{"id":86144,"date":"2018-04-09T15:54:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T13:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=86144"},"modified":"2026-01-16T17:19:20","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T16:19:20","slug":"rowing-is-life-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2018\/04\/09\/rowing-is-life-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Fear and loathing at Holland\u2019s biggest rowing event"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Rolling through the mud<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJack Parker<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

On the first balmy Sunday of 2018, the oldest and most prestigious student rowing event in the Netherlands took place. The event is known as Varsity<\/a> and for the country\u2019s most ambitious rowers, this is the pinnacle happening of the sport. For everybody else whose name is on the roster of a rowing club, Varsity is the pinnacle of drunken debauchery. An extravagant afternoon of gentlemen rumbling about in the mud and the blood and the beer<\/a>, as Johnny Cash put it.<\/p>\n

Collared shirts, white trousers, and boat shoes are part of the standard dress code for both men and women at Varsity, with each rowing club donning a different coloured blazer and tie to stand out from one another. Even for the spectators who haven\u2019t brought a blazer, there\u2019s a tent where a Gordon lookalike<\/a> sells old ones for cheap. The entire event feels as if it were staged in a Ralph Lauren Polo commercial, except those commercials don\u2019t feature the spectacle of inebriated men from rival rowing clubs ripping each other\u2019s coats and getting body slammed into the mud.<\/p>\n

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A Gordon lookalike<\/span><\/p>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tJack Parker<\/span>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Tossing mud<\/h2>

\u201cOh don\u2019t worry, they\u2019re just doing something called brassen<\/em>,\u201d says Maxime, member of the Erasmus-affiliated rowing club Skadi. \u201cYou challenge someone from a different rowing club and try to drop them on their back. If you lose, you have to buy the winner a beer. It\u2019s friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rules to brassen<\/em> are simple: opponents may only grab each other by the jacket. If a woman battles a man, the man can only use one hand. Other rules include no kicking and no touching of the hair or face, naturally. Every time a lad is lifted by his blazer and slammed against the ground, the massive crowd lets out a long collective \u201cooooooh,\u201d drowning out the sound of the chattering commentators chirping over the intercom. Meanwhile, above the brassen<\/em>, half-empty cups of beer and balls of mud are slung back and forth between the different rowing clubs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t plan on fighting today, but this lad kept tossing mud at me,\u201d says Ralf, whose filthy green blazer signals that he is a member of the Argo rowing club from Wageningen. \u201cHe was acting egocentrically and I wasn\u2019t going to let him keep get away with it, so I thought \u2018I need to take him down.\u2019 But I lost, and now I have to go and buy him a beer.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\t

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Een lijst van afbeeldingen<\/h2>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t
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