Since the day I arrived in the Netherlands I’ve been anticipating Queen’s Day, the country’s biggest holiday. April 30 was the birthday of the former queen, Wilhemina, but her daughter and reigning queen, Beatrix, has decided to save the date. This is basically the Dutch equivalent of Canada Day except they do it with much more vigour.
My friends and I did our best to obtain the authentic Dutch experience by baking cookies to sell on the street. Queen’s Night is the evening before the official celebration when the streets are lined with amateur merchants. Utrecht turned into one giant garage sale with stalls set up lining the canals. Real estate is so hot, apparently, that people go days ahead of time armed with masking tape to mark their territory. Hearing this, I invested 2,68€ in baking supplies to make shortbread and get down with the locals. My hope was to make enough money with my orange and crown shaped cookies to buy some of other people’s wares. Since arriving in Europe, I’ve acquired a taste for antique stores. The prospect of rummaging through other people’s old things and cutting out the middleman had me salivating, something it seemed, my cookies couldn’t do for the Dutch.
I decided to sell my ‘koekjes,’ as it were, at the reasonable price of four for 1€. We set up shop on an old bookcase that a bunch of students were trying to sell. I paid them off with a cookie each in exchange for our storefront. So there I stood switching between yelling “koekjes” and “cookies” to bemused passersby. No one was remotely interested in buying my cookies despite the fact that I had a team of orange-clad girls on the street advertising for me. At first we thought it was because the cookie bowl was half covered in foil to protect them from the on-and-off-again rain, so I removed it for better merchandise visibility. Then, I took my coat off and froze in my Queen’s Day outfit, hoping the gimmick would help it sell. Even when Lorenzo, the Italian master chef, offered a free slice of cake with purchase of my cookies there was not even the remotest nibble of interest.
Most Dutch people tried as hard as possible to avoid eye contact and on the off-chance they had the misfortune of catching our eye, they wouldn’t slow down as they declined. After a while we began to get bored and desperate which led to yelling things about how these cookies were made by a Canadian and therefore an authentic and exotic treat. When that didn’t work we tried to give free samples that all but one group of university students and one old woman turned down. Things were pretty dismal when a man in a hi-lighter yellow jacket walked up to our booth. When he asked if I had change for 2€, he was swarmed by my overjoyed friends offering praise and thanks. We told him he could take as many cookies he wanted and snapped photos. He was our only customer, but in that way it made it all the more special.
