Prinsjesdag

On the third Tuesday in September, the Queen gives her State of the Union Address, outlining state policy for the coming year. In Georgia, the most frightening forty days of the year ( the length of a legisslative session) is celebrated by the citizenry locking up their daughters for the duration. In Holland, they go out to wave at the Queen as she rides by in her golden coach to make the speech.

Yes, it's a golden coach, I saw it. I took its picture. There is also a glass coach, but I am unsure whether I saw that.* There were however quite a lot of horses, some of them attached to coaches of various types. Eight of them were attached to the golden coach: I am given to understand that that's how you can tell the Queen is in there. ** If she is not there, it is drawn by six horses. +

We travelled on the train and the tram and the bus, and that was sufficient fun for the boys -- for all of them, we could have turned right back around and gone home and that would have been a Great Day. In fact, we spent probably twice as long in the train and the tram and the bus as we did at the actual event, even counting working our way through the crowd.

Dutch Crowd Behavior is, well, a subject all in itself. Dealing with a Dutch crowd usually involves rather more elbow than I am personally comfortable with. It's just bizzare, how did the residents of the most crowded country in Europe get to be incapable of standing in a line? (Dutch queing goes like this: you stand in line. A dutch guy sort of sidles up in your vicinity and stands sort of roughly next to you. Another one wanders around and works his way in almost but not quite in front. Pretty soon they are all sort of clustered in a gang.)

Why is it so difficult to comprehend that, if you all rush in a body into a train car which just opened, you will wind up pushing the people trying to get off, back on? I think it's the last bastion of their barbarian genes manifesting themselves. It's the only conclusion I can draw. In all other ways the Dutch are mild and rational in manner and even in temperament. In crowds, they just seem to sort of lose their equilibrium and just want to form a pack and go hunting.

After the parade whisked by, we went over to the palace and had a nice cup of coffee. No, just kidding. But both boys declared that this was their intention, after we told them that the building we were going to was the Queen's house. However, they were mollified by a bit of fancy marching in ranks by the palace guard.

I know that I am old now. Because I stood there looking at the palace guard (no fancy ass swords or silly hats here, they carry very businesslike machine guns) and could not stop thinking that at least four of them were far too young to be handling those weapons under any circumstances. They looked hardly old enough to shave to me.

* The glass coach is called that because the carving on the coach is covered in glass. The coach is not, alas, made of glass. The golden coach is also not made of gold I am afraid, though it is gilded wood.

** Well, you can tell she is in there by the hat. Queen Beatrix wears, I have to say, the weirdest hats I have ever seen. She puts the Amen Corner of the local AME Zion to shame, and that's saying something. However, a significant hat correlation is noted by me this year: The ladies attending the big speech in Parliament have taken to also wearing weird hats due to the Queen's known weird hat proclivities. This year, a significant number of them were not wearing hats like the Queen's (which tend to be sort of cakelike and flattish) but were wearing big, floppy ass hats, like Princess Maxima, the daughter in law, wears. Were I a journalist, I would have written a long article speculating that this development signals a switch in loyalties to the next generation as it were. But I am not so I keep all such opinions to myself.

+For a person who has never before actually seen the Royal Progress in the Golden Coach, Nel knows quite a lot about it.