Pokémon Go day trip to the Amstelveen Safari Zone

Last weekend was the last opportunity to visit one of Europe's so called Pokémon Go Safari Zones. For three weekends in a row, in various shopping centres that partnered with Niantic, kangaskhan (normally only available in Australia) could be found. In addition, an increased spawn rate of the unknown letters forming E-U-R-O-P-E was in effect in these areas. You didn't have to pay anything in order to participate in the event; you just had to be there and look for those pokémon.

I do love catching myself some cool pokémon. And while I don't usually travel beyond my municipality for pokémon and shopping isn't exactly my greatest hobby, it seemed silly to let the opportunity go. Especially so when I found out that the closest Safari Zone, in Stadshart Amstelveen (the Netherlands), was less than an hour drive away.

I was prepared to spend some time on my own, maybe drop by the Cobra Museum (modern art) if I got bored of the shopping centre, but then I found out my brother and his girlfriend wanted to go as well. So past Saturday, all three of us got in the car early to catch us some pokémon.

We found our first kangaskhan already when we were in the parking lot, just getting out of the car. "Okay, now we can go home again!", we jokingly said. We soon found out that kangaskhan spawned regularly all over the place, often even with multiple at a time, so everyone who visited the Safari Zone was going to have a successful day.

As expected, the scene was crawling with pokémon, pokéstops and gyms. All the pokéstops had lures active; most of them even seemed donated by generous other players, judging by the variety of names that had activated them. 

The shopping centre was a lot more fun than I thought it would be. It was huge and totally covered to shelter visitors from the weather. In the middle, a boulevard with a rainbow pedestrian crossing (see top picture) brought a smile to my face. I knew these existed but had never seen one myself. A variation to the white crossings ("zebrapaden") usually found in the Netherlands, these paths voice a statement of equality and acceptance in general, and to the LGBT community specifically. But I digress.

This power bank that I bought at the Action the previous day came in super handy 

My phone is quite old and it just about manages to play Pokémon Go, if you're patient and give it time to load things. However, it was horror in the Safari Zone because of all the mobile data being used. I could barely move my viewing angle in-game and got kicked out of the Lugia raid five times. Luckily, my company had newer phones that didn't suffer so much. After 20 minutes of fruitlessly trying to enter the raid, I borrowed my brother's phone to login to my account and finish the Lugia raid. It would've been a shame to have spent that raid pass without being able to take part in the fight at all.

I didn't manage to catch lugia (don't worry, I did already catch one a couple a weeks ago in my home town, so I'll survive), but it was fun to hook up with random strangers and fight. In my semi-rural home town, there aren't enough players around for raids to just happen organically. It wasn't extremely busy in the shopping centre, but you could see people playing Pokémon Go everywhere, which was a fun experience! Normally I feel like a bit of a dork when I'm hanging out somewhere alone, trying to take out a gym or tier 1 raid boss.

While fighting lugia, I heard from a fellow raider that this Safari Zone had been very busy the previous weekends. Apparently back then it was so crowded that it was hard to move around. I don't know if it was because of the poor weather or because most players had already gotten their kangaskhans by now, but it wasn't like that during my visit. I'm not particularly fond of crowded places, so this was a good thing in my book - not to mention how my phone would've behaved  with so many people around.

I had expected a pretty much generic shopping centre with logs of huge well-known brands. Of course, all the big brands were indeed there. But there were also plenty of fun small shops present, like this cheese store (picture above) that literally had their cheeses stacked up until the ceiling. Unsurprisingly (being Dutch), I love cheese, so I really enjoy shops like this.

Around lunch time, I discovered that my favourite brand of hummus (Maza) apparently has whole cafes with delicious falafel as well (or perhaps it is the other way around). This falafel café was heaven! Everything was freshly made, reasonably priced and so delicious. 

While kangaskhan was extremely easy to catch, the unowns were more of a challenge. There weren't as many of them, and when they did appear it was sometimes hard to target them because they were so small and were covered by other pokémon or pokéstops. My phone was overheating, so I basically shut it off, until one of the others shouted "unown!" and I'd quickly start up the game, hoping I could catch it. The unowns despawned quickly (I think they were only around for about 5 minutes), so it was tricky. Of course we wanted to catch all five available letters (E, U, R, O and P)!

Unsurprisingly, my legs didn't want to carry me anymore when it was afternoon, so I seated myself in a cute cake cafe while the others continued exploring. The cupcakes were exquisite and tasted less chemical than they looked! I couldn't resist ordering one, even though I wasn't very hungry because of the falafel.

At the end of the day we returned home with several kangaskhan, all different unknowns, and then some. I'd been too busy to visit the Cobra Museum, so I guess I'll have to go to Amstelveen again someday. I miss the pokémon madness already.

When we were heading towards the car, my brother suddenly noticed a wild snorlax nearby. Off we ran, and each of us managed to catch it. Mine was extremely low level with poor stats, but I don't mind, as I already have an awesome one. The others got a better one and were overflowing with joy.

Overall, it was a memorable day, and a way more fun experience than I could have anticipated. Niantic definitely hit the target here. With the shopping centre being free to enter for everyone, the area big enough for people to spread themselves out and phone service working fine (at least for the people that didn't have to operate an ancient phone), this low key version of the originally planned event was good fun - probably even more so than a paid huge event would be for me.

As usual, all photos in this article are made by me. The pokémon have been digitally added back at home. As for my phone: don't take my complaints about it too seriously! I got my phone secondhand from a friend and I'm very thankful for it: without it, I wouldn't have been able to play Pokémon Go at all. When I state its age, it's merely to make clear that my experience doesn't reflect that of the majority of players present.