You might be wondering why all the Dutchies around you are excited about the King’s birthday. Well have no fear, I am here to explain why we love to celebrate this birthday like no other. Firstly, not only is it a celebration of the King’s birthday, but it is also a general celebration of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands is still a monarchy, thus the royal family must be celebrated.  A little Dutch history lesson for all of you: before King Willem Alexander took the crown in 2013, the holiday was known as “Queen’s Day” and was celebrated on the 30th of April. It was a real shift for us Dutchies when we had to stop saying “Queen’s Day” and start saying “Kings Day”. It’s been six years and it's still a struggle.

Fun fact: The previous Queen’s birthday was actually on January 31st, but the weather in January is so terrible that the crown decided to keep the day in April. This just about summarizes how serious we take our nice weather.

Why orange?

Orange is the Dutch national color, which stems from the House of Orange Nassau. Dating back to the 16th century, this was a branch of the European House of Nassau, which played an important role in European politics, especially when the Netherlands became independent from the Spanish rule after the 80 Years War, thanks to William of Orange. The orange colour, therefore, became important as it is a symbol of independence and the Netherlands as a nation. On King’s Day especially, the orange fever is in full swing - everyone is dressed in orange, has orange hair or has Dutch and orange flags painted on their face.

What is there to do?

Festivals: Dutch people really, really like festivals. Just last week I was writing about all the Easter-weekend festivals, well, no surprise here: this weekend there will be plenty of festivals to celebrate the King’s birthday.

There are too many to name, so here are a few of the most popular ones:

• Kingsland Festival - Groningen
• Free Your Mind: Orange Edition - Arnhem
• HARDFEST - Enschede
• Oranjekoorts - Delft
• Oranjebitter - Rotterdam
• Oranjebloesem - Amsterdam
• Loveland van Oranje - Amsterdam

Garage-sales: no better way of spending a public holiday than cleaning out your house and earning money stuff you haven’t used in years! In almost every city or town, there will be a ‘rommelmarkt’ (literally translated to junk sale) where you can buy predominantly useless stuff for little money. But who knows, maybe someone's trash is your treasure!

Dutch-games: a public holiday means there is time that you can spend with your family and friends. Examples of games like this are..

• ‘koek happen’ (cookie eating): tie a long rope from one point to another across the room. On this rope, tie snacks like cookies, cake, candies and have them dangle from above. The idea is that you try to munch the cookies without using your hands.
• ‘Spijkerpoepen’ (nail pooping): tie a string with a nail around your waist so the nail is behind you, and set an empty (beer) bottle on the ground, and try to get the nail in the beer bottle. A very, very simple game and very accessible for students!
• ‘Zaklopen’ (sack-race): not necessarily traditionally Dutch, but definitely a common game on Kingsday. Get yourself an old potato bag and race against your friends. Again, a very cheap and easy entertainment mechanism.
• Jeu-de-Boule: a bad translation from French, this literally means “game of balls”. All you need is a few heavy balls and a small rubber ball. The first player throws the small rubber ball, and the rest of the game is both teams trying to throw their metal balls the closest to the rubber ball.

Dutch food: make sure to try some tompouce on King’s day. Apparently, the sales for this sweet pastry topped with cream and, you guessed it, orange icing go up by 600% when compared to any other day of the year. There will also be dozens of other street food vendors around, so you will be able to eat like a King yourself the entire day.

Curious what there is to do in Groningen? Check out our weekend blog for what’s going on this King’s Day.