Queen Beatrix kicks Kate Middleton's a**: Queen's Day 2011

Jeff and I knew we would like it here when we learned that the Dutch celebrate both of our birthdays with national holidays. But while I get stuck with St. Discrimination-klaus, Jeff gets street parties, music festivals, fun fairs, public drinking, party boats, and an entrepreneurial free-for-all.

One of the great mysteries of life is why no one seems to know about Queen's Day outside of the Netherlands: This should rank up there with Munich's Oktoberfest or St. Patrick's Day in Dublin.

First, you have to love a Queen who sacrificed a celebration of her actual birthday -- which inconveniently occurs on January 31 -- to continue the annual celebration of her mother's birthday, a much more pleasant April 30.

De Boomhut

I have a new love affair. Mom and Lyza will understand: it's with a children's book. And it's Dutch.

We were in Amsterdam on Sunday and invested in a pair of museumkaarts: 45 euros for access (theoretically) to over 400 Dutch museums. (Sounds like a challenge to us.) We broke it in on the Rijksmuseum - Holland's equivalent of the National Gallery.

The Rijksmuseum had a nice little exhibition on recent picture books. De Boomhut - which means "tree house" but is an awesome word in its own right - is a story with no words. Ronald Tolman made an etching of a tree with a house, and engraved it on a series of canvases, which he then sent to his daughter Marije, who drew in the animals and the weather and other details. For me, the book is a story of a growing friendship between two bears over the course of a day, and their delight in the wonder of flamingos and friendship and snow. (I've seen speculation online that the book is really about global warming, but I rather think that cheapens it - why does it have to have a message, other than the joy of seeing the world through a child's eyes?)

I haven't been able to find the book on Amazon, which is a shame, since a book this beautiful deserves a wider audience.


(Illustrations copied from http://elpetittresor.blogspot.com/2010/09/de-boomhut.html)