Today was Queensday in the Netherlands. There’s a detailed description on Wikipedia–where else?–but in short, it’s a national holiday celebrating our queen (though it’s held on the birthday of the previous queen for reasons of weather).

It’s funny, because the Dutch pride themselves on being a very practical, level-headed people. We don’t really do the patriotism thing. Three exceptions:

1. Queensday. BREAK OUT THE GIANT ORANGE WIGS.
2. Soccer. BREAK OUT THE FACEPAINT.
3. When we’re criticized. We’ll be all, “Oh, nah, we’re not really that patriotic, we’re way too sober for that,” and then someone goes, “You know, the Netherlands have a real problem with this-and-that” and then this orange haze of pure rage covers our vision and we wake up three hours later asking “WHAT JUST HAPPENED.”

That said, I don’t think Queensday is that much about patriotism, though it looks like it on the surface–there’s flags and facepaint and “I LOVE HOLLAND” shirts. It’s an excuse to… well, here’s how we celebrate it:

• Orange. Just… orange.
• Nationwide garage sales held on the streets. Everything from ten-year-old sunglasses to brand-new clothes to stained My Little Ponies cover every conceivable foot of pavement.
• ORANGE. Jeans and hats and hair dye.
• Getting the day off work. We’re so keen on this, in fact, that if April 30th falls on a Sunday, we’ll move Queensday to April 29th instead.
• Partying. Lots of clubs organize Queensnight parties and the beer consumption is through the freaking roof.
• ORANGE. Flags and socks and shirts and wigs and coats and flowers and and and and…

Because of how busy the Amsterdam city center is, they lock it off from most traffic, trams included. This makes the streets a free-for-all, with tourists, people hawking their wares, drunk partygoers, cyclists, and regular visitors all sharing the streets with taxis and buses.

CHAOS REIGNS.

I did mention the orange, didn't I?

Since today is the official opening to my stepmom’s new restaurant, I headed towards the bus stop, which was already filled with orange-wearing neighbors and tourists waiting for the bus. We dutifully chatted about the weather, which was awesome–after a week of rain, today was T-shirt-and-ice-cream weather, with rain picking up where it left off tomorrow–until the bus drove past without slowing down. The driver threw up his hands in apology. Orange-clad passengers with Dutch flags painted on their cheeks waved at us through the windows.

“To the trams!” we shouted, figuring we’d see where we ended up and walk from there. We kidnapped a handful of confused tourists and marched towards the other bus stop. On the way there, I changed my mind and swerved towards home, where I climbed onto my bike for the fifty-minute ride into town.

Pay special attention to the feet of the girl on the left.

Once arrived, I spent some time at my stepmom’s restaurant, took people’s money when they needed to use the bathrooms, and nibbled on some delicious chicken saté before heading back out to Purchase Junk, as is my duty as a Dutchwoman on Queensday.

JUNK: There was lots of it.

For the record, I bought a) ice cream and b) this cute little spool to wind up the cord for my earphones. VICTORY IS MINE.

Cute spool aside, there are a lot of good reasons to dislike Queensday. Criticize the trash people leave behind. The drunken partygoers screwing things up for everyone else. The noise. The damage caused. Criticize the monarchy, the capitalism, the patriotism… I can go on.

But most of the time, I like Queensday. I like people being in a good mood. I like people enjoying themselves and being completely, utterly ridiculous, wearing huge orange clogs and orange dresses and sparkly tiaras. There’s music on every other street corner, people dancing and laughing and starting conversations with total strangers. The streets are packed with people just out to have a good time. Friends will take their boat out for a boat ride through the canals, just putting on their music and basking in the sun. Entire streets will congregate around single cafes.

On Queensday, the city is one big party, and sometimes, there’s nothing better than wandering around and soaking up the atmosphere.

… can be delightfully pretty.

A well-known Dutch band called BLØF brought out an album in 2006 filled with collaborations with artists from other countries. The combination of Dutch vocals combined with different musical styles had some lovely results. In some cases, they even had multiple singers, each singing verses in their native language.

Those are so my favorite.

Here, for example, is a duet with Counting Crows, Wennen aan September (Getting Used to September):

(If you dig that, try this other collaboration between them: Holiday in Spain — LOVE IT.)

I suspect I can appreciate those duets in a slightly different way from most of you, given that I speak both languages, but I’m equally in love with the next song, Herinnering Aan Later (Memory of Later), which is part Portuguese–a language I most assuredly don’t speak.

This collab is with Cristina Branco, a well-known fado singer. Unfortunately the official music video on YouTube doesn’t allow embedding.

I have a special fondness for this duet–it’s on my BLINK soundtrack, which means I’ve played it approximately three hundred times by now.

Do share your opinions–do you like the above tracks? Do the different languages add or detract, you think?

I’ve been quiet on chat/Twitter/this here blog lately, for two significant reasons: one, I’m lazy; two, the lovely Helen Corcoran decided to grace me with her presence. After spending several days getting up early, feeding her silly, and dragging her all across town, I’m back to sitting around in my PJs and trying desperately to catch up on chores and missed sleep.

I love playing tour guide, but sometimes the line blurs between tourist and tour guide. When I took Helen to see places I’d never visited before, speaking another language, I knew anyone overseeing me would assume I were a tourist. I felt  like a tourist, too: obsessively planning my day, constantly checking the map, thinking of where to eat and which bus to take. One moment, I’d be standing in line for the Anne Frank House and be offered an English flyer; the next, I’d be dragging Helen past the house where I grew up so she could see the old, overgrown graveyard where I used to play as a kid.

Being so immersed in American culture–American friends; American books; American television–has given me a very foreign perspective of the city I grew up in. I see everything in a new light. I appreciate the history, the context. Buildings I passed every day suddenly represent so much more. Food I snacked on as a kid is suddenly unique. Little details–the lights fixed around the bridges, the bike-only tickets for trains–stand out in a way they never did before.

It means I can point out fascinating details to visiting friends, because I know it’ll be special to them, but it also means it’s not as much a part of everyday life as it used to be. The normalcy is gone. It may be a good thing: It makes me appreciate my city more. At the same time, I’m not American, I’m not foreign, I am–or should be–Dutch through and through. There’s a fine line between appreciation and feeling like a tourist in your home town.

When I bike to the supermarket, I’ll catch myself thinking about how smooth and flat the bike paths are, I’ll marvel at how natural biking comes to me, I’ll smile at a mother balancing heavy groceries on the handlebars and two kids perched on the rack. Five years ago, I’d just be cursing myself for not checking if I needed to get milk.

It’s an odd feeling to have, and I’m not sure I like it.

Is it just a part of growing older and looking at things differently? Have you ever felt similarly?

Well, two weeks, at this point. I’m such a slacker.

In lieu of actual blog content, let me show you what I’ve been up to…

… witnessed my dad and stepmom’s new Thai restaurant being blessed by a Buddhist monk. (My stepmom is the lady in blue–my dad’s not in these photos. All the elderly people are family, though. The man setting next to me is my granddad.)

… revised BLINK and sent it back out to betas. Here’s a comparison of different versions of the first few chapters. I… very badly want to be done with this book.

… started “The Tales of Sigma City”–a pulpy ’50s superhero novella–from scratch. This is how I envision my main character, Joan. She needs a hug.

… biked into town so I could work on the above novella in the Central Library. On the way there, I encountered this bike parking boat, which is the coolest thing ever. It is out-Dutched only by our habit of pointing at a significant body of water and going, “That. That right there is where I’m going to build a house.”

(The floating flower market visible in this picture is also high up there, though.)

Poffertjes are soooooo goooooood, you guys. SOGOOD.

Wikipedia describes them thusly:

Poffertjes (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈpɔfərtjəs]) are a traditional Dutch batter treat. Resembling small, fluffy pancakes, they are made with yeast and buckwheat flour. Unlike American pancakes, they have a light, spongey texture. Typically, poffertjes are served with powdered sugar and butter.

Mainly in the colder seasons, temporary stands selling poffertjes are quite popular, and sell portions containing one or two dozen of them. Sometimes the cook prepares them freshly for you. They are sold on a small cardboard (sometimes plastic) plate and come with a small disposable fork the size of a pastry fork. Poffertjes are not difficult to prepare, but a special cast iron pan or copper pan (also available in aluminium with Teflon coating) with several shallow indentations in the bottom is required.

One of the thing I love about staying at my sister’s house is that there’s a poffertjes stand every Saturday, cold weather or no cold weather. Yesterday, I treated myself to some, and thought I’d snap a few pictures to share the experience.*

First: oiling the plate.

Second, squishing the batter into the indentations.

Third, flipping the poffertjes. (They use special forks for this.)

Fourth, you pluck the poffertjes off the plate, add butter and powdered sugar…

And fifth, you eat the damn things. (I’d add a picture but I was too busy eating DELICIOUSLY SWEET POFFERTJES.)

If you ever get a chance to try these–please do so. You won’t be disappointed.

* I tried to be surreptitious about taking pictures… which was tricky. At some point I just blurted out something so people could hear my utter non-accent. I’m sure all inhabitants of major cities are familiar with the “I’m not a tourist! Really!” dance.

In the Netherlands, Christmas is a big deal–but not quite as big as in the US. Often families don’t celebrate it, instead celebrating Sinterklaas, another “hanging out with the family and giving kids presents, also there’s an old bearded dude involved” kind of holiday early December.

Our family did both. /spoiled

Officially, though, we have Christmas Eve and Day on the same days as the US, with an important distinction in that a) when there’s presents, we’ll do them on Christmas Eve instead of the following morning (at least in my family), and b) we have two Christmas days; Second Christmas Day, December 26th, is just as important as First Christmas Day, December 25th. That gives us time to celebrate with both sides of the family.

And get extra presents.

/even more spoiled

In my family we’ve sort of given up on the presents part, since most of the kids in the family are fully grown, but I’ve still got a full enough Christmas planned: tonight, I’m going out to dinner with my paternal grandparents, my dad, his wife, and my mother; tomorrow, I’m going to my mother’s where we’ll brunch with her side of the family; Monday, I’m headed to my mother’s again where the two of us will hang out, watch a movie, and gourmetten, which is similar to raclette but with meat, fish, and vegetables instead of cheese.

Basically, a meal in miniature form. That you cook yourself. On teeny little pans. It is the absolute cutest.

For now, though, it’s Life As Usual, except for:

a) All the Christmas music playing from street organs.

b) The view of a camel from my (well, my sister’s) front door.

I admit, I had to do a double-take on that one.

More tomorrow. For now, if you celebrate, I hope you have an awesome couple of days!

St. Martin’s Day, better known as Sint Maarten here.

Only in recent years did I find out that Sint Maarten is a) celebrated in various countries, albeit in different ways, and b) only celebrated in certain regions of the Netherlands. As a kid, I pretty much assumed the entire country — if not the entire world — celebrated the day.

The Wikipedia entry I linked to above gets a few things right about my own experience with the day: It’s celebrated on the evening of November 11th, and kids go out carrying lanterns and singing songs about Sint Maarten. The most well-known songs go like this:

Sinte sinte Maarten
De koeien hebben staarten
De meisjes hebben rokjes aan
Daar komt sinte Maarten aan!

And:

Elf november is de dag
Dat mijn lichtje, dat mijn lichtje
Elf november is de dag
Dat mijn lichtje branden mag

(Eleven November is the day
That my light, that my light
Eleven November is the day
That my light gets to burn/light)

No one ever accused the Dutch of being song-writing geniuses, all right?

Anyway, the kids go door to door in groups, carrying a lantern each — sometimes home-made, sometimes store-bought. When the door opens, they sing a song or a parody thereof in unison. (Accusations regarding the size of one’s mother are pretty common in those parodies, though those usually only show up when the kids aren’t accompanied by their own parents. Fancy that.)

THEN is when the magic happens — and the part that Wikipedia left out. The owner of the house offers them candy.

This lead to the song I just heard a minute ago:

Twaalf november is de dag
Dat de tandarts, dat de tandarts,
Twaalf november is de dag
Dat de tandarts boren mag

(Twelve November is the day,
That the dentist, that the dentist,
Twelve November is the day,
That the dentist gets to drill)

Aside from parodies — offensive or humorous — kids get inventive with the songs in different ways. I’ve heard rap songs, and just now one kid accompanied the others in his group with his beatboxing.

So there’s your random dose of Dutch culture for the day!

This is not a post about River Song.

This is a post about Acda en de Munnik, my favorite Dutch band by a wide margin. Specifically, it’s a post about one of their songs, Ze Zegt Steeds Liefje. This band often has really lovely — and sometimes humorous — lyrics, but this one struck me as nicely understated one about verbal/emotional abuse in a marriage.

Then I saw a YouTube commenter laugh at how recognizable it was, and only then did I realize it could also be read as the ‘nagging wife’. Given the way it’s sung, I really struggle to get along with that interpretation. The thing is, if it’s meant to be my version, I love the song. If it’s all about some guy bitching about his wife… notsomuch.

So what’s your take?

I’ll try to translate the lyrics as best as I can. This can be tough as a lot of their lines can be interpreted differently. (In this case, the only ambiguous one is ‘sweet’ or ‘sweetly’. It can be read as either a noun or adverb.

She keeps saying sweetie
She keeps saying sweet(ly)

Sweetie listen to this
Sweetie that’s wrong
She says, sweetie, sometimes I think
I shouldn’t have married you
Sweetie I want
Sweetie you should
Sweetie don’t do that
And sweetie that’s not right

She keeps saying sweetie
She keeps saying sweet(ly)

Sweetie don’t be so dumb
Sweetie stop doing that
She says, sweetie, sometimes I think
Would you finally shut up?
Sweetie I demand
Sweetie I’m going
Sweetie don’t ever, ever do that again
And sweet, sweetie, ahhh

She keeps saying sweetie
She keeps saying sweet(ly)

You know that stereotype about the Dutch being greedy?

It’s true. We even double up on Christmas — that’s right, we’ve got two Christmas Days.

We do the same thing to Easter. And Pentecost.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, to be honest. An extra Christmas day is very handy to hit up all sides of the family, but in this country, that’s not exactly a tough job to begin with. Even driving cross-country takes only two hours at most. So why we get an extra day but humungous countries like the US have to make do with one — beats me.

So there’s your random bit of information for the day! I’ll just leave you with this link (which has made its way through the Twitterverse already, so you’ve probably seen already): The Year Kenny Loggins Ruined Christmas on Hyperbole and a Half.

I laughed.

A lot.

(And now I’m off to prep Christmas dinner 2.0 further. Ta!)

Today, I visited the Niet Normaal exposition with some writing buds of mine. The name translates to Not Normal, and asks questions about diversity, about what’s normal and what isn’t, and to what lengths some people go to be normal.

Sounded like my cup of tea, what can I say.

With a generally pro-diversity message – which was challenged even before the exposition opened to the public – I was pretty curious to see what they all came up with. Some of it was on the odd-but-interesting-I-suppose side…

Some of it was cute and subtle…

Some of it highly relevant to my interests…

And some of it very straight-forward, but no less effective for it. (Sorry for the awful quality of this; it was at a very weird angle, with a spotlight shining right at me.)

So, all in all, a laudable message… which the tour guides seem to have missed entirely.

I was studying two side-by-side photos of people’s faces shortly after plastic surgery, still bandaged and heavily swollen and discoloured. Next to me, a tour guide showed around a small group of women. Of the photos, she said, “Look at how young these people are – yet they felt pressured into taking such drastic measures. Of course, it’s different if you’re actually, like, disfigured, like if you have a really weird nose or something…”

…

Sigh.