Queen's Day!

Queen's Day!!

The biggest holiday is the Netherlands is one you've never heard of- Queen's Day! It's bigger than Christmas, New Years and anything else combined.

Queen's Day is a Dutch holiday that celebrates the birthday of the Queen of the Netherlands and is a day of national unity. It's 4th of July ratcheted up 50 times! I have never experienced anything like this, though I would guess that the fervor of Mardi Gras in Rio de Janiero would come close.

Since 1949, Queen's Day has been on April 30th which was Queen Juliana's birthday. Queen Beatrix, the current Queen, decided to keep it on April 30th since her birthday is in January. And who wants an outdoor party in January?

Queen's Night, evening before Queen's Day, is when the countrywide party really starts in The Hague. We went with our American expat friends, Jennifer and Jonathan, to soak up the festivities and listen to one of the many free concerts.

Apparently, people were so "orange-crazy" 15 years year ago that they were rioting. So the city started the free concerts to convince the rioters that a celebration is a much better way to spend Queen's Night. But going to The Hague for Queen's Night still has some of that connotation. Some of our Dutch colleagues were teasing us that we'd be out with all the hoodlums. :)

Queen's Night in the Hague draws tens of thousands of visitors every year. This holiday is definitely NOT for the claustrophobic!

The train ride back to Amsterdam

One key aspect of Queen's Day are all the "freemarkets" all over the country, where everybody is allowed to sell things in the streets. Practically everyone in the country is hosting their own garage sale. Days before people were taping off areas of the sidewalk for their blanket-booths. I had heard that you could find some amazing deals if you got up early, so after a night of partying in The Hague, Jennifer and I got up early to hit the streets.

It was worth getting up early-I'm in a Mah Jongg club and I found a vintage set for 8 euros!!

The calm before the chaos!

The largest celebration of Queen's Day is in Amsterdam. Sections of the Jordaan, our neighborhood, can become so full of pedestrian traffic that they become completely gridlocked, despite the absence of cars.

Have you noticed all the orange in the pictures? Everyone wears the color orange because that's the official color of the Royal family, the House of Orange-Nassau. Some fountains in Amsterdam even turn orange!

Look closely- this is a canal. It's so full of boats you can hardly see the water! We took our boat out for a little bit before deciding it was too insane. Sadly, our boat got a little banged up by some idiot boating drunk.

This Queen's Day was also marked by tragedy. It's tradition that the royal family visit a small town and participate in a parade. This year a car crashed through the crowd and slammed into a monument, just missing the open-topped bus carrying the royal family. Eight people died on the spot and nine suffered injuries. The driver died soon after and no one really knows why he did it.

For the most part we had a blast. It was such a unique Dutch experience and unlike anything we had ever seen! By about 5:00pm on Queen's Day we had enough though. It was just so many people that you were fighting crowds wherever you went and lots of people were pretty drunk at this point. We retreated to our apartment and watched the craziness from the refuge of our living room. Next year we're planning to be out of town!!