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Guess what these men are doing. Let me explain Queensday to my foreign friends. Every year on April 29 we celebrate the birthday of our queen. Actually the queen has her birthday in january and this is the birthday of the mother of this queen who was queen before, but january is too cold for parties in the streets so we keep the old birthday.
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On Queensday everybody is allowed to sell everything to everybody without licence, and this is what we are doing. So days before people take care they have a good spot in de city to sell their things, and they write with big letters on the street: BEZET! Occupied! Some people even sleep in the street to keep their place occupied. Then they drag out everything from their houses they want to get rid of, furniture, old pots and pans, and try to sell it. Kids sell their dolls and old toys they feel they are too old for. People sell the clothes that don’t fit anymore because they have become too fat. <\/p>\n
I’m lucky (or not so lucky) to live in the middle of the city in the old part, where sometimes it is so crowded nobody can move. Every year I have to make a decision: to flee the city and have a quiet day somewhere else, or stay in the city and join the big party. There is no in between because the noise in my house is terrible with all the shouting and laughing and singing and I can’t work.<\/p>\n
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So this year I decided to join. I have too many books in my house, and soon I would have to move out because with all the books there would not be enough space left for me and my cats. So I decided to take out a lot of books and sell them to people for one euro each. It is a lot of fun, because it makes people happy to go home with some books cheap, and there is a lot to talk about. Two girls bought almost thirty books. At the end of the day I felt rich, because I earned more then two hundred euro. <\/p>\n
The other thing we do is everybody wears something orange. This is not because we like the settlers, but because orange is the colour of the royal family, after their name: van Oranje. The settlers stole the colour from us and they need to give it back. Like they should give back the country to the Palestinians. So everybody in Holland looks like an idiot wearing orange, and behaves like an idiot, including me. Everybody who can make music makes music also the people who really can’t make music. Everybody who has a boat goes out on the canals. People dance in the streets. And everybody drinks a lot of beer and gets mildly drunk or not so mildly. Now this is the problem. People who drink a lot of beer have to pee a lot. Normally you can go into a bar or restaurant to go to a toilet, but everything is full. Now in former years the men peed in the canals or against the houses, which is very bad for the houses and smells for a week. So by law ‘wild peeing’ is forbidden. Now the city council puts extra toilets in the streets, just for peeing on Queensday and just for the men – which is unfair except that women don’t do their peeing standing up and it would look funny if we did it in the streets. So this is what you see the men do in the first picture. The women have to find other solutions or not drink so much. <\/p>\n
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This lady is not from Gaza but from Amsterdam. She is the only one who managed to look normal. Also I guess she didn’t drink beer, because the muslims are the only ones who don’t drink even on Queensday. So she is the only one not shouting and singing and dancing. <\/p>\n
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Today everybody has a hangover, there is a lot of mess in the streets that needs to be cleaned up, and we return back to normal. Sort of. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Guess what these men are doing. Let me explain Queensday to my foreign friends. Every year on April 29 we celebrate the birthday of our queen. Actually the queen has her birthday in january and this is the birthday of … Lees verder