Orange is cool!

Some impressions from my orange Queen's Day (April 30)!

Together with our two Couchsurfers from Taiwan we had a walk around the city, went to Vondelpark to see all the kids selling everything and understanding why Dutch are so good in business (since an early age), had a nice lunch downstairs in front of our house - watching all people passing by and asking "What do you sell?" and in the evening picking up some free stuff on the streets.

Free books

Although I enjoyed Queen's Day (official holiday in the Netherlands, celebrating Queen's birthday - the biggest street party ever) a lot, there was also something sad about it.

In the evening we were walking back home, looking at all the mess on the streets and people still continuing to party. That was all bearable, and we even appreciated the free stuff left on the streets - especially several bags of clothes. Both me and my friend took some clothes and now after washing (as they smelled like champagne) I have a nice white summer jacket, a Chinese-style top and two orange tops, which will be perfect for the next year. Although it is pity that so many clothes are going to waste and people should be donating them to charity instead of leaving on the street, it was not the sadest thing.

Some streets later it hit me. There was a huge amount of boxes, full of books! It was like 5m long street, all full of boxes of books. Around ten people (and later even more) were looking for books they would like to keep and take home. Apparently somebody did not manage to sell them and left on the street.
Books! Why was that stupid person??? Imagine, it would start raining and all the books would get wet... Why couldn't this person simply donate them to the library, old people house, orphanage or any other place? I took around 10 books in English and thought that it is enough, I can't take more. But it makes me sad thinking that all the rest of books will end up in a garbage... People should be punished for leaving such amount of books on the street!