|
Post by fumobici on Jun 24, 2014 0:31:48 GMT
Koningsday (King's Day) was held this year for the first time in over a century on April 26th since the appointed day, the 27th new king Willem-Alexander's birthday, was a Sunday and those as you know the super pious Dutch couldn't deal with that. Since 1890 it's been Koninginnedag or Queen's Day. But enough background. The day is the biggest party of the year in the Netherlands and I found myself smack dab in the heart of it in Amsterdam. After I'd got checked into the hostel and had a brief nap to recover a bit from the flight from Seattle I headed out. A carnival complete with scary looking huge rides had been set up in Dam Square. The night before King's Day is called King's Night and it is a party of epic proportions in its own right, the king of pre-funks. Bands are set up playing in the streets and squares all around the city and one can wander beer in hand from one free concert to the next late into the night if one so wishes. I had to go to sleep early but I managed to take it in until 10 or 11 PM. Once I got out of the lit Dam Square though, it was too dark to photograph much besides blur. You can get up in Koningsdag kit as far as you like... Must be time for bed soon.
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Jun 24, 2014 1:44:33 GMT
Unlike the rest of the city, I'd been teetotaling jetlagged so I was up early on King's Day and pretty much had the city to myself until 10 or 11 AM when people began filling it up. This is like 7:30 AM, the streets are deserted and the morning light shone in the canals. Skies were blue and clear, the forecast hadn't been terribly encouraging right up to a couple of days earlier so luck was with us. Amsterdam is a beautiful little city and the deserted streets offer delight after delight to the eyes. First sunlight on the buildings glows in the water. Any sunny Sunday morning would probably be similarly photogenic. An early arrival motoring in. A very Amsterdam building. What's this? The Rijksmuseum. I'm guessing there are some beautiful paintings inside. It's got a great facade. Behind the museum are some wonderfully landscaped and planted gardens a large reflecting pool and the (a really, there's another at Schiphol airport) famous I amsterdam sculpture. This fountain in the lovely museum courtyard garden caught the play of morning sunlight through the breeze blown trees in a most attractive manner. We're getting into mid-morning and the city is still pretty quiet but I know it won't last. The Science Museum looks like a giant ship berthed across the Amstel river. Now the boats and people are starting to pour in, a trickle then a flood. Now things are heating up, Dam Square is full of revelers. These guys were even sweet enough to invite me to join them for a boat ride but I wanted to navigate myself around. There were even huge party boats with bands and DJs rocking up the canals-- Watch your heads there people! Even in the midst of all this there are quiet corners of the city nearby, which I was ready to find and relax a bit. I wandered into this pedestrian street in the centrum, Verversstraat, where I'd like to live when I get around to becoming officially Dutch! Not particularly photogenic but perfect. Almost Italian! But the party goes on mere blocks away. The streets are closed for the day. Even the heat seeking bicycles are largely absent. It won't be this relaxed walking Amsterdam until next King's Day I suspect. I found this building interesting in the Jordaan quarter. The clean up crews will be busy tomorrow, but it'll all be pretty much spotless when they finish. In fact it's already about halfway done by the time I catch my 10:15 to Paris. Wonderful, crazy, jetlagged, whirlwind. If you haven't been to Amsterdam I really recommend you do, it's a beautiful place and the Dutch are just lovely people, very friendly and will almost always return your smile. There's really nothing else like it anywhere.
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jun 24, 2014 4:53:15 GMT
I really like the peaceful photos of the canals before the people are out and about, and the scenes also make me realize that I haven't really visited Amsterdam in the spring with the delicate leaves on the trees. I've seen it during the other seasons, though. Winter can be quite grim! I like the last blurry photo in the opening post. It looks like the sort of photo one might find on a fringe website with the caption "Loch Ness monster spotted in canals of Amsterdam!"
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jun 24, 2014 6:49:03 GMT
I too like the quiet photos. Last time I was in Amsterdam was about the same time of year (around Easter) and same time of day, between flights, although much colder than your photos show. It definitely is a picturesque city.
I wonder how many of those revellers are actually Dutch. King's Day seems to be a young tourist attracter like running the bulls in Pamplona, if TT is anything to go by.
|
|
|
Post by mossie on Jun 24, 2014 13:26:34 GMT
I like the painterly effect some of your canal pictures with the fresh green trees have. These canal towns are something else of course, it is many years since I have been to Amsterdam but I instantly remembered the tall houses with the beams protruding from the topmost gable carrying the gin wheel to haul the furniture up and down.
|
|
|
Post by tod2 on Jun 24, 2014 14:29:04 GMT
Thanks so much for that lovely photo report - the trees are just as I remember them....such a wonderful green. I was very happy to see Koningsdag in Amsterdam from your photos because I now see what we missed. As we hightailed it out the day before, expecting to escape the masses....how wrong could we have been! The Keukenhof Gardens were just as crowded with 'orange' people out enjoying those spectacular tulips.
I am with you on a nicer walking experience with the roads closed to trams and other vehicles especially bicycles - I was very nervous crossing the roads!
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Jun 24, 2014 14:40:07 GMT
I wonder how many of those revellers are actually Dutch. King's Day seems to be a young tourist attracter like running the bulls in Pamplona, if TT is anything to go by. I didn't hear a lot of non-Dutch being spoken, it seemed like the vast majority of the celebrants were indeed Dutch. I actually didn't plan on going to this event, in fact I wasn't even aware it was going on when I booked my flights. I just thought getting a cheap room in central Amsterdam was extraordinarily difficult.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jun 24, 2014 15:30:09 GMT
And you had very nice weather. Even in the springtime, it can be very grey and drizzly.
One time I was there in late autumn and I swear it rained every day for a month. Very cold rain, a degree or two above freezing. The pavements were seeped with rain.
Oh, it is an attractive city even in cold rain, but sterner.
|
|
|
Post by bixaorellana on Jun 24, 2014 16:21:56 GMT
Glorious, exuberant thread, Fumobici!
Yes, your peaceful pictures are exquisite, but as the thread is named Koningsday, you did a bang-up job of covering that aspect too. I was appalled at the litter in one picture, though. It sure overturned the stereotype of the spotless Dutch step scrubbers. And hey -- I see by your 2nd photo that the Monty Python foot is much older than I ever suspected.
All of your canal pictures, including the sleepytime bridge one, are absolutely lovely. Great, fun report.
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Jun 24, 2014 18:38:06 GMT
Super report. All your photos are wonderful, but I agree that the canal shots are to die for. The little video helped capture the boisterous spirt of the crowds, too. Funny how you ended up visiting at the same time as the celebration. :-)
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Jul 18, 2014 4:03:25 GMT
I've been enjoying this thread and your fabulous pictures once again, Fumobici. A trip to Amsterdam may be in the works for next summer, and I suppose now is as good as any time to start gathering ideas.
|
|
|
Post by fumobici on Jul 18, 2014 19:09:10 GMT
Thanks. Amsterdam, to me, has to be worth a couple of days at minimum.
It seems like when I travel, I end up constantly walking into parties and celebrations without even planning to. Get out the door, get on a plane, then start walking. Good things seem to happen! I loved your uncategorized Paris photos so much htmb that I may do my own version.
|
|
|
Post by htmb on Jul 18, 2014 19:23:49 GMT
Thanks, fumobici. It would be really nice if you'd post more pictures from your trip.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jul 19, 2014 1:23:26 GMT
I've spent as much as 2 1/2 to 3 months there at a time, and always enjoyed it, though of course that wasn't full-time tourism. There are some very pleasant things about daily life there. One frustrating thing is that it is very hard to learn Dutch in Amsterdam, because everyone except the oldest people and some younger people who speak another language at home speaks fluent English. And even when I pretended not to speak English, I happened upon people who spoke fluent French. At one point, an fellow and associate director of the research institute was Flemish. She heard me speaking German (which I don't speak very well) and saw me reading Dutch papers, so she would speak to me in Dutch.
Dutch falls linguistically between English and German, but that doesn't mean that it is a mixture of the two. And the Dutch are very protective of their language, which is good, but that also means a lack of readiness to speak it with those who are less than fluent, which is less good.
A lovely thing in the Netherlands, even in wintertime, is that there are always fresh flowers, because there are greenhouses for them in winter. At the street markets, one can buy them very cheaply - beautiful flowers that are "substandard" as in a bit crooked, like the ones we'd grow ourselves. Though there are some unscrupulous merchants who sell flowers past their prime.
I discovered kale there (boerenkool) before it became some weird kind of healthfood to have in (yecch) smoothies. It is indeed a very healthful winter vegetable, but it is not served in a way that would please smoothie fans; it is cooked and mashed with potato (my friends add onion, garlic, parsley etc) and served with a smoked sausage called a rookworst (which means... smoked sausage). A dish for cold weather.
And questa, of course I discovered Indonesian food there!
|
|
|
Post by tod2 on Jul 28, 2014 16:45:33 GMT
Aahh! You know I just loved being in Amsterdam because the language is almost exactly like the Afrikaans we learned in school. The Dutch cooking skills I have learned come from my mother who cooked Dutch dishes to please my Dutch father. The most served at dinner ( and most probably be boring to many) were potato boiled with green sliced beans and then mashed. Potato cooked with carrots and then mashed.) Always accompanied by some kind of meat and gravy. I still cook these dishes for my family as one way of getting vegetables into young children.....
|
|
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2014 16:55:08 GMT
I have to admit that I have never quite figured out what a Dutch dish is unless it comes out of a Febo dispenser. Oh, except for the herrings! I could eat nothing but that for a week.
|
|
|
Post by bjd on Jul 28, 2014 18:06:49 GMT
They also have pancake restaurants where they serve nothing but huge crepes with all kinds of fillings.
|
|
|
Post by lagatta on Jul 28, 2014 23:20:21 GMT
tod, at the railway station at the airport (great transport integration), I was behind a South African couple of a certain age who were speaking English (obviously their second language) to the railway employee, who answered them in slow, carefully articulated Dutch. He knew (from experience) that they could understand him and feel at home if he didn't speak in the very deep-throated and a bit slurred way that many contemporary Dutchies do.
If we hadn't had modern media links and far more cultural and economic exchanges, Québécois, Acadian and other Canadian varieties of French would have been as far removed from French and other European varieties. Nowadays the two sides of the pond seem to be getting closer, also because of a lot of French and Maghrebi immigration here.
There are certainly commercial ties between South Africa and the Netherlands, especially since the end of apartheid. Lots of South African wine, and of course there has always been a diamond trade between the South African mines and the diamond cutting businesses and their highly-skilled workers in Amsterdam - and in Antwerp, in Flanders.
|
|