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!!)
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