Sunday, May 1, 2011

Queen's Day

I've had a busy weekend. As I mentioned earlier it was Queen's Day here in the Netherlands on Saturday, this turns into a full weekend event.

On Friday I wanted to get a bunch of homework done but instead ended up watching the royal wedding, because I couldn't very well be the only person not watching it. And it sounded like fun. I loved (capital L loved) her dress by the way. That lasted a substantial amount of time.

After all that it was early afternoon and a few of us headed into the city to find some orange things to wear for the big day. By the time we got back it was pretty much time for us to head to the house of a guy who used to live in our complex for a bbq.

It was a lovely evening, quite warm and generally a good time. We left for the city centre for the festivities of Queen's Night - the night before. It was quite a party. In the Netherlands they, unlike Canada, don't corral their drinkers into a small fenced off location, they serve them beer in the streets and let madness ensue. Well not really any madness at all, at least nothing unreasonable, just a really big party. There was live music at various stages around the city. The show ended at 2am, at which time we headed to the bars, I made it home around 4 and made it safely to bed shortly thereafter.

The next day started slow, which is for the best for most people - as I'm pretty sure my 4am bed time was quite early compared to others.

It was very entertaining to see people slowly emerge from their rooms, still wearing last night's orange, with their faces still painted with Dutch flags. The previous night's face paint came off and was quickly reapplied as we suited up in even more orange and headed into the city centre in the early afternoon of Saturday.

The streets were quite packed. Each bar had their own music playing in the streets, there was about 4 large stages with bands and djs playing throughout the city and more beer stands than you could count. It was such a laid back atmosphere with people of all ages wondering around the streets. We made our way around to most streets where things were going on, shared some laugh, ate greasy burgers (with fried onions! yum), danced, and ate frites with mayonnaise (not really that good). Eventually when the sun started to set we headed home to change into warmer clothes and grab a snack before heading out to the bars for the night. What ended up happening was us sitting around in someone's room chatting for most of the evening. By this time I had long since stopped drinking so when they decided to head back to the city at 2am I headed to bed.

This is, of course, a very abbreviated version of the weekend's goings on but I think that is for the best.

Today I've been doing homework, I had to go buy some new jeans, and I've been getting ready for Berlin and Prague. Well more accurately, I've been putting off getting ready for Berlin and Prague. I just hate packing so so so much and it seems like that is all I do, it really makes me feel like I live out of a suitcase, and no one likes that. Boo :( Not that I'll complain, it just always puts a damper on my going places.

My train leaves tomorrow morning just after 8am and I know it'll be a struggle to get there on time, and I haven't really packed yet (everything is laying on my bed), and it is almost 10pm already. What happened to my day?!

Well this time I am taking less stuff so I can fit my computer in so hopefully I'll be better able to update you from the road, but if not, I'm back on Saturday so I can study for a final exam I have on Wednesday and finish up a group paper that is due the following Friday. Hope you've had a lovely weekend.

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