Koninginnedag

Queen's Day is a celebration in the Netherlands on April 30. It was originally a celebration of the queen's birthday, it is now mainly known for the 'vrijmarkt' (free market), which is the one day of the year that anyone is allowed to sell anything in the streets. Every other day of the year, it is illegal to sell your items in an open market type setting. Therefor, there are no garage sales here.

We took advantage of this day to unload some of the stuff we didn't want to take with us to Denmark.

The major vrijmarkt is in Vondelpark, in the city. Nearly 500,000 people come into the city that day to scour the park for their next treasure. Luckily, the street in front of our house is closed down for the vrijmarkt as well. Thank goodness we didn't have to drag our stuff into the city.

People started setting up their selling stations at 5:15 AM! They woke me from my sleep! We reserved our little square the week before hand. You have to be aggressive if you want to win on Queen's day. Here's a picture of our street at 6:00 AM.

Eric and I decided we'd better get outside and set up before someone came along and took our coveted spot. It was a good thing we did. About 10 minutes after Eric set everything up, someone came along and wanted to squeeze into the second half of our square. Eric had to beat them off with a stick.

People were selling everything imaginable that day. We say trailers full of board games (who knows where they really came from), bathroom sinks, toys, clothes, furniture, almost anything that you can imagine was sold that day.

Eric and I selling our treasures:

We were able to sell almost everything. Although we bought a few items that day too, defeating our attempt at uncluttering our lives. We had a really fun day. We closed down our square at 1:00 PM and went off exploring with some other families that we met over here. We ended the day by inviting everyone back to our house and ordering out Chinese. All in all it was a great day. One that will stand out from our memories of Holland.

Here is a picture of the outside of our house. Our house is the one with the awnings pulled down.