The Queen and I

So I'm sitting there in the lunch hall at work, holding my cheese sandwich (of course), and someone mentions that on Koninginnedag (Queen's Day, her birthday, a national holiday), the Queen herself customarily shows up in some small, pseudo-randomly chosen, probably remote village for her big day. I ask which one this year. No one knows. One fellow comes up with the name Warffum, they don't know where it is...BUT I DO KNOW. Now this is just too, too weird, but just last Saturday my bike and I rode the train through Warffum, 30 or so kilometers north of Groningen. Someone laughs, "Eric, maybe you ought to get a hotel room in Groningen so you can see the queen the next morning." I laugh and finish my sandwich. Back in my office I log on and score a room for the night before Koninginnedag.

This is the story of how I saw the Queen.

I pack stuff in a tough bag I use for grocery shopping, and pedal to the station. The trains are full, and the closer to Groningen we get, the harder it is to keep the bike out of the way, and to shove back onto the train after I've had to step off to let people through. I ride through Groningen in the dark, find the Bastion hotel courtesy of GPS,...

...and push my bike down the hall and into my room. This is the Netherlands, after all.
 

It's raining the next, Koninginnedag, morning. I eat overpriced breakfast and wait. It half clears, I launch back to station Groningen and find the right track.

There it is, the very same train I took last Saturday to Uithuizen (but got off at Usquert).
 

I haul the same bike up through the same doors, and park it in the same stall. Now, this picture has a lot going on. First: note the distinct lack of overhead electrical equipment. Note the diesel cap at far left. We are, after all, headed for remotest Groningen province. Note the tiled-in dotted line near the spoor's edge. Dotted lines in the Netherlands have a sort of universal meaning: "it's OK to cross this line, but only if you mean to." OK, now note through the near door's glass, the little blue square. There is a bicycle with a tag on it, meaning: "park your PAID-FOR bicycle here." Very sensible--I knew what it meant the first time I saw it. Also, it is painted behind the glass, so you can see it when the doors are open OR closed. I love the Netherlands; so many little things like this are well thought through. OK, lastly note how the bike fits snugly. I can go sit down in the normal passenger compartment, but for short rides it's just easier to stand behind the bike, watching it, and most of all--conductors approve--out of the way.
 

I was almost alone on the train out of Groningen, but every stop picked up passengers who had driven into the area from who knows where and knew that the train was the most convenient way to get into town. I lock the bike at the outdoor station and join the crowd.
 

Little Warffum's population must have quadrupled or more less than an hour. (What you're seeing is pretty much the whole town.)
 

Suddenly there are big, honking military helicopters working the whole area's skies. This would be a supremely poor moment to, for example, shoot off fireworks in celebration. Soon the choppers are drowned out by music from the stage--American 1940s big-band, which seems extraterrestrial in this setting. And as if on a signal I never saw...OUT COME THE HATS.
 

Mostly ORANGE hats. (Hint: the Dutch royal family is the House of Orange.) I admit I know of no other patriotic event on the planet flying the colors: Red, White, Blue, and Orange.
 

Including some pretty cool home-made hats (I sense a school project).
 

The loud, staged music stops, and people get wound up--some of them seem to do this every year, Royal Groupies or something...
 

Everyone checks his camera one last time, a young TV-Noord tech way up on the crane, a retiree on the ground...
 

...the band stands ready...
 

...the MC gets everyone organized. And then the sun comes out! and well up in the town center there is wild cheering...
 

...and before I can believe it, they are all on us. The lovely lady at fore is Queen Beatrix, her royal family all around her, walking with her through one of her rabidly loyal little towns.
 

She's here! In my own silly orange hat, I jump and wave and JUMP and WAVE, and she turns!!!:

 
 

I am laughing myself silly, and I am far from alone. This is such a fine, irrationally gorgeous moment I almost can't bear it.

The family passes, the sun recedes behing clouds, and for a moment we all look at each other, and then all as one we RUN! wildly for the railroad tracks, a block away, to watch the royal train depart, down the single-track line. The police are utterly indulgent, joking with the crowds. All across the potato field are a hundred bicyclists standing, and as soon as the diesel locomotive puffs its first, they all jump and wave like maniacs, as we ALL do! for half a kilometer along the tracks, close enough to touch the slow cars--the police frown when some of us even touch the train and wave in. The royal car passes and recedes west. The gentle clanging stops, the red lights go out and the boom raises and catches, and we start to scatter, not to see each other again.
 

I walk up the tracks and retrieve my bicycle, walk it through town, past the few restaurants and bars filled to capacity, and in a few steps I'm out the north side on a narrow lane among potato fields. It is only noon. I have maps and enough food and water with me, the weather is perfect with wind out of the east, my big bag of stuff is safely in a locker back at station Groningen. I hop on the bike. Harlingen or bust, which will take 7-8 solid hours of pretty fast riding. Closer Leeuwarden station available, just in case.

And 7 hours it is, mostly behind the dikes, lots of sheep and sheep, well, decoration for the tires and chain and gears. Ugh. But fast.

Other than sheep, not much but the same old flowers...
 

...mud flat panoramas...
 

...pictoresque harbors.
 

To be fair, the 135-kilometer (84-mile) ride, by far a new high, had its moments. The Netherlands' north coast is cut in half by the Lauwersmeer, an ex-swamp that has been carved gently into quite a lovely (and flood-safe) interior sea. Kite-surfing is the sport of the day. Sorry I couldn't photograph them directly into the sun as they were. The orange (today of course) kites against the blue water were amazing to see.

Other than that, it was mostly sheep. Millions of sheep. The very stupidest Dutch sheep, too, along the mostly human-free Waddenzee--I rang my bell over and over, and still I could have ridden right across their wooly backs. All the way to the end of Frisia, in Harlingen, and a cold drink, and a long wait at station Harlingen Haven for trains to Leeuwarden, Groningen (to get my stuff), Amersfoort, home.

For station Harlingen Haven, this exceptionally geographically important spot in the train system, the end of the Dutch world, I expected--I don't know--something a little more impressive. Maybe a little plaque, a sign or map, something. But this is just the railhead, so they install a railblock on the tracks under a temporary walkway--and that's it. Well, OK, you know: these are the Dutch. They are all business. They are just not a sentimental people.
 

Except when it comes to their Queen.

Yes, now I know.