Hemp Hotel

This historic hippy hangout was an Amsterdam landmark, now permanently closed.
This groovy little hotel promotes hemp products with every conceiveable item made of hemp. Mila Jansen is well known for inventing the Pollinator which makes hashish out of leftover cannabis leaves. The Hotel has very reasonable rates which include a vegetarian breakfast. Prices range from 100-145 guilders per room. The Hemp Hotel is located in a quiet part of town.

The Hemple Temple Bar is located in the ground floor and has all sorts of hemp food and drinks for you to try. It’s open nights until early in the a.m.

Frederiksplein 15
Amsterdam
Phone: 625-4425

South Africa

“If you’re looking for hippies South Africa has got them. Cape Town especially hosts a large hippy community, here we have the famous Green Market Square where hippies sell their creation from clothes to paintings. Every year from late June into early July thousands of people make their way to Grahmstown, a small town in the middle of nowhere, for the Grahmstown festival. Every hippy in the country winds up there sometime time during the 2-week festival. The festival is actually an arts festival where plays of all kinds (from miming to Shakespeare) can be seen, but along with the abundant actors come the hippies, hoping to make a profit off the large crowds of tourists and catch a few laughs at one of the many comedy plays. The entire town consists of two main streets and several theatre houses, what space is not being used for makeshift stages is a hippy market the size of a football field. All those who have been to one of the annual Grahmstown festivals agree on one thing; it gets better every year. As more and more people come and the hordes of hippies become uncountable the atmosphere seems to grow in a unique feeling of appreciation for the newfound peace in this unstable country. As I returned home to Cape Town after the latest festival I realized that I met more humane people from all over South Africa than I had in years of travel. It’s an experience of a lifetime not to be missed.”

Mesnil Eglise, Belgium

I moved from Brussels to the little town of Mesnil Eglise (yes, Belgium) and see from the 75 habitants half of them are old and new tekno-hippies. From the solar energy professor to artists and bio food producers all invite friends to spend the summer in the woods of the Ardennes. This makes a lot of people smokin’ and roamin’ the 3 streets of the village… The melting pot with the original farmers worked well out during the last 25 years.

Joussard, Alberta, Canada

Location of the NORTH COUNTRY FAIR. Each summer in June there is a Summer Solstice celebration held in this little northern Alberta town. Hippies and free spirits alike come from all over to enjoy this wonderful enlightening experience of live music, new age work-shops, dancing and of course the artisan market. Situated beside the Lesser Slave Lake, there are many great places to camp on and off the fair site. It’s like taking a step back in time, if only for one memorable weekend a year, to see beautiful people join together and celebrate the longest day of the year.

Shimo-Kitazawa, Tokyo, Japan

This is a great little hippy part of Tokyo, no cars, lots of nice shops and restaurants, home of Tokyo’s first hemp shop and hemp restaurant.

Hokkaido is Japans North Island and is a nature paradise. It also has lots of wild hemp growing, some of which is quite smokable apparently. Japan Alps – during the summer it hosts lots of outdoor festivals and rave parties. These are real hippy congregations – people you don’t see too often in Japan suddenly appear. Where do they live?!

Kitchener Ontario Canada

Hippies roam the streets of Kitchener and especially Cambridge. We are up there along with the freaks and jocks, geeks and the boring ones. Hippies are the best, with our butterfly shirts and bell-bottoms, we have our own twists to the 60’s fashions.

In response another visitor wrote:
“Thought I’d add a note to what our obviously young friend above has said, the scene here is extremely diversified, there is much to do see and experience. I have jokingly referred to Kitchener for years as the Berkley of Canada. For some strange reason this little city is a drawing card for hippies. But don’t show up expecting chaos and revolution in the air, because for the ten years I’ve lived here, most of what I’ve seen is behind the scenes, although the older hippie and deadhead community here threw some of the biggest bashes going.”