Posts Tagged With: Koningsdag

Hemaxima (Or: Eating a tompouce on King’s Day)

Posted on April 27, 2024 by Niki

As recently noted, today is King’s Day in the Netherlands, a holiday to mark the birthday of King Willem-Alexander. Every year the royal family (including King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima and their children) visits a Dutch city to celebrate King’s Day. This year they visited Emmen, a city in the province of Drenthe in the northeast of the Netherlands.

The local Hema had a great marketing trick. They added “xima” to their logo as shown in this tweet:

Of course the “xima” is in orange since it is King’s Day. It is also a nice word joke since “Hé” is a way to get someone’s attention, pronounced “Hey”. Therefore Hemaxima becomes “Hey Maxima!” The question above that is “What is your favorite way to eat (tompouce)?”, so it is asking the Queen how she eats the messy dessert that is known as tompouce.

Personally I eat the cream first with a dessert fork and then I eat the top and bottom layers in either order. Any other way results in a mess (for me). The kid in the photo above is eating it in the traditional manner, but then you risk the cream squirting out the other side.

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Preparing for King’s Day 2024 (Or: Flags and tompouce)

Posted on April 26, 2024 by Niki

Tomorrow the Netherlands will celebrate King’s Day to mark the birthday of King Willem-Alexander.

Tonight is the Life I Live festival, with free podiums set up at Lange Voorhout, Kerkplein, Grote Markt and the Hofvijver. Here is a look who is playing at each podium. Alternatively you can now download an app for iOS or Google Play (under the name “Woov”).

Here are some of the things you can do tomorrow:

  • Visit the King’s Day carnival at Maliveld (Saturday is the last day)
  • Visit the King’s Day carnival at “De Fred”, or Frederik Hendriklaan, which runs through 5 May
  • NMNH Kingsday Festival at Zuiderpark (paid event)
  • The Hague’s Vrijmarkten. If you’re from the US this is equivalent to a garage sale, but held on a national level. It’s the one day of the year you’re allowed to sell your stuff outside, although you have to do it in certain streets of The Hague. Check denhaag.com for a list of streets where you are allowed to sell your crap–err, precious memories.
  • Eat tompouce. indebuurt.nl has a nice list of places where you can buy it. Since it is for King’s Day the top layer is orange instead of pink. I had a “double decker” tompouce yesterday from Plasman.
  • Geraniummarkt at the Lange Voorhout. That translates to “Geranium market”. Yes, for some reason it is tradition to buy geraniums on King’s Day.
  • King’s Day at the Grote Markt, at the Zwarte Ruiter bar. denhaag.com has the list of bands and the times they will be playing.

Lots of places have put out Dutch flags to mark the holiday. This photo was taken near Dozo, an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant (formerly known as Sumo, see also this blog post).

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Hrmmm (Or: A man and a bear walk down the street…)

Posted on April 8, 2024 by Niki

Imagine my confusion this weekend when I snapped this picture, taken on the street which connects The Hague’s Central Station with the city centre:

Either he is about to be eaten alive from behind or that is one big bear. Roger offered a good explanation though: the Kingsfair is now open at the nearby Malieveld. Kingsfair is the carnival to celebrate the upcoming King’s Day holiday on Saturday, April 27.

Hopefully the gentleman didn’t actually drop it on the way home. That thing looks like a dirt magnet!

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King’s Day merch (Or: I hope you like the color orange?)

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Niki

King’s Day is a Dutch holiday on April 27. This year it falls on a Saturday. Annoying for those who don’t get the day off, as it isn’t standard practice in the Netherlands to give an adjacent day off if a holiday falls in the weekend. On the other hand, if the weathers good, you still have all day to party on Saturday.

Oh, and this means The Life I Live – a free music festival held the night before in The Hague’s city centre – falls on a Friday this year. The Hague government donated an extra €50,000 to the festival to keep it it around, on top of the already earmarked €400,000, as a one time (extra) donation. I can’t imagine The Hague or King’s Day without The Life I Live festival. Here are some photos I took back in 2022.

A lot of people dress up in orange for King’s Day (and some also dress up in orange for the festival the night before). Most Dutch stores take advantage of that by offering orange merchandise in the 4–6 weeks leading up to the event. Here is a look at the King’s Day offerings at Xenos:

I also saw some orange tompouce themed t-shirts being sold at Hema. Tompouce (English Wikipedia) is a pastry that is delicious, if extremely sweet and messy to eat. And of course it gets sold with orange frosting for King’s Day!

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King’s Day in The Hague (Or: Flags everywhere)

Posted on April 27, 2023 by Niki

Today is King’s Day in the Netherlands. At the very least, it is a nice day off! It celebrates the birthday of King Willem-Alexander, although most people use it as an excuse to head into town and enjoy a lot of good music and alcohol. (Seriously, walking into the local supermarket, the first thing on display was six-packs of beer. They know where their money is made!)

Dutch flags on display for the holiday with the Grote Kerk (“Big Church”) in the background.

You can also check out the King’s Day Google doodle. The doodle celebrates tompouces, a pastry which is normally pink. Unless it is King’s Day, and then it is bright orange.

Chilly but sunny start to King’s Day after a busy night of partying from dutchnews.nl. The day before King’s Day is known as King’s Night and most of the major cities have music festivals. For instance last night The Hague had The Life I Live festival in the city centre.

There are two main activities on King’s Day: 1) The king and his family always visits one city each year. This year was Rotterdam. 2) A lot of cities have “free markets” (Vrijmarkten) which is basically a huge garage sale – one day a year everyone in the nation is out selling things. Or buying things. On that day people can clear out all of their junk and old items and sell them in specifically designated spots in each city.

Here is a live blog from NOS (the national news channel). It is in Dutch but at the very least you can check out the pictures to get a sense of how crowded it was/is!

And here is the live blog from the local news service, Omroep West, also in Dutch. But Google Translate is your friend. (And mine too, sometimes.)

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The first signs of spring (Or: Tulips have been spotted)

Posted on April 20, 2023 by Niki

On my way to Kelly’s Expat Shopping last weekend I spotted a lovely bunch of flowers planted along the sidewalk:

It is a good reminder that spring is coming, although it certainly hasn’t arrived yet. There have been a few days of full sunshine and blue skies, but it quickly turns cold and grey again. We were promised good weather this week but then the wind direction changed, coming from the east rather than the sea to the west. Brrr.

Speaking of spring… you have a few more days to pick up free seeds in preparation for National Seeding Day. This is possible due to an initiative from The Pollinators (article in Dutch). The goal is to have more flowers which are bee friendly.

If you are here in The Netherlands, don’t forget that King’s Day (April 27) is fast approaching. See also this article about the holiday at dutchreview.com. The night before (aptly named “King’s Night”), The Hague celebrates with The Life I Live festival with lots of little podiums throughout the city centre.

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A day to sell all of your stuff (Or: King’s Day)

Posted on April 30, 2022 by Niki

So last time I talked about King’s Night, which is when you go to music festivals, drink overpriced beer, and dance like a maniac. Oh, and try to avoid being pickpocketed–apparently the police found a 13 year old and 20 year old with a bag full of 21 stolen telephones on King’s Day (article in Dutch over at omroepwest.nl). Sheesh.

In contrast, King’s Day itself is about selling cheap stuff. This is the one day a year it is legal for anyone to sell their old furniture, toys, books, you name it. Well, anything except food. Almost all cities ban that. I didn’t get any photos of these vrijmarkten (free markets) this year, but check out my post from way back in 2012 (!). Back when it was Queen’s Day, before she abdicated the throne and became Princess Beatrix. Marco took those photos for me since I was till living in America back then.

One thing I did get photos of was the flower sale at the Lange Voorhout. It was quite colorful, and not just because of the flowers:

These juichcapes (cheer capes) were sold by the grocery chain Jumbo last summer when there were a lot of high profile sporting events going on (Tour de France, Dutch Grand Prix, UEFA Euro Cup, etc.).

Lots of color here too!

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The Life I Live festival 2022 (Or: King’s Night in The Hague)

Posted on April 26, 2022 by Niki

Tonight is the 10th anniversary of The Life I Live festival. Note: their website is definitely experiencing server capacity issues, so it is a bit hit or miss to visit it right now.

The last edition was of course in 2019. It is held in The Hague’s city centre, with musical acts spread out over about 8-10 stages. The opener this year was the Ukrainian band Go_A. Last year they participated in the Eurovision Song festival held in Rotterdam. This year the band got special permission from the Ukrainian government to travel to The Hague to perform (as technically Ukrainian men are not supposed to leave Ukraine right now).

This stage was at the Lange Voorhout not far from the Escher museum and Hotel Des Indes.

This smaller stage was on the opposite end of the Lange Voorhout, featuring the band Kuzko. I didn’t stay long, but they really brought the bass! It was a weird feeling to feel the bass after not going to any concerts the last two years.

King’s Night (and more accurately King’s Day) is a holiday to celebrate the birth of the Dutch King Willem Alexander who turns 55 tomorrow. The joke “Max komt misschien later…” is a joke that Max Verstappen, the 2021 F1 world champion, might stop by here later. Hmm.

(Man, I still remember when it was weird to see Willem Alexander with a beard!)

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King’s Day 2022 (Or: Do you have your “orange” yet?)

Posted on April 24, 2022 by Niki

This coming Wednesday is King’s Day here in the Netherlands, a public holiday for most of us. The larger Dutch cities like The Hague and Amsterdam also have parties to celebrate. The Hague has “The Life I Live” festival (official website in Dutch) traditionally held the evening before, dubbed King’s Night. This free musical festival is held throughout the city centre. This year there are 8 small stages for artists to perform. The Ukrainian band Go_A will open the festival.

I suspect things will get a bit insane Tuesday evening as the event has not been held for the last two years due to corona. The 2019 edition drew 275,000 visitors for those two days (omroepwest.nl, in Dutch), so it will be interesting to see how many we get this year. The local transportation company HTM runs an alternate route due to how congested the city centre gets. (I must admit it is kind of fun to walk down the middle of the street and not worry about cars or trams.) HTM and the national train service will also add extra night buses and trains to help everyone get home at the end of the evening.

But why did I mention orange in this post’s title? Because everyone wears orange, of course! Well, the tourists and the diehard Dutchies do, at any rate. Here is a look at the King’s Day merchandise at Xenos:

See also my post about King’s Day 2018.

Anyone else remember the attempt to rename Koningsdag to Woningsdag for the first year of the pandemic? Woning = home, so it was an attempt to be clever and tell people to be safe and celebrate the holiday from home.

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Orange, orange, orange (Or: Cheese and nuts for King’s Day)

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Niki

Over the weekend the intercom unexpectedly buzzed. It turned out to be a surprise package from work. Inside were gifts to celebrate King’s Day with.

Think of things like a toxically orange lei (you can just see it hidden behind the orange ballons), nuts, cheese blocks, Valencian orange tonic water, and a game of tic tac toe with wooden blocks. Oh, and an elderberry syrup mixture to stir into your water.

The two drinks were Aperol Spritz, an Italian drink (aperol, sparkling water and prosecco). They actually weren’t part of the package. I still had leftover aperol spritz from last year when I celebrated King’s Day with my coworkers! Virtually, of course. Luckily the bottle is now empty. It’s an okay drink… once a year?

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