Day 319 - Honestly, this country....

.... never ceases to amaze me.

Yesterday I sat in the sun in the garden out the back of our guesthouse flat studying. The mercury hit 30C at some point during the day (truly amazing for the Netherlands and about bloody time!). At some points I even broke a sweat (although I wasn't quite to the point of wanting air-conditioning like some of the other foreigners here!). Nonetheless, the point was it was hot... Today I wake up ... and it's RAINING! and I mean really raining. So far the maximum temp has been 14C and I got absolutely drenched cycling home.

                              
Felt like this was me on the way home today! 


<= Me yesterday in the garden (happy snap by the housemate Emma)


I honestly can't believe it - a 16C turnaround in less than 24 hours. And we're not talking a 'cool change' like we get back home. This was literally "Netherlands: summer one day, winter the next". And remember this is one day from the official start of Summer. It did get me thinking though about other things that surprise/amaze/dumbfound/disappoint/confuse me about the Netherlands, so here's a few:

• People here walk their dogs ALL the time - seriously, day or night - and in whatever weather. So of course I saw people in ponchos walking their dogs today as I was cycling home against gale force rain. And the other night Emma (my housemate, Sydney) and I came home from the pub about 1.30am and a young girl was walking her dog!
• No fly-screens on the windows: even though they have just as many bugs as the next country here it seems the Dutch haven't heard of fly-screens :( which means no opening windows on muggy nights (its MUCH more humid here than back home) or playing mozzie hunter before bed
• Non-poisonous spiders: even if they get inside, apparently none of the insects here are poisonous. I really found this hard to believe when I was first told - that their spiders aren't poisonous. But enough people have told me now that I suppose I have to believe it. Coming from Oz though it just doesn't seem possible!
• Pre-cut food: it seems the Dutch are as time-poor as any other western nation but what really gets me is the staggering variety of pre-cut, pre-washed, pre-flavoured food you can get at the supermarket. In addition to the usual freezer pre-cut chips or pizza, there is a literal WALL of refrigerated peeled, cut potatoes at our supermarket in EVERY shape, size, flavour and filling.Our Dutch teacher said most Dutch families don't like to spend a lot of time cooking during the week. "Choose and cook" fridges like this are common:
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• Dairy products: there's also about a bajillion types of yoghurt/drinking youghurt/cream/milk etc variations in the dairy section. Lot's i've never heard of obviously, like Vla, Slagroom, just plain Room or Kwark... (whatever that is)!
•  
• Missing words: language-wise, one of the funniest things is the missing words. For example an English speaker would say "I play tennis" or "I use the computer", but in an effort, perhaps, to be efficient the Dutch simply turn the activity into a verb. So, one "tennisses" or "computers", or my favourite, "I internet" - sounds like Apple's next venture.
• Mutant words: the Dutch also have the LONGEST words I've ever seen (except maybe in German). Apparently, in many cases it is okay to join a number of words together in the Dutch language to describe something, and there's really no limit to the length of the combination. Perhaps they were the true inventors of 'supercalafrajilisticexpialadocious' (or however you spell it!)
• One word for too many words!: one last thing about language, it seems the English have a lot more words for things compared to the Dutch. There are a number of little words in Dutch that cover so many meanings, depending on context, which can make it really hard to make sense of a sentence. For example, the word 'nog' can mean yet, still, besides, further etc etc.

And this brings me to a brief piece of other news - my narrowly passed Dutch course. I'm sure I complained to a number of you that I was surely going to fail my Dutch course... but I managed to scrape through. While I now feel after 28 weeks of lessons once a week (and admittedly VERY little homework in between) I can understand about 60/70% of everything I read and hear (ie. government letters, announcements at the train station, speaking to the lady at the supermarket counter) my speaking and writing is not so flash. My grammar in particularly is atrocious, which was pretty embarrassing to discover given my profession of choice! The problem is I tend to think in English and then put Dutch words into the English grammatical structre - which is COMPLETELY different to Dutch. For example, the verb always comes at the end so when in English you say "I went to the beach with my friends", in Dutch you would say "I to the beach with my friends went". Hence I messed it up a lot!

However I saw the classes as much as a cultural experience as anything else - a chance to ask our Dutch teacher questions about the country and lifestyle as well as the language, and figure out some of the oddities of this place. As a result I feel a little bit more like a resident and less like a tourist. It's also a humbling experience to realise how hard it is to learn another language, let alone become fluent - and therefore makes me appreciate the across-the-board English skills of almost Dutch person!

So before I go, some funny Dutch words or phrases from our last few classes:

• Kater = hangover (NB: overgeven = vomit!)
• de voedselvergifiging (yes, that's a real word!! an example of those combination-long-as-you-like words) = food poisoning
• magnetron = microwave (i just love this one cos it sounds so futuristic :P)
• Jeetje = aw geez! or oh gosh!
• borsten = breasts!, or elleboog = elbow, or billen = bottom :P
• Trouwens = "by the way"
• handschoenen = gloves (literally, handshoes)
• beha = bra
• ontzettende = very, very, very, very, very, very, very .... you get the point, it's a very emphatic word!
• ging = going, which isn't anything very interesting but I just think its a cute dutch word, only missing one letter and it could be English
• zadelpijn = saddle pain, as in when one rides one's bike !!!
• zonde van de tijd = "waste of time"
• paars = purple & geel = yellow

So, a very random selection, but some of the quirkier things that came up in class in the last few weeks.
For now though, it's back to the study of "theorising terrorism" - the course that got me excited about coming to UCM in the first place. Only about one and a half months til I'm home now! I hope the weather gets its act together - I need to get a tan to make you all jealous on my return!

Day 302 - Eurovision ... IN Europe!

Day (or should I say Night) 302 (Sat) - Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest is well-known enough in Oz I would say; the winner usually makes the newspaper (or the website these days), pubs often play it and everyone makes fun of it. There was even that live stage show spoof "Eurobeat". So understandably I was pretty excited to experience a Eurovision IN Europe! I was surprised though to discover that many Europeans aren't actually 'that in to it' (for example, Eurovision, not so big in Italy as it turns out). And I was equally surprised at the amount of blank stares I received when talking about it in front of Americans and Canadians...

Regardless, that didn't stop me from getting completely into it and dragging anyone I could convince along for the ride. The original plan was to get tickets to this year's show, given it was held a 2-hour train ride over the border in the German city of Dusseldorf. Buuuut, we missed out on tickets on line. Plan B was to go over by train anyway, pull an all-nighter and watch it on a big screen outdoors. Buuuuut then I got horrendously sick and was not in ANY shape to be crossing state borders! So, plan C ended up being a party in the Scottish (guesthouse) household of Katie and Kathleen watching the BBC broadcast of the show.

After drawing country names out of a hat (I drew Switzerland and Austria) we got out the face paint (to paint flags on our faces) and other attempts at last minute nationalistic costumes and then settled down to the real business of the night - figuring out the rules of the Eurovision drinking game! We ended up going with the Webtender.com version (http://www.webtender.com/handbook/games/eurovision-song-contest.game) which basically invoved drinking any time we saw a performer wearing a hat, fireworks going off, singers winking at the camera, any use of props, key changes etc etc you get the picture ... basically we were pretty busy :P


SWITZERLAND!

Getting into the spirit!

The tense Brits (and an Italian in the middle at the back) watching the votes being counted

Highlights of the show included the hottie Greek/Russian/Swedish male performers, the hilarity of twins with mohawks and "dice" shoulder pads, lots of "ethnic" dancing and instruments, the token metal/rock band and lots of shoop-shooping back up dancers. My money was on Moldova from the start (mostly because of their country name but they also had awesome cone-head style hats!) but as you all may have heard, Azerbijan won - with a classic mix of treacley catchy love song, all white outfits, hair extensions and long looooonnngggg looks into each others eyes. Needless to say Switzerland and Austria did not do so well, but I was loyal to the end! On the upside, the Brits hosting the party were stoked the UK got on the board voting-wise and did half-decently with their washed-up pop band entry! It was also interesting to see how political the voting was. Neighbours voting for neighbours, former Soviet blocs sticking together and the SHOCK HORROR of Ireland snubbing the UK after the UK gave Ireland top votes! None of it made much sense to me but it was all quite sensational according to the Europeans :P

I was bummed we couldn't see it live, or at least soak up the atmosphere in the same city, but just being in Europe made it all the more interesting and it will be even funnier to watch it back home. Or I hear Azerbijan is nice that time of year.....?

Day 294 to 297 - Aha Praha!

Day 294 (Fri) Finally we meet!


Prague has been on the to-do list for Europe since I got here. Since August we’ve been saying “must got to Prague”, and everyone who had been kept saying “you must go to Prague”, but it’s never been very cheap, the weather got colder and colder and there always seemed to be something else come up. However, finally, this weekend, we made it! And boy am I glad we waited – it wasn’t necessarily any cheaper (but not terrible expensive) but the weather was worth the wait – 19C and sunny each day (whereas we’d heard it was truly bitter in winter).

The excitement at finally getting to Prague meant we peaked a little too early though and spent the day getting to Prague regretting the “spontaneity” of a night out in Maastricht before! Regardless, we were flying out of Eindhoven (only an hour away from Maastricht) and there was time for a nap at the hostel when we got in! The guys running our hostel (Czech-speaking Americans) were really helpful and suggested a place right next door that did big, hearty, good value meals that hit the spot for a late lunch and even drew us a little map for our own personal evening walking tour. It took us uphill (a novel concept when living in Maastricht) to this great little public park, quite large, but hidden away in backstreets. We were drawn in by the noise of a large crowd watching the rival ice hockey game between Czech Republic and Slovakia (which the Czech won thankfully!) in an open air beer garden. Further on there was this perfect little spot on a sloping hill to see the sunset over the city. And nearby there was a quirky little grill restaurant, perched on a slope, in amongst the trees, much like a tree house. We continued on, promenading down the main drag in the shadow of the imposing national museum and then into the narrower, winding streets of the old town.


view over the city at sunset from the park


old town turrets

Here we came face to face with Europe’s most disappointing tourist attraction (literally, it’s been voted on!) – Prague’s astronomical clock. In this sense astronomical refers to the actual design/purpose of the clock … but really it makes it sound a whole lot better than the wind-up, wooden puppet and crowing chicken performance it gives every hour. There are other buildings of note scattered through the old town, the usual assortment of churches and turrets, and of course all the kind of touristy cafes that now line every main square in every city like this. So we ploughed on, to another restaurant recommended by the hostel guys called Lokal, as in “local”, not low calorie (in fact, anything but – Czech food must be worse for your heart than German and Dutch put together I think!). The ice hockey game was playing here as well, and true to European form, there was a dog sitting at the table next to us! so every time something exciting happened in the game the Czech men yelled, beer was spilled and the dog started yapping! Quite the atmosphere though – much like a Showdown at home I suppose. The food also did not disappoint – we had cabbage soup (very oliver twist) but it was amazingly tasty, coupled with some excellent potato salad. Fed and wandered, we decided to call it a night and hopped on one of Prague’s quite efficient trams back to the hostel.


THE astronomical clock!


Dining Lokal-style

Day 295 (Sat) Spot the tourist

Kicked off the day with a 3-hour walking tour of the city, taking in the Jewish quarter, the old town and main square, the new town (read: where all the shops and bars now are) and of course some history about the place. Our guide’s family was half Czech half Swedish and he was a little bit odd and nerdy looking but boy did he know his history stuff. Turned out to be a real entertainer too :P The tour finished by the river which runs through the city, giving the perfect opportunity for a stroll across the bridge and up (some very steep stairs) to a palace/castle on the other side. By this time it had been enough walking for one day so we hopped on the metro/tram back to the hostel for a rest (not a common feature of most of our trips away on weekends but I happened to be slowly dying of some sort of phlegm invasion and it was the 5th weekend travelling in a row so we cut ourselves a break!).


the castle/palace we walked up to


enjoying the river


old Jewish cemetery - starts at the bottom of these stalls, built up in layers over time because they were denied any other space to bury their dead


climbing the stairs to the castle/palace
With our strength regained we headed back up to the park to eat in the ‘treehouse’. It was here that the whole language difference thing became most obvious. Of course, everywhere we go speaks a different language, but most are quite good with English. That's not so much the case in the Czech Republic (not that that’s their fault, they speak more English than I do Czech). We got there in the end but we felt very awkward kind of walking in to this place, not knowing where to sit, whether to order first or wait, what was on offer etc… in fact, there wasn’t really a menu so we ate what we were given! Which turned out to be (thanks to Andra [from Canada]’s great interpreting skills) sausage on the grill or cheese on the grill… so we had both! And that’s exactly what it was … A sausage, on a plate with mustard, sauce and horseradish… or a whole wheel of soft cheese, on a plate, with bread and cranberry sauce. It was surprisingly filling but I couldn’t get over how simple it was. It seems the Czech’s love a bit of fried cheese! We also tried some beer, a larger, but for the first time in a long time I can actually say it wasn’t the best…


sunset view from the "treehouse"

(I wanted to take photos of the food at the treehouse but already felt enough like a foreigner!!)

And while I’m thinking of things that were unusual, as well as the language difference, the money situation in the Czech Republic is crazy. The smallest note they have is 100 korunas and ATMs regularly spit out 1000 koruna notes! One euro is about 20 to 25 korunas depending on the day. So you’re paying 150 koruna for a meal but really it’s only about 8 euro. Everything is actually very cheap still in Prague but the hugeness of the numbers kind of puts you off!

Day 296 (Sun) Skeleton schedule

Day trip time! It was up bright and early today for a train ride to a town about an hour away and a look at a really weird bone church! The place was quite touristy and pretty small, but if you detached from the fact that it was a Church decorated with the bones of about 40,000 dead people … it was actually quite artistic. I think the general theme is supposed to be the ‘eternity of life’ represented by the bones, but it was also very, yes I’m going to say it, … beautifully designed. It obviously would have taken a lot of medical knowledge and an artistic eye to know which bones from the body to use where to fill out a design or create the desired 3D effect. One amzing fact is that none of the bones in piles are tied togehter with anything, they're just stacked up and stay that way because of gravity! While the Church is very clean and well kept (and the bones have been disinfected and whitewashed) there were still a few cliche spider webs and spiders crawling up skeleton noses or into eye sockets! :P We stayed for about an hour, just taking in the detail of the decorations, before heading back to Prague.


bone coat of arms


"oh harro!"






In the afternoon we found a little hole in the wall café to have goulash and potatos for lunch(!) (where Andra satisfied her craving for potato pancakes!) and some better tasting beer and, later still, headed to a swish looking café for cake and drinks. It seems Prague actually has quite the social scene for young people. It’s much hipper than I expected, really into fashion but also kind of ‘underground’. It was also much more capitalistic than I expected - admittedly I still had quite an Eastern-bloc kind of image of the place in my head. But it was very modern in part, lot's of neon signs, chain eateries and name brands. It didn't exactly take away from the old-world charm of the city, was just a bit of a surprise. All in all though I think Prague would be a really cool place to live if you spoke the language!


Day 297 (Mon) The verdict

Time to say goodbye again, it was back to the airport in the morning and back to Maastricht. It had been quite the wait but Prague didn’t disappoint. A nice relaxing few days with great weather, interesting food, beautiful buildings and cool people. I would now also recommend it!


view over Prague from the castle hill

Days 279 to 283 - Turkey for Easter & ANZAC Day... gobble gobble!

Day 279 (Fri) On the road again...
A quick summary of this holliday to start with: 5 days (about 120 hours), 46 hours spent travelling (by bus, train, plane, boat and minuvan), only 24.5 hours sleeping in an actual bed, one night spent completely awake and out under the stars, on Dawn Service but no Easter eggs.

Being in Europe for ANZAC Day (which nobody over here except the Turkish knows about) I couldn’t miss the opportunity to go to Gallipoli. So Nakita (Sydney) and I joined a Top Deck 5 day tour which took us around Istanbul and over to ANZAC Cove for the Dawn Service. It was a mammoth trip – travelling ALL day on the Friday and Monday to get there and back(including almost 2 hours we spent STUCK IN TRAFFIC on arrival. With a population of 13 million people and another 4 million or so who commute in and out of the city, Istanbul really needs a better traffic solution :S)

Regardless, we made it there alive (just – our minivan driver from the airport gleefully informed us he was a “cray driver”) and were able to fit in the most delicious roadside kebab (for just 5 turkish lira, or a couple of euros) and a beautiful walk around some of the Mosques, fountains and garden parks all lit up at night before crashing into bed. On the upside, this tour we were staying in a hotel, not hostel - splurge!



Day 280 (Sat) Getting to know Istanbul

We only had one full day in Istanbul so we made the most of it by packing in a walking tour (including a look inside the beautiful Blue Mosque and a stroll in the palace gardens - I just LOVE the architecture there, like nothing I've seen so far, so different from the Gothic churches in middle Europe etc, just beautiful), lunch near the old bazaar, a boat tour on the bosphorous strait which separates the city of Istanbul – the only city to be on two continents at once with a European side and an Asian side - and then dinner and a belly dancing show to finish off the night. Although it sounds cheesy, the belly dancing was actually quite impressive, the women so skilled and strong, and a few hilarious dances by a couple of blokes. Late in the night some of the locals got up to dance and it was fascinating to see the differences in the way they danced compared to some of the Aussie and Kiwi yobbos on our trip who also gave it a go. The Turkish guys and girls just didn’t touch each other, at all. They were quite obviously flirting with their dancing, but it was all in the eyes and the smile and the way they reacted to each other’s dancing, none of that D-floor bumping and grinding you see on a Saturday night in most clubs. And the Turkish women, even tho weren't belly dancers themselves, had so much rhythm and grace, and really seemed to know what they were doing and didn’t seem awkward at all. Whereas the tourists that got up there were embarrassingly stiff and trying too hard. It was just really interesting to see the cultural differences come out in that way.


Blue Mosque


Aya Sofia


view out over the Bosphorous Strait


Bridge between the European and Asian sides of Istanbul


view from our boat cruise - partiorism running high all over Istanbul, flags like this everywhere!


the hilarious men belly dancing
Day 281 (Sun) To Gallipoli and beyond...

There was no rest for the wicked on this trip – we were up and waiting for our bus to ANZAC Cove at 6.30am the next morning. Unfortunately the first bus broke down and we didn’t get going on the second one – clearly the B-grade back up as it was completely falling apart! – until 8.30am. It was remarkably quiet as we drove across the Turkish countryside as everyone tried to catch up on lost sleep. We stopped briefly at a supermarket to pick up supplies for the night and day ahead but it was the most confusing experience of my life. Honestly, I’m sick of trying to figure out new supermarkets – new brands and none I recognise, all the ingredients in another language, varying qualities of fresh goods (note: the fruit and veg were not in great shape in Turkey)etc. I stood in front of the cold meats section for so long trying to find something that looked like the kind of ham I would eat before giving up and buying a bread roll and some French Laughing Cow cheese – not because I even particularly like it but because I recognised the brand and therefore knew what I would be getting!

Back on the bus the afternoon consisted of stop-starts, break-downs, tyre changes, traffic jams and LOTS of waiting. It turns out our B-grade bus had been driving with a flat tyre for hours by the time we reached ANZAC Cove, which meant a two-hour wait while our driver tried to fix it. At one point a cheer went up from our group, sitting around in the car park, as we saw this tiny Turkish man wheeling an enormous bus tyre across the asphalt! We originally tried to get into the ANZAC Cove national park through one entrance, got stuck in a traffic jam because of a commemorative service, got sent to another entrance where we encountered a line-up of empty buses and ended up having walk the rest of the way. Long story short, we arrived at the Dawn Service site at 8pm that night! (we were supposed to get there about 3pm…) Unfortunately it meant there were no spots left on the ground and we had to make do in the grandstands, which meant trying to sleep sitting up! That didn’t really happen for many of us, so we spent the night talking, eating, watching documentaries on big screens, listening to the army bands and, for me, watching the TV journos do live broadcasts back to Australia!


fixing the bus tyre


traffic jam Gallipoli-style


walking to the service site after getting off the bus

It was a VERY cold wait overnight, under the stars – I wore 3 hats, gloves, a scarfe, many layers and a puffy feather jacket over the top, 3 pairs of socks including a woollen pair, AND a sleeping back and was still shivering involuntarily from the wind that whipped through the cove. (needless to say I got a cold when we got back to Maastricht!)

trying to stay warm!


the Dawn Service site

However, I know this may sound cliché, but it really did give us an idea of what those soldiers might have gone through. We had all those layers on, we’d eaten, we’d slept recently enough and we were still freezing, tired and uncomfortable. And when the Dawn Service began and we were told how these men had arrived on that beach around that time in the morning and had been ordered to jump out into the water to reach the beach I just couldn’t imagine the temperatures they must have faced. And then to be wet and miserable and far from home, with Turkish gunmen in the hills around you, facing terrain covered in short, hard, spikey little bushes and giant cliffs just shooting straight up into the sky and they were expected to just charge up there, push through it all and make it to the top alive…. :S

I didn’t find the service as emotional as I thought I would, instead it was more though-provoking and sobering. But I must admit I did cry as they began to play the Australian national anthem. One sad realisation was that the scenery was actually so beautiful, the coastline is just stunning and because the terrain rises so steeply so close to the water there are spectacular views. We realised this the next day as we climbed up to the Lone Pine Australian Memorial Service and the New Zealand service at Chanuk Bair. We stopped at points to turn around and look out of the ocean and it occurred to me that those soldiers probably didn’t have much time to admire the view – or would have more likely resented the landscape than admired it.


sunset over ANZAC Cove


an example of the spectacular views


the Cove itself

Day 282 (Mon) ... and back again

After the individual national services, as well as some time to explore the national park, the cemetaries and other memorial sites (including the Turkish memorial - I was, ashamedly, surprised to realise that far more Turkish soldiers died than Australian or New Zealander) our tour group gathered to get back on the bus to Istanbul. Luckily the trip back went much more smoothly and we arrived back at the hotel in time for one last dinner out in Istanbul. Nakita and I headed back to this little restaurant and patisserie that we’d visited the first day, with the funniest bunch of blokes running the joint. They were very complimentary, and a bit cheeky (trying to convince us that if we enjoy Turkish food we MUST enjoy Turksih men…) but refreshingly, they weren’t sleazy and they didn’t take it too far. In fact generally, I was really pleased with the attitude of the Turkish people, particularly the men. I feared being a Muslim country (and not having felt overly comfortable in Morocco) that I would maybe feel a bit uncomfortable in Turkey but the blokes were just friendly and happy and, at the worst, a little cocky! Bless one of the guys who brought us an entire PLATE of hoummus as a starter for dinner! And of course, there was Turkish delight and chocolate baklava for dessert!!!
 

the Aussie service


the Turkish memorial


hoummus!!!


SO MUCH Turkish delight!

Day 283 (Tues) One the road .... AGAIN

Unfortunately the next morning it was already time to go home ... and also unfortunately, it took us just as long to get home (think the first day in reverse order and minus the rewarding kebab at the end!). But despite the travel time and the lack of Easter eggs (only a couple of hot cross buns on the day we left) it was certainly an Easter weekend to remember.




Dutch I've learned:
Pasen = Easter
Paashaas = Easter Bunny (or Hare)
Paasei = Easter eggs!
Turkije = Turkey

(P.S. thanks to Nakita again for some of the photos)

Days 286 & 287 - Right Royal Weekend

286 (Fri) Konninginnenacht
The entire world (it seemed) was anticipating a certain royal event today – the wedding of British Prince William and (commoner!) Kate Middleton. But in fact the Netherlands throws a major royal party on this day EVERY year – Queen’s Night (or Konninginnenacht). This then leads to Queens Day the next day (or Konninginnedag). Basically it’s the equivalent of Australia Day back home, but on crack! The Dutch really do love their royal family, evidenced by enormous posters of their Queen, Beatrix, on a number of buildings. (She also makes a royal visit to a couple of towns each year.) Generally though, its just a chance to be patriotic and have some fun!


Givin' some lurv to Queen B


Queen B looking over the crowds at Museumplein


More Dutch patriotism

We decided to spend the night and day in Amsterdam where, unsurprisingly, the biggest party happens. Now, Aussies do green and gold for our national day, we might hit the beach, have a BBQ and possibly sing or listen to the anthem at some point during the day. The Dutch do Orange – the kind of Orange prison gangs wear (and indeed there were revellers dressed in orange prison-style overalls!). In fact, they get dressed up in ALL SORTS of costumes, face paint, accessories (think glitterbril [glitter glasses], orange afro wigs, blow up crown hats etc etc.) and run around in the streets dancing and singing to infectiously cheery Dutch tunes (or Dutch covers of popular songs, which are hilarious) and of course drinking and eating all things Dutch (think frites met mayo, broodje wurst [basically a hot dog], Heineken, suikerspin [fairy floss] etc.) And so that’s pretty much what we did!


The ubiquitous blow up crowns



FRITES!


BIER!

The train ride up on Friday night was mildly hectic/full, but not as bad as we had expected considering the hordes descending on Amsterdam. We only put on about half of our crazy Oranje get-up for the first night and headed into the club district where it was nuts – outdoor stages, people dancing on top of tram stops and on tram tracks(!) and generally Dutch orange madness. We also visited a shots celebrating the occasion with drinks such as ‘Dutch Delight’ and ‘Pumpkin Pie’ (it’s orange...). The real excitement  though came when a drunk Dutch guy tried (only half-jokingly, but thankfully unsuccessfully) to throw me in a canal!


A taste of the Queen's night decorations all over the city


SO many balloons!

287 (Sat) Konninginnedag
Our Queen’s Day started about midday. Out the window of the bus on the way into town we started to get an idea of what to expect as whole families rode past, decked out in range, flags and feather bowas flying being their bikes! The event spreads out over the whole city, with street parties and markets, music blaring from everywhere, food and drink stalls, event stages and park picnics. Everyone’s in a pretty good mood, but we noticed there weren’t a lot of kids around. Another observation was that its most certainly a Dutch event - while there were quite a few tourists, and we saw the odd tourist group or bus, the event is definitely a local thing. We were always surrounded by Dutch accents and language, the music was mostly in Dutch etc etc. And in typical Amsterdam style, not only were the streets PACKED but so were the canals. Quite a few people hire canal boats for parties, which caused major traffic jams under some of the canal bridges. There’s no real point to the day other than to have fun, be Dutch, wear Orange and maybe contemplate the royal family. It was also great for touristy photos. And you’re all aware how much I love an excuse to get dressed up!


An idea of the crowds ... are you sensing a colour scheme? :P


Canal traffic jam!


Amsterdam through Oranje coloured glasses!

The only downside to the day was getting home. After a day in the sun, drinking and dancing, we were knackered but it took about two hours longer than usual to get home by train because of the masses of people using the system. But nothing a good sleep in the next morning couldn’t fix. So now I feel like I’ve experienced the two most Dutch events during my exchange – Carnival (which I still haven’t blogged about now that I think about it! Eek – stay tuned) and Queen’s Day.... so I suppose you can just call me Lauren van Oranje!



(P.S. photo credits to Kathleen, Katie, Nakita and Emma, as I FORGOT my camera for this one!!)