April 30: ever since decades The National Party in Holland: Queen’s Day. 90% of the people over here do love our Queen and her family, even the non-western immigrants. On Queen’s Day everybody goes out for parties, fairs, markets, concerts. Usually fancy dressed. And so did I. My wife Maya and daughter Maaike had decided to go to Amsterdam. Grandpa Hans and his granddaughter Souhaila had different plans. First a visit to the children’s flee market in Boskoop where we bought a dozen of toys, mostly dogs and horses, for less than 6 euros. Afterwards we loaded the bike trailer with grapes, strawberries, boiled eggs and sandwiches in order to organize a picnic in the park nearby. The weather was lovely, and a nice gentleman took that picture of us after we had finished. After that I put Souhaila inside the trailer and cycled some 10 kilometres to the fair in Alphen aan den Rijn, still accompanied by Mr Blue Sky. There we heard that awful news about the attack of a lunatic, killing 7 people and injuring many others. I was (am) really, really shocked….. My five years old granddaughter is too young to understand what happened, so I tried to have fun with her at the fair. But I realised, that Queen’s Day will never be as it used to be……..
Love and greetings from The Netherlands,
Hans FF
