long live the queen!

Koninginnedag is the national holiday celebrating the Queen’s Birthday, a tradition begun initially to honor the previous Queen, Juliana.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Queen’s day occurs every April 30, a.k.a. yesterday. Pretty much it’s a whole city party. Everyone, including about 800,000 tourists (accurate number, not exaggerated) flood the streets of Amsterdam, all decked out in orange, and celebrate. It is a rocking good time.

The festivities start April 29, with Queen’s Night. The whole crew, a.k.a. Alex, Hallie, Christy, Sarah, Tim, and Nick, gathered to pre-game. We then headed out, prepared to join the mob of drunken revelers. At first we didn’t see anyone (of course not, we weren’t quite in the city yet) but then we heard music. And saw people. We headed toward Rembrandtsplein because we desperately needed a bathroom and figured we could duck into The Devil. We quickly realized that we were not going to be able to find free bathrooms anywhere, so eventually settled on paying at MckyD’s. Anyway we had heard a lot of bass coming from the Waterloo area on the Amstel on our way to Rembrandtsplein, so decided to head back over there. There was a large crowd and we dived right in. We were immediately swallowed up. We listened to the music for a bit, but having lost half our group we went in search of them. We were body, to body, and everyone was ridiculously having a good time. By some miracle the halves of our group found each other. Sarah went off to meet up with some friends who had come into town and we went over to Spuistraat. More good time celebrating. Apparently the Queen’s Night is when the young people go ape-shit crazy.

Eventually we returned to Funen and hung out for a bit. A couple of people talked of staying up all night to be able to hit the free markets as early as possible, but I knew I needed sleep, so I admitted to my lame (or very smart) status and turned in for the night at 4, thinking of waking up by at least 10 to get a good day in for Queen’s Day.

Well, two hours later I hear knocking on my door. A little discombobulated, I find myself starring blankly at Christy, Tim and Nick, who have been up all night and were waking everyone else up to go to the free markets. Shit. Ok, two hours of sleep. Interesting. So we gather up Alex and Hallie as well and leave Funen at about 7:30 – due to some confusion. We immediately start toward the Jordaan, because apparently that is where the good stuff is. Oh, part of Queen’s Day is that all the restrictions on sales are lifted and people can and do jus set up along the streets. They sell whatever. They sell food (I got some delicious strawberries.) They sell furniture. They sell movies. They sell whatever junk they’ve accumulated over their entire lifetimes. It’s amazing. We spent the morning wandering through the streets. Prinsengracht seemed to have the best selection. I got a Kitsch Kitchen coin purse for one euro!! I was so stoked about my purchase; I just wished I had it the whole time (considering everything under five euros is in coins, I’ve been longing to have one so I don’t have to dig around in my Coach for an hour every time I want to pay for something.) There were also some other great purchases made; from Tim’s one-euro Ajax scarf to Christy’s prize of a one-euro picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was like reallllyyyy young. I’m not even really into markets, and it was just so cool to see all the things being offered up. Plus the people doing the selling – priceless. From cute little Dutch children hocking wares to old women dressed in head to toe orange doing shots of orange liquor. Amazing. Anyway we started making our way towards the center and then Museumplein (where we heard was a center of the party.) Until this point we hadn’t seen the crowds I expected. But then as we went south, I realized there were people pouring into Leidsestraat from all directions. It was a stream of orange. Most people I believe were drunk and had been for a while. It was fabulous being caught up in the crowd and carried along on the happy force that united every single person. Eventually the three who had gotten zero sleep cried Uncle and returned to Funen to, I believe, grab a few hours of sleep. Those of us who got two hours in, a.k.a. Alex, Hallie, and myself, continued on to Museumplein. We walked into party central. There were tents sent up everywhere, music blasting, people celebrating. We grabbed some lunch and then pulled up a spot on the lawn, which wasn’t easy as most of it was already full. We sat around for a bit just people watching, and then the concert started. The first two performers were amazing. The first was like a Dutch Usher, and the second had so much ridiculous energy it was fun to be just watching them. We hung out there for about two hours, enjoying the rowdy crowd. We saw some wild outfits and even wilder behavior, and it was perfect. Eventually, mostly due to the cold, we decided to move.

We didn’t exactly know what to do next, but we just decided to wander the streets, and that did provide us with enough of a party. Every street we walked down was filled to the brim with celebrating people. Every step we took was accompanied by music, because there were enough stages/d.j.s/random people playing stereos that the whole city was a concert. It was like the whole of Amsterdam was a party, and everyone showed up with bells on (almost literally.)

Eventually the two hours of sleep hit us hard and we wearily trudged our way home (it was really rough, as no public transportation was running.) I must say, it was a super cool experience to be here on this day!

Thoughts: It was interesting to be caught up in so much Dutch pride. Flags were out everywhere, a sight we don’t usually see. People randomly burst into versions of what I can only assume is the national song. People swathed themselves in red white and blue (also The Netherlands’ colors, fyi) as well as orange (because that’s the house of the royals, from back in history with William of Orange). I felt downright proud to be (associated, sort of, with the) Dutch.

Also it was cool to be caught up in something that was so big. It was like a Penn State football game, but on the scale of an international city. Everyone there is hyped up about the same thing, looking for a good time, and ready to share the fun with everyone around him. You become just another snowflake in a blizzard, but you’re part of that snowstorm. And it is a rush.

I’ve never seen so much public drunkenness (I mean PSU games come close, but you can’t beat a whole city + tourists lol) and outright crazy outfits. Everyone is happy and singing and celebrating – I feel like I’m repeating myself here, but I just can’t reiterate enough. What a fun holiday!

~ by Brianna on May 1, 2008.