Party time ... Nederlanders show their colours for Queen's Day.Credit: AFP
Susan Bredow lets her hair down with the locals in Amsterdam as they celebrate Queen's Day.
IT WOULD have to be the bad hat day to beat them all. Anything goes when it comes to headgear - as long as it is coloured orange.
On April 30 each year more than a million Nederlanders and visitors don orange in the form of clothing and just about anything else that can be worn or waved and head onto the streets, parks and canals of Amsterdam for a giant party.
The centre of town is busy by 10am. By midday, the roads are impassable as crowds fill the city and surge towards any number of free concerts throughout the Dutch capital.
Restaurants and bars compete with each other pumping out music from giant sound systems. The ever-growing cacophony is added to by DJs mixing on the back of barges that manoeuvre their way along the narrow waterways, often bumping into each other like floating dodgems. Due to traffic snarl-ups on the usually orderly waterways, a canal tour that would usually take 75 minutes runs to more than 90.
It's a mad day verging on mayhem.
Queen's Day.Credit: AFP
But while fuelled by alcohol and air scented with marijuana, the mood of the masses is benign and the day remains apparently trouble free.
Passengers dance precariously on the decks of the barges. Others balance while peeing over the side. Onshore a group of onlookers helps haul out a large man who has fallen into the water - but first they retrieve his orange wig.
On a street corner a man in little more than a gas mask is being pelted by a group of people throwing eggs. Pity the poor optometrist whose shopfront is splattered.
In another element of the celebrations, throughout the city families have lined the footpaths with odds and sods hoping their trash will be someone else's treasure in what has been billed as the biggest garage sale in the world.
If you feel left out because you aren't wearing orange there are a number of freebies, such as bandanas and carry bags, that will add a splash of the right colour to your ensemble.
The normally conservative Dutch only let their hair down rarely for Queen's Day, New Year's Eve and Gay Pride Day with floats parading on the canals each August.
Although April 30 isn't actually Dutch Queen Beatrix's birthday (it was her mother's) that doesn't stop the population of Amsterdam more than doubling to let its hair down to celebrate this royal anniversary.
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