The Herring Festival, or Flag Day, is celebrated in the Netherlands on the first or second Saturday in June, when fish caught in May and properly salted are on the shelves.
Instructions
Step 1
Find out exactly when this year the Flag Day will be celebrated in the Netherlands (it is called so, since all fish sold on the holiday are decorated with miniature national flags of the country). As a rule, festivities unfold on the first Saturday of June, however, if it falls at the very beginning of the month, the holiday can be postponed to the second Saturday. The main thing is that the main product is ripe for the shelves - herring caught in May and salted in a special way with an ideal fat content of 14 percent.
Step 2
Buy a tourist package or buy plane tickets to the Netherlands (the country's only Schiphol airport is located near Amsterdam) and book a hotel online. Please note that you can obtain a visa for an independent traveler only if you have round-trip tickets and a confirmed reservation of a place of residence in the Kingdom.
Step 3
Open a Schengen visa allowing you to enter the Netherlands. To do this, contact any travel company for intermediary services, or the Visa Service Center of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located in Moscow. You can find out the requirements for photos for Schengen, download the visa application form and sign up for the submission of a package of documents on the official website of the service center.
Step 4
Choose any of the Dutch cities for your cultural pilgrimage: in each of them, even the smallest, the herring festival is celebrated right on the streets. On this day, orchestras play in the center, comic contests and competitions are arranged. And everywhere there are huge barrels of herring, from which sellers take out fragrant fish and free it from bones in one motion. The buyer is supposed to take the herring by the tail and immediately send the whole herring into his mouth, snacking on crispy onions and the freshest bread. And those who are used to fast food are offered national hot dogs with fish instead of sausages.
