The Adventures of Flat Julia: Koninginnedag

As usual, my apologies for being absolutely horrible at blogging!! Seriously, it's been months - not okay. During my absence, I took a day trip to Gouda for a class project and traveled to Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Germany with my family. To see my pictures from those adventures (and all my adventures), visit www.flatjulia.shutterfly.com.

Anyway, April 30 was Koninginnedag (Queen's day). As the title suggests, it is a day to celebrate the queen and show some national pride, mainly by wearing lots of orange. Traditionally, it is celebrated on the queen's birthday. However, since all the festivities are done outdoors, Queen Beatrix did not want the celebration on her birthday in January. Instead, she chose to continue the tradition on her mothers birthday as it had been for decades before so that there would be a (small, ity-bity, tiny) chance of nice weather. What a sweet lady.

And miraculously enough, Queen's day almost always has nice weather! This year, for example, it rained for almost a week and a half before, was beautifully sunny and warm on the day (we're talking no jacket, short sleeve warm), and has not stopped raining since. Go figure.

On the actual day, I ventured into Amsterdam where the biggest part of the festivities are held. Dam Square was set up like a carnival and I knew immediately that I had to ride the ferris wheel. As for some of the other rides...I opted for not throwing up on my nice new orange shirt. Apparently Dutch people really enjoy being dropped at ridiculous speeds from heights higher than the surrounding buildings. Continuing on, I was met with some things that I heard were particular about Queen's day. For one, there are vendors set up all over the city. They sell various things from orange gear to food and beer, even special bathroom trucks. Besides the vendors, people come out from their houses to sell things. Now, the week before Queen's day, I learned in my Dutch Culture class (yes, shut up, this is considered a real course) that Dutch people are essentially hoarders. Since this is the only day of the year when people can sell anything anywhere without a permit, they save all their old junk in their attics until Queen's day, when they throw a blanket down on the sidewalk and try to sell all of it. Whatever doesn't sell gets packed up and put back in the attic for next year. Seeing Amsterdam, I can say that this is pretty much not true. Yes, I saw a few people sitting on blankets trying to sell crap but not that many. Other special Queen's day events are the outdoor parties. Anywhere you go, you can hear music and can pretty much follow that music to find people hanging out. And, of course, the orange was EVERYWHERE. Every article of clothing you could see (and even some you couldn't) was orange. On top of that, there were orange wigs, orange hair spray, orange head-items (hats, headbands, etc), orange sunglasses, orange jewelry, and on and on.

All in all, a fun and exciting day.