Holland And Orange

Famous for its windmills and the lovely tulips spread on its plains, Holland is a great country to visit and why not, live in! It is true that Holland is quite small and you can drive from the north to the south in about three hours, but there are plenty beautiful places to visit!

Spending a day captivated by the majestic beauty of one of the worlds finest flower fields in March to May is one of the most enchanting things you can offer yourself and the memories will last a lifetime.

The north of the country has those stunning hosts of flowers! Since 1950, the bulb growers have organized an annual international exhibition with millions of flowers: daffodils, tulips and hyacinths. That is sheer delight! Everyone should see that explosion of beauty, grace and color!

Every spring, the well-known Keukenhof Garden offers a cheerful banquet for your eyes! Around 80 acres of twisting paths, serene ponds, playful streams and thousands of flowers, many more then you can imagine! Keukenhof Garden also offers for admiration seven theme gardens, a corn mill, sculptures as well as a special path for children.

The Netherlands is strongly associated with windmills, it is so enjoyable and somehow nostalgic to see them turning so that is often times the first thing visitors evoke when describing this country. A windmill with a river passing by is the idyllic picture of Holland …

The Dutch needed the windmills since they used them to drain the land as well as for corn milling, saw milling and other industrial purposes; you know Holland has a whole province reclaimed from the sea, the province of Flevoland.

Starting back in time, 2000 years ago, the 12th province of Holland was coming to life, not from Germany or other neighbor of the country but form the sea, the North sea! Frisians, the Dutch ancestors have been struggling to reclaim land from the North Sea for more then 2000 years. The first dykes to hold back the water were named "terpen" and Frisians built them but in 1287 they failed and the country was flooded.

Zuiderzee (South Sea), a new bay came to life because of this flood, and since, the Dutch worked to push the water back into the North Sea by building dykes and creating polders. A polder represents any piece of land reclaimed from the water and they are kept dry by draining the land using canals and pumps; windmills have been used for this purpose since 1200.

Today the Dutch have their unique major project to reclaim land from the Zuiderzee, one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

A 30.5 km (19 mile) long dyke called Afsluitdijk (the Barrier Dyke) was built, turning the Zuiderzee into the IJsselmeer, a freshwater lake.

It is indeed an amazing achievement as today, 27 percent of the Netherlands is actually below sea level and this very area is home to over 60 percent of the country's population.

The Dutch themselves are very friendly and open people. Their craziest day of the year is Koninginnedag or Queen's Day. On April 30, this annual festivity commemorates the Queen Mother's birthday.

Everyone wears orange! This is the color of the royal house so this is a must on Queen’s day! Willem van Oranje (William of Orange) is the one the roots of the orange color come from and they go back to the House of Oranje-Nassau.

There is so much joy and street parties, it is a moment when friends and neighbors gather and have a good time over some nice traditional food.

The trading laws vanish for this day and anyone can sell whatever they want on the street so the whole place becomes the craziest flea market! Music pumping out of sound systems and funniest representations, camel tours for children, all kinds of the yummiest sweets and basically all you can imagine to entertain everyone.

Many people who want a boat party on Amsterdam’s channels come to spend the day in the most colorful city of the country…or should I say of the world?!

Every Dutch is proud to wear orange this day more then any other day, vivid and representative, orange and Holland both express the strong will to live trough life threatening hardships.