Tuesday promises, literally, to be the ultimate Queen’s Day (Koninginnedag). The Netherlands bids farewell to its beloved HRH Beatrix, who after exactly 33 years on the throne, is stepping aside to make way for her son Willem-Alexander and his wife Maxima, in a ceremony in Amsterdam’s super-central Nieuwe Kerk. All being well, starting next year the annual public holiday-cum-street party will be known as King’s Day. Here’s what to expect if you’re anywhere near Amsterdam tomorrow:
Now, I love a good (read: bad) novelty song as much as the next person, but one has to draw the line at this, the official Koningsleid (King’s Song) composed to welcome Willem-Alexander to power (which is to say, considerably less power than his predecessors). A storm of criticism greeted the ditty, with many deriding it as North Korean-style propaganda (its lyrics hint at a divine right to rule, plus a desire to eat mashed up potato for breakfast) and its composer has publically withdrawn it, if not from the iTunes store. Inevitably, I’ll be humming it regardless. That’s the thing about propaganda; it’s catchy.
Already one of the most densely populated places in the Western world, Amsterdam gets even cosier on Queen’s Day, when folk from all over the country flock to pay their (drunken) respects. This year, it’s estimated that 800,000 people will make for the capital to be near their incoming monarch. Yup, that’s twice the population of the city. Breathe in.
Dutch laws are relaxed on Queen’s Day, meaning that any resident is entitled to set up a street stall with the objective of clearing out their attics. In Amsterdam, people do this in their thousands, making for a fascinating, nostalgic, and occasionally horrifying spectacle as households spew their out-of-fashion toys and VHS collections out onto the streets. It’s presumably pretty lucrative for the stall-holders, as most of the passersby are—let’s face it—drunk out of their minds. My own star purchases from Queen’s Days of yore include this life-sized cardboard tribute to Paris Hilton, which tragically ended up in a canal. Gone but not forgotten.
Although Amsterdammers of all political stripes are generally glad of tomorrow’s royally sanctioned day off, 70 percent of the public favors slashing royal expenditure—in particular, the incoming king’s pay check. Surely it can be no coincidence, then, that the ceremony for Willem Alexander’s investiture is looking a little—well—bargain basement. Plans to release a host of balloons into the sky over Amsterdam have been shelved ("on environmental grounds"), and the new royal couple will apparently be waving to crowds not from the royal yacht, but on something borrowed from the water inspectorate. Glam!
As usual, Amsterdammers will be digging out the deeply unflattering national hue in all shades and dressing like a bunch of satsuma mandarins with sunburn. Nice to see that some things never change.
