Author Archives: Niki

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About Niki

I run the blog http://www.lifeinthehague.com

Oliebollen time! (Or: It must be November)

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Niki

You know it is (almost) November when you see the oliebollen (English Wikipedia) stand pop up in the last few days of October, a sign of yummy things to come. Oliebollen are a donut-like treat that is popular this time of year. They are eaten en masse on New Year’s Eve. Marco and I usually make oliebollen every year. These days the stands are allowed to open from 1 November until the end of January.

As you can see they still have their preferred spot at the end of the Grote Markt street. They used to be closer to city hall but moved to this spot when construction for the Amare cultural centre started some years ago. Speaking of Amare–apparently the building will be getting a Spar grocery store (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch).

In other news:

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Beautiful blue canals (Or: Another view of The Hague)

Posted on October 30, 2022 by Niki

Last week I took a walk to the old Red Cross hospital in Segbroek, a neighborhood in The Hague. It was time to get another corona vaccination. It was a route I hadn’t taken before, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a beautiful view of one of the canals:

I love photographing trees dipping into the water. And the blue, slightly cloudy sky was also nice to photograph.

In other news:

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Sinterklaas (Or: HTM’s newest tram driver?)

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Niki

I kid, I kid.

Sinterklaas (a figure based on Saint Nicholas) will be arriving in the Netherlands from Spain on Saturday, 12 November. This year he will be arriving in Hellevoetsluis, which apparently is a city in South Holland. Who knew? English Wikipedia apparently. His arrival in Hellevoetsluis will be televised. But on the day (or around the same day) he arrives in pretty much every Dutch city. How, you ask? Magic. He is Sinterklaas after all.

He will also be arriving in The Hague on Saturday, November 12, in the Scheveningen haven. But this year, due to all of the road work going on throughout the city, he will be taking the tram! And as indebuurt.nl reports (in Dutch), you might even see him driving the tram. But first he needs to take a driving lesson before he is allowed to do that.

The full list of places he will visit can be found at indebuurt.nl. The parade starts at 12:30 at Vissershavenweg and ends at Lange Voorhout at 17:05. If all goes to schedule, that is.

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Anyone ready for a heat wave? (Or: Issues with Buienradar)

Posted on October 22, 2022 by Niki

Buienradar.nl is a well-known Dutch website for weather. Buien = showers/rainfall.

A few days ago they had this as a 14 day prediction for The Hague:

In other words, late next week the temperature would go from about 66F to 95F. That sounds nice! But no, it was just an unfortunate bug in the data which has since been fixed. Actually the temperatures will be dropping from 17C to 13C (62F to 55F). It is probably for the best that it isn’t 95F in late October…

See also: Buienradar: in deel Zuid-Holland volgende week 36 graden from omroepwest.nl.

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Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine… (Or: Ovomaltine?)

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Niki

Ovaltine, I mean. Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine is a line from A Christmas Story (1983), a film which was popularized by the the American TV channel TNT’s 24 hour marathons every Christmas Day. It was definitely always on tv every year at my house growing up.

Spotted at the local Asian store, and the inspiration for this blog post:

Apparently it is a “milk flavoring product” according to Wikipedia. Its original name was indeed ovomaltine, but it will always be Ovaltine to me. You can also get it at the local grocery store under the name ovomaltine (ah.nl in Dutch).

Speaking of A Christmas Story, there is a sequel coming out on HBO Max next month: A Christmas Story Christmas (tvline.com). Ralphie, the main character in the first movie, returns to his childhood home to give his kids a Christmas like he had growing up. We will need to wait and see how the film fares. Usually sequels like this don’t do well in the box office (Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure, anyone?) but one can hope.

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A long way from home (Or: Anyone looking for a shopping cart?)

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Niki

In September I went to The Hague’s Albert Heijn XL grocery store. As you might guess from the “XL” in the name, it’s a bigger version of the normal Albert Heijns. It still sells 95% of the same items that a normal Albert Heijn would, just more variety. The XL stores are a lot larger, closer to the size of an American grocery store like Shoprite, Jewel-Osco or Kroger.

I knew I was almost in the neighborhood of this Albert Heijn when I saw shopping carts in the neighborhood:

You could say that people are being nice by putting the carts together and stacking the smaller hand baskets on top, so if an Albert Heijn employee wanted to come get them it would only be one trip. Although this wasn’t the only place I spotted them in the neighborhood.

In other news:

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Somewhere it must be Christmas (Or: Decorations at TK Maxx)

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Niki

TK Maxx is a European apparels and home fashion store. And if you are American and wondering if this is the same company as TJ Maxx, why yes, yes it is.

This company thinks it is Christmas already:

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind at all. I just find it a bit funny. And by the way, all of the things you see on the racks in the picture above are Christmas soap dispensers. Including the dog with the red sweater on the second highest shelf.

Maybe we skip straight ahead to Christmas in this country because Halloween isn’t that big here and Thanksgiving doesn’t exist. Although the Netherlands does have the Sinterklaas holiday (English Wikipedia) on 5 December, so who knows.

I have to admit these are cute: little wooden sleighs with a few packages and a mini Christmas tree. However, the packages must have been little mini bricks as the decoration was way heavier than I expected when I picked it up.

Anyone else spotting Christmas decorations popping up in stores?

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Every day a new dog awaits (Or: Sand art in the city centre)

Posted on October 1, 2022 by Niki

If you visit The Hague’s city centre in the afternoons, there is a good chance you will see some doggy-related sand art:

Of course, the person was still in the middle of sculpting so the dog looks more like he lost a lot of weight very, very quickly. Here is a close up:

See also: Bijna dagelijks ligt deze hond van zand op de Grote Marktstraat, maar waarom? (This dog of sand is lying on the Grote Markstraat almost every day. Why?) from indebuurt.nl in Dutch. Apparently this dog sand art is frequently seen in other Dutch cities and even London. Of course the sculptors hope you will drop a few coins into their bag as you walk past, and it seems like dogs are an easy thing to sculpt. If you stick around long enough you will also see puppies being formed. Or just click the news article above to see some sand puppies.

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Up, up and away (Or: The Art of DC comics exhibition in Groningen)

Posted on September 26, 2022 by Niki

While in Groningen Marco and I also visited the Art of DC comics exhibition (official website in English) at Forum Groningen. The forum is a multipurpose building which includes exhibition space, a cinema, a library, a café and more. It’s not a good place if you’re afraid of heights, though. It has about 7-8 floors and lots of escalators. And of course the escalators aren’t on top of each other, so when you’re on floor 5 going to floor 6, there’s 5 floors of nothingness directly below you. Hmph. You can get an idea of what I mean by checking this link (alamy.com, it’s an image bank site).

Here are some pictures of the costumes. You can see the difference in suits as the years pass – at first quite basic, and then more intricate suits as the years go by (actually, this image doesn’t even show the first superman suit they had on display).

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Oasis in the city centre (Or: Prinsentuin in Groningen)

Posted on September 18, 2022 by Niki

Marco and I celebrated our wedding anniversary (19 September) a bit early this year by taking a trip to the north of The Netherlands to visit a city called Groningen. It was a pretty far journey by Dutch standards (2 hours and 40 minutes by train) although by American standards it could be considered a daily commute…?

One of the highlights of the visit was the Prinsentuin in the northern part of the city centre.

This garden was created in 1626 and includes a rose garden, herb garden and “berceaus” (a sort of tree tunnel where trees line both sides and are allowed to grow into each other, creating a tunnel).

Those tunnels are very handy when it begins to rain unexpectedly! If you were hiding in the tunnel you could (mostly) stay dry. This part of the garden gave me Secret Garden vibes (English Wikipedia).

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