King's Day

Our first King’s day, after having queen's days as long as I can remember. If my memory of history lessons is not leaving me totally I think we have them since Queen Wilhelmina became queen in 1898.

Although it’s not the really high day that it used to be. In my childhood all the shops were closed and everybody had a day off to celebrate. Complete families were competing in all sorts of games organised by the so called oranje committees . Most of the games were the old Dutch games. I guess this was to remember the good old days. Nowadays most shops are open and not everybody has a day off. I expect this day will become more and more commercial to persuade people to go out and to have fun, in the hope they are going to spend money on food and drinks.  In the big cities like Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht, it always start on the night before: the king’s night. There is a variety of music and shows to go to and with nice weather it’s always very crowded mostly with people who have had too much to drink but always seems to have a lot of fun.
When I was young I lived in Apeldoorn and my grandparents were living in a nice part of the town called ‘the Parken’ just across “Het verzetstrijderspark and the historical building Marialust” .

 There was always a three-day fair where we always went with my family. The fact that my grandparents were living next to the fair was very useful. After  my parents had given us money my grandfather always asked us if we already had money for the fair. We never lied, but just said yes we have some: then my grandfather always said: something is not enough, and gave us a handful of money. This ritual also happened with my grandmother and so we always went off to the fair with more money than my parents would like us to spend. I have to explain that my grandparents were relatively wealthy and always spent a lot of money on us on every occasion.We of course did not complain about this at all. On the other hand, I know we were spoilt by this and it took us a long time to get used to the fact we couldn’t run to them when we wanted something right away when we were getting older. The time that grandparents spoil their grandchildren disappears as children get older unfortunately.