We’re back to the drunken stumble home. It’s fairly late. Lectures start in an hour. No point in going home to shower. No one will notice the smell. How to pass time…? Of course, eat! Because every student’s day is built around finding various distractions until it’s time to eat again. Great: Dönerix is still open. ‘Fwryies pleyz’, you slur. Ears well-trained, the chef (?) brings you a carton of fries, with what looks like a bucket of… What the facial?!

Don’t worry, it’s not the chef’s payback for paying him in pennies: it’s mayonnaise… and lots of it…

The Dutch love the stuff! So, it’s no understatement to say that the Dutch are to mayonnaise what student faction leaders are to themselves. If you were to order fries, chicken, beef — just about anything — for instance, don’t be surprised if you were then to receive an (unwanted) extraordinary, blood-stopping portion of Groningen’s favourite sauce, too: ‘Can I order some fries with my mayo, please?’

In fact, the Dutch care so passionately about their mayo that they have integrated claims from Europe’s Federation of the Condiment Sauce Industries that oil and liquid egg yolk levels in mayonnaise should be at least 70% and 5% respectively in 1998 under the ‘Warenwetbesluit Gereserveerde Aanduidingen’ law, Article IV: so expect only the best when given Groningen’s favourite saus.

Just the other day, mayo-loving Groningers took to the streets to celebrate after it was announced that a phenomenon from post-war Groningen, mayonnaise from the cafeteria Brander on the Grote Market, returned after thirty years of closure, which means that the Dutch have loved mayo since before WWII!

The comeback was brief, however, and the event lasted a mere hour in front of Drie Gezusters on 22^nd February. Yet, if the Groninger’s grins were anything to go by, I would say that the Brander Mayo might make a more permanent return in the near future.

What we do know for certain, though, is that the Dutch have loved mayo for so long that, when the Titanic sank carrying over 12,000 bottles of the stuff, they created a day of mourning (much to the dismay of the city’s Spanish contingency):  Sinko de Mayo…