It’s the 27th of April. I’m woken up by a tingling feeling in my belly and some shouting kids outside. I realise it’s King’s day, the most wonderful time of the year.
You however, might be from a country that has no King, and I am sorry for you. Maybe in your country they might have a queen, a dictator, or even worse, an elected head of state, but a King is something different. If you look at a card deck you’ll understand: the King is the highest rank.
We, us, Dutch, we have a King. We have that highest rank and that guy his favourite color is orange and the 27th of April is his birthday.
So I wake up, happier than ever, and I quickly go to bakery to stand in line for a royal pastry called Tompouce. It’s orange, because of the King.
I go home, drink a coffee, eat an orange Tompouce and call my friends to see what’s going on this King’s day.
I find out there’s a pandemic going on. Bummer. That explains the ridiculous length of the bakery’s queue though. Anyway, nothing can stop me now, and I decide to make the most of it. I dress up in orange, get a sixpack of beer and get in the train to Amsterdam.
In Amsterdam, there’s a lot of people dressed in orange. Because of the King. They drink beer too, because that’s how the King likes it. In Amsterdam, I sing the King song. I raise my hands to the air and make the King sign: the W of ‘Willem’, that’s the name of our King. There’s more Willems, but there’s only one King Willem. And we, us, Dutch, we have him. He’s the top card in the deck.