Celebrating the birthday of our Queen is a traditional national event.
April 30 used to be the birthday of our former Queen: Queen Juliana.
Our present Queen, Queen Beatrix, decided to keep the date of april 30 as the official date for Queensday, because her own birthday of januari 31, is in the winter and queensday is a day of celebrations in the open air.
This year, 2006, april 30 is on a sunday. It's tradition to move the festivities a day forward when they fall on a sunday, so this year we'll celebrate on a saturday.
In the morning children will have a ride on their bikes through the neighbourhood.
All bikes are made nice with flags and other things by the children themselves (and an occassional father who cheats his child into winning.).
Then there's a market where children sell their toys, and sometimes there's a market for people of age above 10. Like a bootsale.
Ofcourse there's lots of music, icecream and whatever people like.
And people play games. Old dutch games. They dance, sing and have fun in other ways.
In many cities the day ends with an open air concert.
The Queen visits two cities at Queens Day. This year: Zeewolde and Almere.
Everybody can follow these visits on TV.
Which is fun, as you can see the prinses taking part in the traditional Dutch games. Ofcourse people are curious this year if the little Princess Amalia, our future Queen, will participate too.
Many people eat traditional cake and drink an original Oranjebitter, an orange coloured liquor.
Well, if you really want to taste a bit of this special day, you need to visit our country and participate, preferrable in a little city.
Don't forget the wear orange, the colour of our Royalty.
At the left you see links that lead to pages with more interesting information about our Queen, the relationship between our Queen and our country, etc. I hope you enjoy these pages.
