Queen’s Day, a day of national unity for almost a hundred years now. It’s a day marked by the free market, where people sell stuff on the streets — basically like a massive garage sale. It’s a day of celebratory drinking, much like St. Patrick’s for the Irish, Mardi Gras for the Nawlinsians and Carnival for Rio. It’s a day of merriment and a day of Orange. Amsterdam is the focal point of many, many people and each year the amount of people pushing themselves into the center of Amsterdam swells. They keep coming from further and further away, people fly over as the reputation spreads to other countries.
Interestingly, for the last twenty years or so, as the popularity of going into Amsterdam on the day itself has grown, many people who live in Amsterdam have started fleeing the city and staying indoors until everyone has left again. It gets so busy it’s silly. The people in Amsterdam don’t celebrate Queen’s Day anymore? Sure they do, they just do it the evening before in something that’s started to be known as Queen’s Night and it’s usually a lot more relaxed, since the city isn’t filled to the brim with people desperate to have a good time, hopped up on pills or drunk off their mind. No, Queen’s Night belongs to the people of Amsterdam, the hosts , while Queen’s Day belongs to the guests. (I’m sure this goes for other, larger cities in the Netherlands as well, like The Hague, Utrecht and Rotterdam.)
This year’s Queen’s Night was kind of spurred on by my brother, who was jonesing for some fun. I was looking to skip Queen’s Day this year, having not heard about any parties or events going on. My brother convinced me to go out and have a drink somewhere, so after training I went with him to swing by a BBQ that Moulsari was at, to drop of some stuff that I was holding for her. When we got there, around nine, people were already slightly intoxicated and having fun out in the street, eating sausages, drinking wine. We immediately got taken in and set up with a drink and a sausage. The evening turned out to be a lot of fun, meeting a bunch of people, mostly foreigners and expats, and having a good time.
Today we’re staying in, hanging out, and waiting for the party to die down again, and tonight we’ll move out into the city and see what’s going on. Looking forward to chilling out for a while. Happy Queen’s Day!
