Koninginnenach
Yesterday was Koninginnenach or Queen's Night, the night before the traditional and very Dutch Koninginnedag or Queen's Day on the 30th of April. What originally started out as the celebration of the queen's birthday, today is only an excuse to totally freak out and party all night (and day) long.
You could already see huge concert stages being build on the major plazas of Den Haag over the past few days as well as posters announcing all sorts of activities and events. We, the exchangies, were told it's best to spend the night in Den Haag and take look at the spectacle in Amsterdam the next day. Well, in the early evening it became clear what kind of event this would be: thousands and thousands of Dutch people wearing at least one piece of orange clothing crawling the streets, getting drunk and listening to 2nd class bands blasting from the stages. Everything ranging from families to students to elderly people was there, literally the whole city seemed to be up on their feet.
Well, upon seeing what awaited us, Cécile, Naïma, Daniel and I decided we were not cut out for this kind of 'national holiday' and instead would just have a couple of drinks at Naïma's place and later sneak past the crowds into the Paard van Troje to see DJane Missile in action. And that's what we did. After a couple of beers and some wine we headed out into the night eager to party. Only to discover that Missile wasn't as good as she sounded in her online sets, the crowd was extremely... um... drunk and village-fairish and we still weren't ready for the full frontal patriotism that was apparent everywhere – there were so many Holland flags hung up behind the DJ it almost looked like some fascist propaganda speeches were about to be held. Very strange.
After one and a half hours we called it quits and headed back to Naïma's place for a relaxed chill out session. Upon looking at some pictures of what Queen's Day in Amsterdam would be like, the four of us had also decided that it would probably be fun to look at for 15 minutes and after that we'd just be annoyed by the 'spectacle'. So instead of doing that trip today was spent recovering from last night and bundling strength for tomorrows big party.
By the way, Naïma lives in the coolest place I've seen here so far – it's an old squatted school building, where each 'apartment' is basically one of the old 60qm classrooms, with one big shared kitchen and showers in the basement. The whole thing is just crazy and looks like a mixture of run down artist's atelier (e.g. there's a small screen printing room on the first floor), junkie den and fraternity house. Gotta go back there some time and take more pictures. Those two below are almost exactly three hours apart by the way.
You could already see huge concert stages being build on the major plazas of Den Haag over the past few days as well as posters announcing all sorts of activities and events. We, the exchangies, were told it's best to spend the night in Den Haag and take look at the spectacle in Amsterdam the next day. Well, in the early evening it became clear what kind of event this would be: thousands and thousands of Dutch people wearing at least one piece of orange clothing crawling the streets, getting drunk and listening to 2nd class bands blasting from the stages. Everything ranging from families to students to elderly people was there, literally the whole city seemed to be up on their feet.
Well, upon seeing what awaited us, Cécile, Naïma, Daniel and I decided we were not cut out for this kind of 'national holiday' and instead would just have a couple of drinks at Naïma's place and later sneak past the crowds into the Paard van Troje to see DJane Missile in action. And that's what we did. After a couple of beers and some wine we headed out into the night eager to party. Only to discover that Missile wasn't as good as she sounded in her online sets, the crowd was extremely... um... drunk and village-fairish and we still weren't ready for the full frontal patriotism that was apparent everywhere – there were so many Holland flags hung up behind the DJ it almost looked like some fascist propaganda speeches were about to be held. Very strange.
After one and a half hours we called it quits and headed back to Naïma's place for a relaxed chill out session. Upon looking at some pictures of what Queen's Day in Amsterdam would be like, the four of us had also decided that it would probably be fun to look at for 15 minutes and after that we'd just be annoyed by the 'spectacle'. So instead of doing that trip today was spent recovering from last night and bundling strength for tomorrows big party.
By the way, Naïma lives in the coolest place I've seen here so far – it's an old squatted school building, where each 'apartment' is basically one of the old 60qm classrooms, with one big shared kitchen and showers in the basement. The whole thing is just crazy and looks like a mixture of run down artist's atelier (e.g. there's a small screen printing room on the first floor), junkie den and fraternity house. Gotta go back there some time and take more pictures. Those two below are almost exactly three hours apart by the way.
ccseabass - 2008-05-01 00:21