April 30: Koninginnedag

That name, which like any Dutch word with the letter 'g' in it sounds like a cat hacking up a hairball, means "Queen's Day", and it's basically the Canada Day of Holland.

Except a lot crazier than Canada Day.

There are a few traditions on Koninginnedag. One of them is a festival of children's games and activities in every neighbourhood. This was ours:



Merel and Job, right in the middle of things:



Job, riding the bucking bronco...



And Thom, preparing for some jousting...



This girl never had a chance; heck, I wouldn't go up against Thom in that.



And Thom, of course, managed to wiggle his way up to the front of the crowd to get picked as the magician's assistant.





I went off exploring. Another tradition is the "free market"; on Koninginnedag, anyone can sell whatever they want to on the streets, so there are stalls set up everywhere. It's as if I was back in the Grand Bazaar again...





In the very center of town was an outdoor dance party, packed in with beer-swilling orange-clad hooligans. I never realized this many young people even lived in Bussum!




I took a couple short videos that might give a sense of the atmosphere. This was three in the afternoon on a Wednesday!





At this point I reflected to myself: this is Bussum, a sleepy bedroom community. If this is what Bussum looks like...what's going on in Amsterdam?

Holy smokes. Amsterdam was nuts.




All the streets in the downtown core were shut down and filled with people. There were stalls everywhere; people were selling six packs of Heineken for 2 euros.

Below you can see a street that leads into Dam Sqaure. There were all kinds of crazy carnival rides set up, but I never got there because it would have taken forever to get through everybody.



Every time you walked around a corner there was some kind of outdoor concert or dance party.



Another little video; this sort of music was everywhere.



The party just went on and on, for as long as the eye could see. This much orange gives you a sense of what it was like during the Euros (football tournament) as well.






Crazy Dutch...

My Tower Is Leanier Than Yours

I can't stop stumbling across wacky Dutch stories.

The Tower of Pisa is being challenged by a lesser-known 12th-century building in the northern Dutch town of Bedum as Europe's most steeply leaning tower.

Retired geometrician Jacob van Dijk said measurements this week on Bedum's 36-metre church tower of Walfridus revealed it is now leaning more than its Italian rival, which lost part of its tilt following restoration works.

At a height of 55.86 meters, Pisa's tower leans about 4 meters, while Bedum's tower leans 2.61 meters on its height of 35.7 meters. If both towers were the same height, Bedum would have a greater tilt of 6 cm, Van Dijk argues.

"In Italy they're happy with the result, but here in Bedum we are much more happy, because the tower of Pisa is now leaning less than the tower of Bedum," said Van Dijk.

Please, Think Of The Children

This story is funny for multiple reasons, one of which is that I can completely understand how it happens. Walking around the streets in Dutch towns, particularly at night, you notice that you can look directly into people's houses because front yards are largely non-existent. For many Dutch, their living rooms are fishbowls.

The story, spotted on Radio Netherlands' website:

According to Trouw a naturist has been banned from wandering around his own house naked with the curtains open. Anxious parents in the neighbourhood had taken the 66-year-old to court after their children came home with stories about a naked man waving to them from his front room. The man doesn't know what all the fuss is about, "I always drink a cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette in the nude, before I get dressed." According to him the neighbours have never minded. He says his house is 35 metres from the road and there are large plants in the garden. "You'd have to be a peeping tom to see me."

Humans Outnumbered

There are a lot of bikes in Holland.

How many?

A lot.

The Dutch statistics office reports that the number of bicycles sold last year rose by 80,000 to 1.4 million. Around 85 percent of the population owns a bicycle and there are now 18 million bicycles in the Netherlands, which has just over 16 million people.

Last year the Dutch cycled a total of 14.7 billion kilometres, 1.4 billion kilometres more than they did 15 years ago.

April 27: Guinness Factories And Pub Crawls

Morning in Dublin; I disembarked the commuter train at the River Liffey, which splits Dublin in two, and began exploring.



There are all kinds of crazy and weird statues around Dublin. Like so:




But as it turns out, like so many monuments in Holland, there's a Canadian maple leaf on it! It's to commemorate all the Irish who came to Canada during the potato famine and helped build the country.



More statues...






Right on the edge of central Dublin is a large park called St. Stephen's Green. It's quite a pleasant place, similar to Stanley Park in its proximity to the downtown core.





And onto the busy and overpriced shopping streets of Dublin.




The picture below is from Temple Bar district, the trendiest part of Dublin today. 20 years ago it was a run-down showcase of urban decay, but it's been redeveloped and has a definite charm to it, if you can stand the throngs of tourists.



Dublin's downtown is flanked by a myriad of old stately buildings, many of which are either government buildings or museums today. I can't possibly remember what most of these are now, but I'll put up the pictures of 'em anyway.



(I think this is the Prime Minister's residence, or maybe the Parliament Building...)





Dublin's churches aren't nearly as large or impressive as other European capitals have, but they're still nice.





This is the entrance to Trinity College, one the most presitigious universities in Europe and one of the oldest in the world. It's alumni include Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Bram Stoker and Samuel Beckett. Located right in downtown Dublin, it's a very nice campus indeed. (UBC has better views, though!)






Back on the other side of the river, I walked down O'Connell Street, where I had first gotten off the airport bus. O'Connell Street is named after Daniel O'Connell, a 19th century Irish Nationalist, and that's his statue below.



Also on O'Connell street is the gargantuan Spire of Dublin, built in 1999. It sits on the site of the former Nelson's Pillar, a monument to Lord Nelson. But Nelson was the British naval hero who won the Battle of Trafalgar, and as you might be aware of, there's been a bit of tension between Britain and Ireland over the years. The IRA blew up Nelson's Pillar in 1966, and eventually Dublin decided it might be nice to build something in its place to spruce things up a bit.



This, of course, is the holiest of holies: the Guinness Factory. Did you know that Guinness actually fills you up less than other beer because it's not carbonated? Most people think it's more filling. Now you know.



I didn't take the tour, because...well, who cares what a beer factory looks like on the inside. But I walked very close by.



I did go inside the Arts & History branch of the National Museum of Ireland, where there's a large exhibit on the military history of Ireland. The museum is located in the Collins Barracks, so named after Irish independence hero Michael Collins. Collins Barracks was an actual army garrison until 1997, when it was incorporated into the museum.



The Irish civil war fought through the 20th century took place largely in Northern Ireland, where Belfast is; Dublin was mostly spared. The museum exhibits on the war were very good, and I learned a lot of things that surprised me. The number of people killed was relatively small as far as civil wars go--somewhere in the neighbourhood of 6,000--but it was a truly vicious battle.



There was a big ol' boat on display in the courtyard.



I did a bit of exploring in the area, and behind the museum I found a quiet church-yard and cemetary which contained memorials to those killed in the Easter Uprising, the event in 1916 that eventually set off the civil war.




That night I did what any tourist to Dublin is required to do: a pub crawl. I chose the Literary Pub Crawl, which was lead by two old stage actors who were quite humourous and lively (seen to the left in the photo below).



Ireland today is one of the most economically successful countries in the world, but as an unfortunate result Dublin is shockingly expensive. London is probably more expensive, but because Ireland is on the Euro it is easily comparable to the other European countries. A beer in a Dublin pub is three to four times as expensive as a beer in Amsterdam, which was...well, disappointing. Not that the pubs were any less busy because of it!

And that was my trip to Dublin. It's of course getting more difficult to write these blogs posts, as I'm so far removed in time from the actual trip. But two more cities to go, Copenhagen and Paris, and a couple other surprises along the way.