Author Archives: Niki

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About Niki

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

Mondays (Or: Start of another week)

Posted on May 17, 2021 by Niki

It is a short week for me, though. I am taking Friday off because next Monday is a holiday (Pentecost). Did you know it is the last holiday of the year here in the Netherlands? Christmas and New Year’s fall in the weekend this year, unfortunately. But I digress…

The biggest news of the day is that the Netherlands will proceed with the lockdown easing this week, from Wednesday (nltimes.nl). Time for me to get a list ready of books I want to check out from the library… The library has posted a list of what people will be able to do (and not do) once they open later this week; the link is in Dutch. The list is as expected, except that they are also offering the option of studying in the library with a reservation system. You need to have a reservation to sit anywhere. The café in the central library will be open for coffee to go as well.

Vaccination against Covid-19 is going faster every day. Yesterday appointments were opened for anyone born 1963 or 1964. Today they are now allowing anyone born in 1965. We still have a ways to go, but it’s nice to see things speeding up.

Today’s photo of the day: What do you do if you are throwing away used paper and your watch accidentally falls in the underground container as well? You hope the fire department has a bit of time to help. Luckily for this woman, they did.

It’s an unexpected photo, to see someone in such a tight space. And I do need to ask: why do I see what looks like egg in his hair if he is in the paper container? I hope he was able to take a very good shower after this assignment.

He did manage to find the watch – you can see it in his hand.

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A start to the event season (Or: The European Songfestival)

Posted on May 16, 2021 by Niki

While most things have been cancelled due to the coronavirus crisis, some events are still going on. One of them is the European Songfestival. Rotterdam is hosting the festival because the Netherlands won in 2019 with Duncan Lawrence’s Arcade number (YouTube).

The opening ceremonies are tonight – actually they are going on right now. It isn’t without a bit of controversy: Poland unable to join Eurovision opening ceremony after coronavirus infection from nltimes.nl. Since that article was published Iceland also had a positive corona test. Romania and Malta also decided not to attend the opening ceremony because they are in the same hotel as Poland and Iceland.

The finale will be next weekend, Saturday evening to be exact. I do want to watch at least the beginning of it, since hey, it’s Rotterdam. We will probably get to see a few beautiful shots of the famous bridge:

This photo was taken during Marco and I’s 3rd wedding anniversary.

But normally it is hard to watch the entire songfestival. It doesn’t end before midnight and that means the final results come in after 01:00. It can also be pretty political at times…

Marco said he will watch a bit so that get a bit of the “Dutch feel”. It has been 40 years since the Netherlands hosted the event, and probably another 40 years before we host it again.

Categories: Rotterdam | Tags: | Leave a comment

Lazy Saturdays (Or: Dreary walks in rain)

Posted on May 15, 2021 by Niki

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.

“Around the table” artifacts at the Grote Markt tram stop, dated to the 17th century. Here’s hoping the Binnenhof construction reveals similar finds.

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Time to tango (Or: A mysterious door in The Hague)

Posted on May 14, 2021 by Niki

I took this photo of a door on the Lange Poten street in The Hague’s city centre. It is between the KPN store (a telephone and Internet provider) and Kruidvat (a Dutch pharmacy chain).

It stood out to me because the door looked like a normal door for a residence, however the details around it suggested otherwise:

But no, it is not a residence. Tango Centro is an Argentinian dance school. Who knew. I am sure it has been around for years, but I only noticed the door while standing on the other side of the street waiting for Marco.

And in other news – remember how I mentioned a Dutch initiative to create a website to prevent corona vaccines from being thrown in the trash at the end of the day? Well. Website for left-over vaccines takes action after massive demand from dutchnews.nl. Apparently the doctor’s practice in question had a queue of over 100 people for 20 leftover vaccines. Although that isn’t a bad ratio, considering…

The website has made a few changes, including removing the practice’s phone number to prevent doctor’s offices from being overwhelmed with phone calls. That makes sense.

Anyway. We all know what day it is – happy Friday, everyone!

Categories: The Hague | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Libraries will open again soon! (Or: Probably… Hopefully…)

Posted on May 13, 2021 by Niki

The news outlets reported some really good news last night. During the corona debate, the prime minister agreed that it was unfair that you could buy a book from a bookstore but not loan one from a library. Bookstores reopened under step 1 of the re-opening plan, but libraries were not scheduled to open until step 3. That step is tentatively scheduled for 9 June. Therefore the government agreed that if the numbers allow it, libraries could also open next week in step 2.

The Hague’s library system confirmed that they would open from Thursday, May 20 if step 2 is allowed to go ahead:

I am just hoping to be able to check out books (in an appropriate socially distanced manner, of course) but I am sure a lot of patrons are hoping that they would be able to go to the library to study. This was a possibility before the libraries closed in December, if you had a reservation in advance.

Read more at the library’s website (in Dutch).

In other news: The Hague’s football team ADO Den Haag has officially been relegated to a lower classification next year after losing their game to Willem II. They were in the top Dutch league for 13 years. See also: Skirmishes in The Hague with ADO relegation; Vaccination site closed as precaution from dutchnews.nl.

Categories: Reading | Tags: | 2 Comments

Englandspiel (Or: A plaque in the Binnenhof)

Posted on May 12, 2021 by Niki

A few months back I talked about the shortcut you could take to get in and out of the Binnenhof. In that area you can also find a plaque about the Englandspiel (English Wikipedia), a German counterintelligence operation held during World War II. The German forces captured nearly all of the British and Dutch allies, executing 50 of them.

Marco took this photo last week, hence the flowers for Remembrance Day on May 4.

The topo of the plaque reads “They leapt to death for our freedom”.

In other news, Ajax (the Dutch football champions) posted this video on Twitter. They melted the championship trophy into 42,000 stars to give to each of their season ticket holders as a thanks for their support over the last season. Each star weighed 3.45 grams.

Read more at nltimes.nl: Ajax melts championship dish, awards a piece to season ticket holders

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Thunder in the distance (Or: Tulip fields)

Posted on May 11, 2021 by Niki

Here is a beautiful photo from Reddit’s r/thenetherlands page:

Onweersbuitje boven een tulpenveld, gisteravond from thenetherlands

The photo was taken in a tulip field north of Amsterdam.

Did you know the Dutch are obsessed with terraces? I blame the bad weather – we take every chance we can get the second the sun peeks out around the corner. See also dutchnews.nl’s article: What is the Dutch obsession with pavement cafes all about? Although the term “pavement café” is a bit weird.

Dutch are biggest consumers of meat substitutes in Europe from nltimes.nl. Although meat substitutes only count for 2.5% of the meat market according to the article. At the moment Marco and I don’t generally eat meat substitutes from the supermarket. We do eat a few vegan meals a week from FOAM, but that is mainly because it tastes so good. Otherwise we might replace meat with courgette (zucchini) or with peanuts for a bit of crunch. Marco does make a nice wok vegetable dish with hoisin sauce and peanuts…

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This is a parking spot, right? (Or: Accidents in Utrecht)

Posted on May 10, 2021 by Niki

Check out this accident in Utrecht by a student learning to drive:

It was the usual case of hitting the gas pedal instead of the brake. Opps! The driving student hit a small speed bump and then a bike rack. This caused the car to launch into the air and land onto another car (which was luckily unoccupied at the time).

This week’s vaccination goal is 1 million–the first time we will be over 1 million. See also the government’s corona dashboard in English. There will also be another press conference tomorrow. However, whether or not the planned relaxation of corona measures for step 2 will go ahead won’t be decided until next Monday. If the green light is given, measures would be relaxed from Wednesday, May 18. Think of things like re-opening zoos, amusement parks and gyms. Of course, we are most definitely not out of the woods yet.

A few doctors decided to set up a website today (prullenbakvaccin.nl in Dutch) to let people know when they had left over vaccines that would otherwise be thrown into the trashcan. The Dutch ministry of health is decidedly not happy with them. People can search for and sign up right before the time slot to receive them, although it is still possible that the vaccine will not be available when they arrive. See more at the NOS live blog (in Dutch). There are only a few location choices and I don’t expect the website to get very far. Interestingly one of the locations earlier today has already disappeared.

Let’s see if the website is still available tomorrow…

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When does air equal water? (Or: A riddle for you)

Posted on May 9, 2021 by Niki

Last week Marco picked up some pancake mix from the local grocery store, Albert Heijn. The brand was Pondan, an Indonesian company.

I was slightly confused when I looked at the back of packaging to see what extra ingredients were needed (top left with the red arrow):

What? I need 100ml air? How does that work?

And then my brain kicked in and my eyes started working. Air in Indonesian is water in English. How confusing!

But I must admit I love the fact that most packaging is not just in Dutch. Usually you see Dutch and French, because the two main languages in Belgium are Dutch and French. My contact solution bottle has 10+ languages on it. It’s so different from packaging in the United States. For logical reasons of course, but it still is something that makes me pause sometimes.

Categories: Everyday purchases, Food | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Lights above the Netherlands (Or: Elon Musk’s satellites)

Posted on May 8, 2021 by Niki

Mysterious lights above the Netherlands turn out to be satellites from Elon Musk) – nos.nl, article in Dutch. The satellites are part of his Starlink project which aims to put 12,000 satellites into low orbit by 2024 so that everyone in the world can have fast internet. (Nice goal, but wow, space is already really crowded!)

And another space-related article: Chinese rocket’s chaotic fall to Earth highlights problem of space junk from the guardian.com. Experts have no idea where it will land – anywhere in the southern hemisphere is currently a possibility. You can follow its path from orbit.ing-now.com. They predict it will crash in the next 12 hours. Its current speed as it spins around the earth is 26,183km/h (17,518 mph). Yikes! Oh, and did I mention this rocket is about 100 feet tall and weighs 22 tons? Here is hoping it either burns up in the atmosphere or lands in an ocean somewhere.

Today’s dinner menu? Saté with rice and peanut sauce, pickled peppers/onions and kroepoek. Saté is the one meal Marco and I made in America for my family (we stowed away the most important ingredients in our suitcases). Tasty stuff.

I can relate to this:

Hopefully in June I can go to the library and check out (physical) books again!

Categories: News | Tags: , | 2 Comments

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