This morning, I was thinking about how much fun it was to be in Holland during the World Cup, and I was feeling a little sentimental about it. So with that in mind, I pulled up these videos to the theme songs for the 2010 World Cup.

These two songs below were in constant rotation during my trip. When I say that these were everywhere, I mean it: On every commercial break, playing from every corner shop, on the sound system of ever eetcafe, booming from every car that went past. Normally, this kind of thing drives me nuts. I can’t justify or excuse it–these songs just reminds me of this recent trip and how interesting it was to be there during the World Cup. If you’re having one of those Wednesdays, I suggest you watch to see if one of these videos doesn’t lift your mood.

This is a fun video of the most omnipresent song during this time, reworked with vintage footage by an African TV station.

Along with the incredible goals, I also just enjoy scenes of fans losing their minds. Fun.

Even though I’m definitely not a Shakira fan, I find it hard to be in a bad mood when I hear this song.

But sometimes things get lost in translation, and not everything is as cute as this photo of cupcakes and cookies in the signature orange:

It’s actually impossible to overstate how much orange was visible during this time. For every game, fully 50 percent of the folks on the street were decked out in the soccer team’s color of choice. Check out this bikes + fans scene during the semifinals:

The Dutch have a great word, gezellig, which basically means both coziness (in your home) and a sense of conviviality in your gatherings. If America were in the World Cup finals, I’d expect a lot of folks to invite friends over to watch in our big-screen home theaters. In Holland, people connected their TVs to an extension cord, pulled out a rug (or even astroturf) and sat down in the streets and squares to watch together.

Check out this scene of girls in a bar, risking falling into the canal below. That’s dedication.

By the time the finals got here, though, I can admit that I was over the whole thing. There’s just something about seeing anyone with shaved heads waving a giant flag and roaring through the streets, shouting. Hmm. Not so charming.

And then there’s this:

…

Um, WTF is that all about?

So, to summarize: World Cup fun can be cute and charming, weird, slighly scary, and/or all of the above at once.

What is the deal with all the orange, anyway? Their flag is red, white, and blue. So how does that explain their love of orange, as in this apartment complex, festooned with the colors of a traffic cone?

The official story, so you can sound smart at your next cocktail party, is that the flag is red, white, and blue, but orange is the color of the Dutch royal family, literally the House of Orange-Nassau. Dig this painting of the Dutch royal family back in the day, with their splashy orange accents:

Now you know. It’s your fun fact of the day, for trivia night at the pub or to impress your soccer-fan friends.

Orange is a symbol of their relationship to their royalty, including the beloved and down-to-earth Queen Beatrix. But I also suspect they just like it. Seeing a stadium full of orange is fun. Orange accents across a bike–and I saw a lot of streamer and plastic flowers draped across bicycle handles–is awesomely cheerful.

I couldn’t help it, I got into the spirit myself, picking up these intensely orange flats in Amsterdam:

Orange is just fantastic, isn’t it?

On a related note, this month’s Vogue has a piece about the resurgence of orange in nail color, lipstick, and even eyeliner. Prada kicked it all of this winter, with their look of super-shiny orange lips:

Photo via Glamour

I think the Dutchies are really on to something.

Evidently, according to this tile, the Dutch had vuvuzelas back in the time of Vermeer.

Photo above taken in Amsterdam earlier this week. You’ve got to admire the dedication.

And speaking of which, the shops have been selling “2010 World Cup champion” t-shirts for weeks. Fingers crossed for them!