories and shipyards being turned into all kinds of spaces, from galleries to cafes and creative work spaces to clubs. Frankly, it’s ultra-hip – and it’s a fitting place to put a design-lead hostel, whose values are to get every ‘city explorer’ (their phrase for hostel-goers) to socialize and get creative.

Social storytelling

Every traveler has a story to tell. ClinkNOORD aims to ‘create a canvas and illustrate it with stories and elements of the city’ through their redefined hostel environment that’s been entirely locally designed. Whilst aptly feeling ‘artsy’, it does still feel very much like a hostel. Nevertheless, well suited for a budget-conscious young traveler, or creative – they offer government subsidized ‘free stays’ for bands, artists and writers through programs like Stay&Play.

We sampled ClinkNOORD’s social side during the launch party, that was catered by experimental chefs based at A-LAB, who exhibited ‘chemistry lab’ culinary concepts. Dry-iced popcorn, exploding matcha-tea ice-cream, Petri dishes of out of this world bitterballen and the unlikely pairing of tuna and grasshopper. The cocktails,were invented by the Scientific Cocktail Lab who sported lab-coats and a menagerie of test tubes, smoke guns and flasks. Smoked orange-infused whiskey with lavender, anyone?

They tested their new sound system with super fun performances by Cut_ and Gallow Street. Both bands epitomized, in very different ways, local creativity and blurring boundaries – mixing visuals and electronic sound and transforming electronic dance music into an energetic brass band sound.

The hypothesis: ClinkNOORD is a sociable and relevant addition to the growth of Noord’s reputation as being a creative epicenter, whilst maintaining that hostel vibe.