Dutch Holidays / Koninginnedag 2008

Koninginnedag 2008

So today was Koninginnedag aka in english Queensday. It's a yearly event on 30 April in which the birthday of her majesty, our queen,is celeberated.

It's a big national event where a lot of people wearing orange go on the streets to celeberate. Why orange? Because that's the color of The Netherlands as you might or might not know.
But celeberating isn't the only thing, there's also the "Free Market": Everyone is allowed to sell things on the streets. So if you have some old stuff at home you wanna get rid of, you can put a blancket on the ground, stash your stuff on it, get a little chair to sit comfortable on, and you can start selling! A lot of kids will sell their old toys, and some will give a little performance just to earn some money, be it playing the guitar, the violin, some magic tricks, anything is possible. You don't have to sell old stuff only, some people buy new stuff, just to sell it at queensday. Ofcourse trying to earn some on it. But the most important is to have fun on queensday.

This Years weather wasn't too good. Rain was predicted, but despite that, it stayed sunny, with some clouds from time to time. Temperature around 15C. With that, it wasn't that crowded on the streets compared to other years. As usual I went out too. Most people come to Amsterdam, cause that's the "place to be" at queensday.
So if you ever thought of visiting Amsterdam, it might be fun to visit it around this yearly event. =P

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Hong Kong Visions @ Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ

Hong Kong Visions

04.04.08 - 17.04.08

Photo Exhibition

http://www.hongkongvisions.com/

Okay, it's not really relevent to post this information, since this exhibition is already over. But nevertheless, just some little talk on it.

I went to this Hong Kong Visions Photo Exhibition on 17 April. It showed photos of Hong Kong ranging from photos of recent years to photos dating from the 60's. So I went and watched it, didn't expect a lot of it. The photo's were taken by famous? photographers, including Dutch ones. Most of the photos were "nothing special", like I could have taken them too...Ofcourse I wouldn't have taken them in a proffesional way like they do, the right lighting and stuff like that, but the content of it wasn't that spectacular. However, something else was spectacular, the price. 950 Euros for one photo. Honestly I don't think anyone would buy it. I think the exhibition is nice to check out (it's free). To see Hong Kong if you haven't been there, but noone would actually buy these "artworks". Ofcourse there were some photos which I liked, with beautiful composition and angle, but still kinda too expensive. Some big ones were even over 1100 Euros.Anyway, maybe there are some people who will buy it, who knows.

Asia sure is booming these days...

Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ behind Amsterdam Central Station