My Birthday and Dutch Queensday

Traditionally, the end of April brings some good reasons to party!! First, it's my birthday on the 25th, followed five days later by "Koninginne Dag" or Dutch Queensday on the 30th, which in its turn is preceded by the Queens Night on the 29th.

Despite questioning myself if turning 24 years, almost a quarter of a century, is something to really cheer about, I decided that april shouldn't end without having had some good fun, and drinks in honour of both myself and the Dutch Queen!!

On the 25th, I invited 11 of my best friends to go out for dinner in a BYO Thai restaurant. It was great to spend the night chatting and laughing in company of Fernanda from Brazil, Courtney from Canada, Matt from Poland, Carsten and Michael from Germany, Rita from Hongary, Mauricio from Colombia, Fiona from Indonesia, Marcel from Australia and Bianca and Chris from the Netherlands, while eating delicious Asian food and drinking cheap Bring Your Own wine!!

The real party, however, took place 4 days later, in the house where I live. Theme: Dutch Queensday, dresscode: Orange! With fellow "Dutchie" Bianca, I had visited the Dutch Shop a week before, to get Poffertjes Mix, Kroketten, Frikadellen, Drop and Stroopwafels. We decorated the place with Orange flags and baloons, and we printed and hung pictures of Amsterdam, Tullips and the Dutch Royal Family. Thanx to Dutchman Luc, brilliant translations beautified the walls as well, to teach the partypeople some proper Dutch sentences, e.g:

"lekkere tieten!" = "Welcome to the party!" ;-)

Although the Queensday celebrations in the streets of Amsterdam and Den Haag are not easy to beat, I didn't get even a chance to miss them much. The dozens of orange-dressed friends and friends of friends, among which quite some Dutchies too, the authentic Dutch music like Andre Hazes, Dj Tiesto and the Party Animals, the delicious Dutch Snacks, the Imported bottles Grolsch and Heineken, they all contributed to a fantastic Queensday / Birthday party which I'll never ever forget!

Rip Curl Pro @ Bells Beach

Another massive international top-sport event near Melbourne: The RipCurl Pro surfing festival at Bells Beach! Each year the 44 best surfers of the world battle each other in the ASP World Championship Tour. During this tour they travel around the world to surf the best waves of our planet: At Pipeline in Hawaii, Cloudbreak in Fiji, Hossegor in France and.. Bells Beach Australia! As a keen surfer I obviously couldn't miss out, and thus I caught a train to Bells Beach, in company of my ex flatmate Chris from the Netherlands, who visited Melbourne as part of his 9 month back-packing trip through Australia.

We chose a fantastic day - in terms of wave-quality and spectacular surfing action, that is. Solid 2 - 3m lines greeted us in the morning when we arrived on the contest site, which itself was just awesome: A true festival village had been build on the cliffs overlooking the ocean, with surf shops, bars, food stands, a big stage from where bands and dj's were entertaining the crowds, and even a snow track where Australia's best snowboarders showed their sickest tricks...

Of course, the heats between the worlds most talented surfers were what it was all about that day. With all the "big guns" still in competition and the waves being just about as good as it gets at Bells, there was not much more we could wish for! Andy Irons, Kelly Slater, Taj Burrow, just to name a few, they all entered the water and paddled out just a few meters in front of the spot we'd conquered on the beach. Although the waves were breaking a bit far out, it was a really great experience to see the pro's surfing in real. I was amazed by their incredibly fast, radical and powerful way of surfing! Apparently it all looks even much better and spectacular in real than it does on the surf videos!

In terms of weather, we were less lucky that day. In the afternoon lots of dark clouds and rain poured over Bells Beach.. Autumn in Victoria! Totally soaked we decided to visit a laundry to dry our wet clothes, allowing ourselves to travel back to Melbourne warm and dry, all and all looking back on a very exiting and pleasant day!

Full of inspiration and "stoke" I went surfing myself the next day, on a beach near Bells Beach. Later that week 7 times world champion Kelly Slater claimed victory of the RipCurl Pro.

Commonwealth Games 2006

In a country that is totally 'sports-mad', Melbourne has a reputation as 'sports-maddest'. No wonder it's considered Australia's sports capital and even promotes itself as the world's. The city has over 30 sport stadiums with a capactiy greater than 10.000. Since my arrival October last year, numerous world-class sport events have been hosted by the city: World Championships Gymnastics, Australian Open, Grand Prix Formula 1, and last but certainly not least the Commonwealth Games 2006, during which the sports-madness was truly inescapable!

During two weeks in March, more than 4500 athletes from all 71 nations of the Commonwealth competed in dozens of branches of sport, ranging from Athletics to Gymnastics, Hockey and Cycling, to Tabletennis and Swimming. A massive event organized every 4 years somewhere in the Commonwealth, requiring a decade of preparation, in its field probably only surpassed by the Olympics.

Impossible to not get caught by the Melburnian's great enthusiasm for the event: The city looked picture-perfect, showing its best to the world in a fabulous multi million dollars Opening Ceremony that included a free magnificent outside-of-the-stadium music- theatre- and fireworksshow on the Yarra river, allowing everybody, including pour trainees from overseas, to enjoy it! From the moment the Games Baton was handed to the Queen on the opening night, to the closing day, an extra sparkle was added to the sportive event by Australias "greatest cultural festival ever". Music, dance, circus, street theatre and visual arts everywhere in the city; two weeks Melbourne was buzzing day and night, more than ever, and it was great to be part of it!

A lot of the sport events were sold out months before the start of the Games. Yet, Rita and I were able to visit the athletics, which took place in the MCG, Melbourne's massive 95.000 specators holding stadium. Although it was sometimes hard to keep track of what was happening with long-jumpers, high jumpers, discuss throwers, and runners performing their sports alltogether simultaneously, we had an awesome time. The climax, definetely, was seeing Australian John Steffenson winning gold on the 400m, cheered and screamed to the finish by an ecstatic 60.000 large crowd.