As the blog title implies, we’re in a bit of a wet spell at the moment. Which is actually a good thing – for the first time since 2018, no part of the Netherlands is experiencing drought conditions. See this article in Dutch at nos.nl: Regen en lage temperaturen maken eind aan droogte or see this “Drought monitor” chart at KNMI in Dutch. The chart does still show we have to be careful, though. The black line at the bottom left is this year, and it is similar to 2018 (the grey line) which had a wet spring that turned into an extremely dry summer, rivaled only by the record year 1976 (red).
Another cause for optimism – hospital intakes and the number of corona cases continue to fall, with numbers not seen since mid March. Hopefully the planned relaxations for step 2 of the “opening plan” can go ahead next week (government.nl in English). Of course, it is always a balancing act since relaxations will lead to more infections, so hopefully the number of vaccinations administered will help with that. We are currently doing about a million a week.
In other news: First night train from Amsterdam to Vienna departs on May 25 from nltimes.nl. It is a sleeper train; the route takes 14 hours (19:30 departure from Amsterdam, 09:19 arrival in Vienna).
Den Haag zet zich schrap voor renovatie Binnenhof: ‘Het gebied moet interessant blijven’ from omroepwest.nl. After this summer the Binnenhof will close for 5 and a half years for a large renovation. I will miss being able to walk through it. The article talks about a few activities the city will organize to help keep the area interesting for tourists, including a lookout point that will allow people to see the construction from above.
It also talks about guided tours and a focus on archaeology. My favorite archaeology-after-construction area is the artifacts found during the construction of the tram tunnel. They left some in the floor under glass for commuters to view whenever they wanted.
Life in the Hague 