Thursday, April 30, 2009

A Beautiful Day turned Sour

Today it was Queen's Day, the day that we celebrate the birthday of Queen Beatrix, queen of the Netherlands. Some of you may have seen the news and know what happened today, but before going into that I want to share the good things of today with you.

My owner's boss at the catering service also owns a clothing shop, so we started today with a visit to her shop. She has lots of pretty dresses there.

Next we went to the 'Vrijmarkt' (free/open market) in Groningen. It's a kind of really large outdoor fleamarket, where everyone who wants to can sell stuff without having to get a permit. It's held all over the Netherlands at Queen's Day. We saw lots of junk and also cool stuff. As you see the weather was lovely and there were lots of people all in a festive mood because of Queen's Day.

There was a woman selling these pretty balloons.

Chinese Lantern Art.

When we got hungry from all the walking around at the fleamarket we bought something to eat: 'Patat' (french fries, but these are a bit bigger). We had mayonaise, ketchup and onions with it. Delicious!



We had planned to do lots more today, like going to a Celtic Market, but then we got a sad message from my owner's OH, which put a stop to our plans:

There had been an attack on the queen and her family.
As is usual on Queen's Day, our queen was visiting a city to join in the celebrations of this day. As she and her family were in an open bus on their way to the next location they would visit, a car actually ploughed through the cheering crowd in an attempt to hit the bus. It killed four people and wounded 17 more before it crashed into a monument, missing the bus.
After hearing this news we didn't feel like celebrating anymore, so we went home.

I feel very sad that something like this happened, especially on a day when everyone should be happy and celebrating. I wasn't sure at first if I should post my pictures of today, but I think it's important to share the good things of a day like today even if it all ended so terribly sad.

4 comments:

Demented Wench said...

I read about this online at work and am sorry that such a bad thing happened.

Sullivan McPig said...

There are now even six dead, including the person who did this.

Eve Noir said...

Oh, I'm so sorry to here that. I hadn't heard anything about it before you said something. That's really awful.

On a happier note, it looks like it was lots of fun. Love the chinese lantern art a lot. You guys are always having such good times!

Btw: I did a story on Sad Boy visiting my work last night. Let me know what you think about it. He wrote it & even talkd about Voodoo Bride.
Have a good weekend~Eve

Urok Burok said...

Yes, after all the joy. The national flags,
softly waving in the sunlight and than
suddenly that attack of a lunatic... But
now, when I write this, it is almost
Liberation Day and again we will think of
more joyful things... Especially while we
to day commemorated the bad warevents...