Don't Leave Me

Apologies, again, for the slow posting pace. I really am quite busy. But I do intend to finish this blog off, and will attempt to start the Copenhagen posts this weekend.

In the meantime, if you miss my witty and sarcastic prose, you can catch me doing some rather political blogging here.

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."