The Netherwhere?: Koninginnedag -- Long Live The Queen.

Coury Dorn showed up in Nijmegen last Friday, travel-worn and pulsing from his last three weeks backpacking through Italy, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany. I met him at the train station around 10:00 and straightaway took him to a Koninginnenacht feest (Queen's night party) at Cristi's flat. There were about ten dutch kids there, milling about the room drinking wine and snacking on cheese twists. One fellow was particularly drunk and after falling back through the patio door onto the coffee table, he cornered Coury into conversation about how shitty America was -- replete with strange attempts at Texan accents and Arnold Schwarzenegger impressions. It was comical, but we didn't stay long and made it out of there in good time, keeping in mind our need for an early rise to make it to Amsterdam in the morning.

Koninginnedag was wild and fiery orange with millions of people milling through the streets of Amsterdam, heading lazily towards the museum plein with beers in hand. You had people wearing every possible article of clothing, all the national color of pride: oranje. Men in suits, beer hats, belts, costumes -- you name it. We stayed a good six hours, then headed back to Nijmegen, more exhausted than we thought possible and more broke than we would've cared to be (the result of buying beers at exorbitant rates from kids who looked no older than 13, slanging six packs of Heineken from wagons).