April 28, 2019

Rainiest King’s Day since 1955 goes by without incident

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:15 pm

Yesterday King’s Day was the wettest in over 60 years.

With 8.9 millimeters of precipitation, only 1955 was rainier (9.6 millimetres), Parool reports.

Perhaps as a result King’s Day was otherwise uneventful, the papers say. Last year’s ‘disaster’, when beer ran out in the country’s capital, Amsterdam, was averted this year by readying more kegs.

The royal family visited Amersfoort, which joined in the uneventful trend by giving an undistinguished presentation, NRC writes. The organiser of the city’s festivities, Yordi Grutters, told the paper: “we are an average city with an average population.”

The paper adds that this was crown-princess Amalia’s day. For the first time ever, she gave interviews without her sisters to national broadcasters RTL and SBS. “It feels sometimes unreal that this is my life,” the princess said. I wonder how she knows.

Since the king’s inauguration in 2013, we haven’t had a King’s Day that wasn’t either cold or wet.

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May 2, 2013

Queen’s Day 2013 in Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 10:46 pm

Maybe it was because I had an inauguration on my mind and maybe because everybody else had, but it seemed that there were more ‘kings’ and ‘queens’ than usual at the vrijmarkt last Tuesday, the annual nationwide flea market held during our national holiday, Queen’s Day.

I actually managed to catch the making of a new king on television because it all happened so quickly and so early. According to the law there must be a monarch. The very second Queen Beatrix put her signature under the declaration of abdication, she became a princess. The king next signed the same document as a witness. This happened around 10.07 in the morning, when I was still on my first coffee.

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September 14, 2012

Cute blonde princesses on children’s charity stamps

Filed under: General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 9:49 am

A new series of charity stamps (‘kinderpostzegels’), which are sold door to door by school children raising money for poor kids in poor countries , will feature the ‘Triple AAA’, aka Princesses Amalia, Alexia and Ariane, the daughters of Prince Willem Alexander and Princess Máxima. The Triple AAA joke was said by the Prince himself once, we can’t take credit for that.

Starting 26 September, one of the 200,000 school children who sell these stamps will ring my neighbour’s door bell and sell him pics of the young blonde Dutch royals. In November, the stamps will be available for purchase at the post office.

(Link and photo: binnenland.nieuws.nl)

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