Wednesdays (Or: Halfway through the week)

The weather has turned a bit colder, with temperatures hovering around the freezing point the next few days. It is the perfect time to stay inside – one of the few benefits of a mandatory work-from-home policy, I suppose.

Here’s a look at some of the more random news stories of late:

Natural history museum bags electrifying new addition to collection from dutchnews.nl. A stone marten (English Wikipedia) found its way into an electrical substation, killing itself and briefly taking out the power in parts of Gelderland, a Dutch province. The Rotterdam-based museum has a collection entitled ‘Dead animals tell a story’. Another recent addition of theirs was a dead seagull with a face mask tied to its leg (rtlnieuws.nl, in Dutch).

Dutch officials seize ham sandwiches of drivers arriving from UK from theguardian.com. Thanks to Brexit you can no longer take animal products into the Netherlands – even if you are a truck driver and its your lunch…

Netherlands and Germany refuse entry to UK nationals for non-essential travel from theguardian.com. This article is from 4 January. At that point 13 people had already been turned away and not allowed to enter the country. Due to Brexit you need to have a negative PCR test and a very good reason to enter the Netherlands. Unlike the person who said he “wanted to visit Amsterdam” or the person who said he “had a connecting flight to Spain for a skiing holiday”.

Foreign visitors face ban from Amsterdam’s cannabis cafes from theguardian.com. The mayor, city officials and police want to ban tourists from Dutch coffee shops. While there has been talk of this for a while, I think corona and overcrowding issues over the last few years made it a bit easier for the city to look at what kind of tourist they wanted to bring into the city.

Speaking of which, I learned quickly: if you want to say you are going to get a coffee, you say you are going to a café. If you say you are going to a coffee shop that means you are going to going to purchase cannabis (and get some coffee on the side). Good to know…