Post by Ella
First of all, we feel a bit thrown off by how smooth the travels were. Both flights (ABQ to ORD then ORD to AMS) departed early and landed early. Passport control in Amsterdam was efficiently fast. We were able to immediately catch a train to Den Haag (The Hague, our final destination) and best of all, we were able to check into our apartment early (it was only 11am).
We landed on the day the whole of the Netherlands is celebrating the king’s birthday. Kids were out of school and the atmosphere festive. Orange was everywhere. Why? The royal family bears the name “House of Orange” (Huis van Oranje).
We spent a few hours wandering the streets watching the celebrations There was live music, lots of beer, and food.
You know it’s King’s Day when…
Orange is notoriously hard to rhyme. Is “oranje” also hard to rhyme in Dutch? (It turns our oranje is hard to type with autocorrect.)
But there are those corny knock knock jokes.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Orange.
Orange who?
Orange ya gonna open the door?
The “House of Orange” spills over into British history. The Battle of the Boyne, in Ireland, between the Protestant King William III and deposed Catholic monarch James II, in 1690, is still playing out in Northern Ireland. The Protestants, who march July 12 every year, wear orange and are called Orangemen.”
I have another orange question. I asked the same question to the Swedes we talked to today and they said that in Swedish the word for orange the color is completely different from the word for orange the fruit. So in “house of orange” are they talking about the color or the fruit? I would assume the color. PS both oranges in Swedish have lots of rhymes.
I am going to put this on the list of things to ask Esther.😀
If you read my post about the “House of Orange” and British history, it seem pretty obvious that it is the color, and not the fruit.
I decided to google this. According to the sources I read, Orange was a region and the name has nothing to do with the fruit or the color, it’s just a name, like York. It said that later Holland adopted orange as its unofficial national color because of the coincidence of the names.
And I totally forgot to ask Esther!
Interesting.