Queen's Day

29 April 2008

Orange makeover for Dutch on Queen's Day
Orange was the order of the day as half-a-million Dutch citizens paid tribute in Amsterdam on Wednesday to their monarch in annual Queen's Day celebrations. Many of Queen Beatrix's loyal subjects were decked out from head to toe in orange -- the royal colour -- as hundreds of thousands defied an inclement forecast to party in the Dutch capital. Numbers were boosted by more than 255,000 people who came in by train and joined the merrymakers along the banks of the canals, some even taking to the water on boats decorated in orange. Police estimated there were some 500,000 people enjoying the festival atmosphere in Amsterdam alone. AFP

Queen Beatrix. The royal family visited the Frisian villages Makkum and Franeker on Queen's Day.

Laughter all round as pink-clad princesses celebrate Queen's Day
Merriment and laughter was the order of the day as Dutch royals got into the party spirit on Wednesday, joining the rest of Holland in marking the annual occasion of Queen's Day. There was a definite carnival atmosphere as Princess Maxima lead the festivities - honouring Queen Beatrix's official birthday and the anniversary of her acension to the throne - in a vibrant pink two-piece ensemble and matching hat. Hello Magazine

Prince Willem-Alexander and Princess Maxima.

Amsterdam TV station AT5 reports about Queen's Day here (in Dutch), with pictures, information and updates throughout the day.

For more information about Queen's Day, read this entry.

Low country highlights: Groningen

22 April 2008 It may seem tucked away in the north of the Netherlands, far from all the action, but that has perhaps been a benefit to Groningen. This city of less than 200,000 has retained its own character. It's a very Dutch city - an old inland port where old boats laze on canals, and people laze in cafés in town squares. Groningen's historic buildings have been largely kept intact, so it's certainly an attractive city at almost every turn - just see the 15th century Martini Tower or the 17th century university for example. Read the entire article here including tourist information.

Amsterdam: World Book Capital 2008

18 April 2008 Amsterdam has a rich history as a literary haven - a tradition which continues today as the city is crowned World Book Capital 2008. On April 23, World Book and Copyright Day, Amsterdam will be officially inaugurated as World Book Capital 2008. The ensuing year-long programme of events centres around an 'open book' theme, a reminder that Amsterdam's infamous tolerance doesn't just equate to legal coffeeshops and brothels - rather, it was vital in the city's development as a refuge for the written word. In the Dutch Golden Age of the 17th century, owing to its lack of government censorship, the city became renowned as a safe haven for the book trade, home to printers and booksellers, as well as controversial writers and philosophers such as Spinoza and Descartes. In more recent history, after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, works by exiled writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Max Brod and Joseph Roth were published in Amsterdam.
Read the entire article at The Guardian

From www.amsterdamworldbookcapital.com, the official website:
Ever since the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic in the 17th century, Amsterdam has been a world book capital with a leading reputation in the Netherlands and beyond. Amsterdam has always opened its doors to writers fleeing oppression elsewhere. Along with the open-mindedness of the book trade, this tradition has ensured the Dutch capital’s thriving success as a literary hub, as a home to many industrious writers, printers, bookshops, publishers and antiquarian booksellers. UNESCO’s granting of the title of World Book Capital to Amsterdam presents the city with a unique opportunity to reaffirm its international reputation as a place of refuge for free speech and the written word.

Speech delivered by Princess Laurentien at the start of Amsterdam World Book Capital 2008 (April 14, 2008).

30 April: Queen's Day

16 April 2008 If you only visit Amsterdam once in your life, make sure your visit coincides with April 30, 2008. Queen’s Day is the annual Dutch national holiday in honour of the late Queen Juliana’s birthday.
On Queen’s Day there are celebrations throughout the Netherlands. However, the most popular destination is Amsterdam where some one million or more visitors join the 750.000 locals in the world’s largest street party. dutchamsterdam.nl

Queen's Day (Dutch: Koninginnedag) is a celebration in the Netherlands, the Netherlands Antilles, and Aruba on April 30 (or April 29th if the 30th is a Sunday). Originally a celebration of the queen's birthday, it is now mainly known for the 'vrijmarkt' (literally 'freemarket'), the one day in the year that anyone is allowed to sell anything in the streets and 'koninginnenacht' (Queen's Night) on the preceding night. It is also a Dutch holiday. It started as a celebration of the birthday of Queen Wilhelmina (1880-1962), on August 31. After 1948 Koninginnedag moved to April 30 (the birthday of Queen Juliana). When Queen Beatrix succeeded Juliana on April 30, 1980, she decided to keep the holiday on April 30th as a tribute to her mother. (from Wikipedia: Queen's Day)

Links
holland.com
amsterdam.info
Queen's Day's hot spots at iamsterdam.com
pictures of Queen's Day over the years
thehollandring.com

Historic New York: From Dutch colony to world capital

10 April 2008 In a city that is ever-changing, where new buildings sprout up seemingly every week, there’s still a vast amount of history to be absorbed, ranging from New York City’s colonial origins, to the immigrant communities of the 19th and early 20th centuries, to recent world-shaping events. In this article (cityguideny.com) you will find a small sample of New York’s treasure trove of historic sites and museums.
Definitely visit Fraunces. From the article: "Fraunces Tavern was the site of Washington’s farewell address to his officers on December 4, 1783, and figured prominently in his presidency. Today, there’s a colonial-style restaurant on the first floor and the Fraunces Tavern Museum upstairs, which exhibits Revolutionary Era armaments, flags, art and other objects." Find Fraunces at 54 Pearl St., 212-425-1778. frauncestavern.com

A virtual tour of New Netherland
"Fifteen streets or so, depending on how you count them: that was the capital of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. At its southern end, Manhattan Island tapered to a smoothed point, rather like a sock, with the toes sticking out toward the harbor. Once the decision was made to make it the capital, other features of the town fell into place. The position of the fort at the end of the island naturally meant that the town would develop around it, the streets radiating northward from it and from the East River frontage. The presence of a small inlet cutting through the developing grid didn’t deter the inhabitants. They decided it was a “gracht” — a canal — and built pretty little bridges over it, as in Holland." More information at www.nnp.org

Maps
New Amsterdam's beginnings, unlike most other colonies in the New World, were thoroughly documented in maps. During the time of New Netherland's colonization the Dutch were Europe's pre-eminent cartographers. There is a particularly detailed map called the Castello Plan. Virtually every structure in New Amsterdam at the time is believed to be represented, and by a fortunate coincidence it can be determined who resided in every house from the Nicasius de Sille List of 1660, which enumerates all the citizens of New Amsterdam and their addresses.
Several maps of old New York can be viewed here (historystreets.com).

New York's legacy, New York's identity: Article in PDF detailing the birth of New York.

(PS: 100th entry!)

When England turned Orange

07 April 2008 Adam Nicolson reviews Going Dutch: How England Plundered Holland's Glory by Lisa Jardine. Jardine's beguiling picture of 17th-century Europe is like a scene in an ancient chocolate factory: everywhere you look there is another percolating, bubbling, mutually infusing reciprocating-jar experiment.

Arrival of William III of Orange in England, November 15, 16, 1688. William came in an armada of 500 ships, carrying an army of 20,000 soldiers, plus a similar number of sailors and associated personnel. They landed at Torbay and marched to London, which was put under Dutch military occupation until the spring of 1690, by which time William had been fully acknowledged as England's new ruler. It was, says Jardine, "a brilliantly stage-managed sequence of events".

The subject could embrace the whole continent but here is restricted to a single relationship: Holland and England, facing one another as first-cousin cultures, linked and separated by the Narrow Seas. Both were protestant, mercantile and imperialist, both highly urbanised, both opposed to the great Catholic powers to the south. But they also differed: one a republic, the other a monarchy; one emerging from the austerity of a Calvinist burgher culture, troubled by its own gathering riches, the other still in love with courtly, jewelled complexity and elaborate clothes, with magnificent houses in enormous parks and sophisticated gardens. There was never any English embarrassment at riches.
Read the entire article here.

No Dutch smoking...except for cannabis

04 April 2008 Cannabis will be exempt from a Dutch smoking ban that comes into force in two months. Restrictions on smokers in cafes and restaurants will not apply as long as cannabis is consumed neat, without tobacco. The exemption follows fears that many of Amsterdam's lucrative "coffeeshops" would be forced to close if soft drug users had to smoke elsewhere. The coffeeshops, which draw millions of tourists each year, allow users to buy cannabis over the counter and smoke it without fear of arrest. The Daily Telegraph

That sigh of relief that you heard was probably from American tourists who travel the Amsterdam to enjoy the lax pot laws, but those from the old continent seem to love their reefer mixed with tobacco. Interestingly, the law allows the establishments to set up an area for the patrons who prefer their mixed spliffs, only the employees cannot serve them because the air contains the highly carcinogenic tobacco smoke (which ostensibly comes from unrolled chemically drenched cigarettes). The Sequitur.com

Ban smoking in Amsterdam? Smoking something they aren’t allowed at home is exactly why thousands of tourists flock there every year. But the prime minister was unequivocal, vowing that the city’s coffeeshops “will be smoke-free” when the ban takes effect on July 1, 2008. Eight months after the announcement, though, the Dutch health minister, Ab Klink, has told lawmakers that smoking could continue at the shops, as long as no tobacco is in the mix, according to the Dutch News Service. Those who prefer to accent their marijuana high with a bit of tobacco as well will have to go outside or to separate tobacco-smoking rooms. The alternative will be going tobacco-free, as the ban seeks, by smoking marijuana alone. “Klink does not expect that cannabis users will switch en masse to ‘pure’ joints,” the Dutch report said. “He will arrange a study, though, of whether the smoking habits of coffeeshop visitors change after the ban.” The Lede

Information and links
Dutch narcotic laws divide drugs into two groups – soft drugs and hard drugs. While hard drugs (cocaine, LSD, morphine, heroin) are banned as in other countries, the soft drugs – cannabis in all its forms (marijuana, hashish, hash oil) has been admitted for the personal use only. In Amsterdam, coffeeshop means a place where cannabis is openly sold and smoked, while only café means a coffee and thee drinking place. The coffeeshops can legally store up to 500 g of marijuana and can sell up to 5 grams to adults over 18.

amsterdam.info/coffeeshops: Information and addresses.

A guide to the Dutch drugs policy (PDF), published by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Amsterdam escape.com: Information, guidelines and addresses.

Harlem: Then, now and forever

01 April 2008 "In September of 1658, the Dutch and their African labor force of enslaved and half-free Africans celebrated the founding of a village called New Haarlem. 350 years later, Harlem is still going strong. [...] The original Africans were either members of the Dutch West India Company labor force or individually owned workers. From the very beginning New Haarlem was, like most of New Netherlands, populated not just by the Dutch but by the Africans as well. That bears repeating—people of African descent lived in what is today’s Harlem 350 years ago. Prior to the Africans’ arrival, the colony was essentially a failing, lackluster afterthought of Dutch holdings. Its predominantly Dutch inhabitants clustered at the lower tip of Manhattan island in the tiny New Amsterdam enclave. They wanted to get rich quickly through the fur trade and return home to Holland."
Read the entire article here.

1863 lithograph of a 1765 drawing of Harlem, New York.