Smack. You’ve been thrown out of Palm Beach: it must’ve been messy. Your stomach weeps for sustenance. ‘Something to soak up Sambuca.’ Everywhere is shut… By Kapsalon! Even Dönerix is closed! Sobbing, you turn to lurch home. Suddenly, a warm glow. The smell of ecstasy wrapped in soggy buns. A chorus of Turkish Angels. What the furcate is it?

Automatieks. The Red-Light District of fast-food. Open 24/7, these glory-holes of grease provide a safe-haven for the weary traveller who doth hail from the land of pubs and clubs. Simply, ‘vending machine’ in English, automatieks are the greatest way to get croquettes without queuing: fast-food made even fatter-sorry, faster*. From fifty-cents, all the way up to three-euros, you could have your hands on the most fairly-priced pork in town… you get what you pay for.

From bakery to burgery, the company behind the cat-flap, FEBO, was originally named after Ferdinand Bolstraat in Amsterdam. Just make sure you don’t leave the clubs with more than ten euros, otherwise you’ll be leaving the automatieks with more than ten pounds!

Check out FEBO’s website. It’s fantastically informative, and they desperately try to make it all look edible, but at the end of the day, you get fat just looking at it. To give you a taste of what you’re in for when ‘eating from the wall,’ I’ll quote their site with my best translation: ‘Balls covered in breadcrumbs, deep-fried, and combined with soft white bulb (?) like peanut sauce: yummy!’

If you don’t think that sounds appetizing… then you’re not drunk enough. Same applies if you don’t know what a ‘white bulb’ is. Get that down you.

So, if you’re drunk, stoned, or strunkly curious, automatieks are perfect if you want to eat food left in a plastic box outside for a few days – it’s the uniquely Dutch way of shifting shnacksh!