Yesterday the news broke that the Dutch music festival Parkpop would be moving to Malieveld next year (article from omroepwest.nl in Dutch). The festival has been held at The Hague’s Zuiderpark for the last 40 years. Indeed, the festival gets its name from the fact that it is held at Zuiderpark (Parkpop). In 1992 it claimed the title as the biggest music festival of Europe, drawing over half a mission visitors that weekend (!).
However, location always proved an issue. It’s much easier to get to Malieveld (which is a 2 minute walk from The Hague’s Central Station) than it is to get to Zuiderpark. Another issue was noise: Zuiderpark is surrounded by residential area, whereas Malieveld is not.
In corona news:
De Jonge: Dutch partial lockdown likely to continue past mid-January from nltimes.nl. The worst part is this means restaurants and cafés will not be able to reopen for dine-in for a while, but if it helps…
Government advised to extend Christmas school holidays, not relax other measures from nltimes.nl. I bet kids will be really happy if their Christmas vacation does get extended, but it will probably mean a shorter summer break. But as a kid, would you think of that? (At the moment it is just advice; the government can ignore it.)
Life in the Hague 
The Parkpop news made me kind of sad. I have lived near Zuiderpark for my entire life and Parkpop has been part of me growing up. When the wind was blowing a certain way i did not even have to leave my house to hear all the music. 🙂 So am sad to see it leave and move to Malieveld. Like the centrum doesn’t have enough things going on already. Oh well..
That is quite understandable! And definitely a bit sad.
Centrum mainly gets demonstrations these days! (I kid, I kid.)