After Queen´s Day

Chaos
Originally uploaded by Photochiel.

It´s over. The biggest yearly mass celebration of the Dutch society. Queen´s Day. The concept is as follows:
- everyone´s wearing orange
- the city turns into a flea market
- beer

The buying and selling is the thing that separates it from the Finnish Labour Day. And yes, people are not that drunk.

I have two Finnish friends over which is always nice. You really see your city in a different way. We didn´t stroll on the streets the entire day but in the afternoon decided to get home, make dinner, open the windows and listen to the crowd. It was a mixture of church bells, party boats and a really crappy cover band in the bar downstairs. Sounds really middle-aged. I know.

I am not really into masses. I get a headache very quickly. And I feel that part of my autonomy as an individual has been stripped off when I can not select the speed of walking. The good thing in Amsterdam was that there were far less horns and whistles etc than in the Finnish vappu.