When Marco and I took a walk this afternoon we spotted these flowers by the Hofvijver (English Wikipedia):
Fitting, since today is King’s Day (also Wikipedia), a Dutch national holiday.
Who else remembers that Koningsdag (=King’s Day) was called Woningsdag last year? Woning = home, so it was a play on King’s Day reminding people to celebrate from home due to the pandemic.
Marco received a surprise bouquet of flowers this afternoon from work. He and others from his group were recognized for the work they had done on a big project which is wrapping up.
Marco and I were pretty lucky. We actually threw out our few remaining vases late last year, planning to replace them at some point. Of course we never got around to it. (Neither of us really have a green thumb so we don’t usually have flowers around. I’ll be happy if it survives the week!) After some pondering, I noticed we had an empty lemonade dispenser with a tap (this one, from xenos.nl), so I quickly rinsed it out and used that. And it works perfectly! And it looks a bit cute if I say so myself.
More than 5 months after the Netherlands went into a lockdown in mid-December (government.nl, in English) I was finally able to return the two books that I still had on my account when the lockdown was suddenly announced. Well, perhaps I can’t describe it as sudden – you felt it coming as the shopping crowds just kept building after Black Friday. (Yes, the Netherlands celebrates that as a shopping holiday now as well.)
At the end of November and the first two weeks of December I started to return each book as soon as I finished it, just in case. That left only two books that I wasn’t done with yet. One was Stephen King’s The Outsider in English and the other was a Japanese novel translated into Dutch, Nakano’s handel in oude rommel (=The Nakano Thrift Shop). Since Monday, 19 April patrons have been allowed to return library books at any library in The Hague, 12:00-17:00 Monday through Saturday (link in Dutch). Patrons also have the option of requesting a bag of five books in a specific genre (this option has been available for the last few months).
Speaking of books: Prominent Dutch authors to reopen country’s bookstores on April 28 from nltimes.nl. There will be at least one author present in each province.
Random photo above from the interior of the Starbucks in The Hague city centre. I haven’t had Starbucks in a few years, but on a whim Marco and I decided to grab a drink. I went for a vanilla Frappuccino. That was also on a whim; I spent most of my time in line thinking I was going for a caramel Frappuccino. Let me tell you: I don’t regret my change of heart. Or taste buds.
King’s Day is next Tuesday which means a lovely day off. That’s about the only advantage these days, since the usual King’s Night parties (the evening before) and the King’s Day market can’t take place this year due to the pandemic. But who am I kidding? I probably haven’t gone to a King’s Night party in the last 5 years (back when it used to be Queen’s Night, before she abdicated and gave the throne to her son).
It also means you see a lot of toxic orange baked goods at the grocery stores.
On the left in the back you have soesjes (profiterole according to the English Wikipedia). Those are pastries filled with cream. In the middle you have tompouce, which is just called tompouce over at the English Wikipedia because it is a Dutch/Belgium pastry. My sweet tooth doesn’t usually show itself so I don’t eat this kind of stuff that often anymore. The best tompouce I ever had was from Hema with a lime flavor, putting it a bit more on the sour spectrum than the sweet spectrum. But tompouces are tricky to eat, more like overstuffed hamburgers. If you bite wrong the cream in the middle squirts out in the back.
On the right you have a schnitte. I had no idea what this was. I told Marco and Roger this and they looked at me a bit incredulously. Apparently its a two or three layer cake with whipped cream between the layers, or sometimes jam. Marco said that Viennetta ice cream (English Wikipedia) could also be an example of an ice cream schnitte.
Viennetta was actually a possibility last week for celebrating my birthday, but we went for cheesecake instead. I will always consider Viennetta a luxury, since that is how I viewed it as a kid. With the commercial where the group would enjoy the ice cream in clear, tall glasses (obligatory YouTube link)…
You know it’s Friday when your phone says “No Alarm” for tomorrow. Finally! This was a long week. It wasn’t even work’s fault. It was just the week itself that was slow. It started on Monday when I thought it was already Tuesday… and yesterday I thought for sure it was Friday. You get the idea.
Tonight Marco and I watched the series (season?) finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Wikipedia) on Disney+. It’s a cool show. Not as crazy as WandaVision was, but still cool. It had some great moments. Marco has definitely converted me into a Marvel fan. I think we’ve done a marathon of all of the MCU films at least 3 or 4 times now over the years.
Here was Marco and I’s treat for surviving a long work week:
Slow cooker chili with cheese and crackers. The best part? How tasty it is. The worst part? It cooks for 8-10 hours. Since we both work at home these days, that meant delicious aromas wafting through the apartment. All. Day. Long.
Happy Friday, everyone!
In a sign that I no longer ride the tram every day, here is a photo of a new check in / out machine in the older Dutch trams. They were first installed back in January of this year in older red-and-beige trams (article in Dutch from omroepwest.nl).
The “no more gibberish” comment is in reference to a blog post that I did late last year where I showed how screwed up the older machines were getting. One of the bigger pluses with the new machines is the space for where you can put your card is much wider (basically hold your card against the screen or underneath). I still remember with faint embarrassment how I tried to put my OV chip card on the tiny green screen when I first moved here (see image in the blog post linked above). With the old machines you needed to put your card against the white part where the pink logo was. Opps.
And also public transportation related: Dutch trains to start return to old timetables within 2 weeks from nltimes.nl. If all goes according to the government’s plan the advice to only travel if strictly necessary will also expire next week, which means trains will get much busier.
But we will see how the coming days play out. On the one hand the government wants to ease restrictions to help the economy (among other things), on the other hand we had over 9,600 corona cases today, the most since early January. It will be an interesting few weeks, that’s for sure.
It’s still not that warm yet in the Netherlands. Maybe 10C (50F), depending on the day? But you can still find color if you wander through the city centre. For example these flowers at the Rabbijn Maarsenplein (a plaza):
The heavy stone planters were added by the city sometime this month, as they weren’t there the last time I wandered through this area. (You can see the major shopping street Grote Marktstraat in the far distance.)
In other, very random news: Poolse vrouw bang voor onbekend schepsel in boom, blijkt croissant te zijn from nu.nl. Or, Polish woman afraid of unknown creature in tree, turns out to be a croissant. Not sure why her being Polish matters, but okay. Apparently the “creature” was resting in the tree for a few days.
T Rex walked the earth slowly but was helped by its tail, Dutch researchers find from dutchnews.nl. Similar to how humans swing their arms and legs when moving, the dinosaur could have also been swinging its tail up and down.
The chips brand Lay’s has three new flavors in the Netherlands: Subway teriyaki, KFC original recipe chicken and Pizza Hut Margherita (lays.nl). I haven’t seen the flavors “in the wild” yet, but it is only a matter of time. Starting in May if you buy a bag you can use it to get your second meal free at that restaurant. Lays is known for some weird flavors. One that managed to stick around permanently in this country was “baguette with herb butter” (stokbrood met kruidenboter).
First off, some great news: the European Medical Agency (EMA) has said that it safe to continue using the Janssen vaccine (Americans know it as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine). We only have about 80,000 doses in storage however we’re expecting about 3 million in the coming months. Since AstraZeneca is facing delays, this can help the Netherlands achieve their goal of giving everyone 16 years and older their first vaccine by 1 July. Even better, we’re going to start using Janssen from tomorrow: Netherlands to start using Janssen Covid vaccine on Wednesday from nltimes.nl.
There was another Dutch press conference tonight with prime minister Mark Rutte and health minister Hugo de Jonge. Although corona cases are still high in the Netherlands and similar to the numbers in January, de Jonge stated that the Netherlands has more protection thanks to ongoing vaccinations. Therefore the government will move forward with step 1 of their plan to relax corona measures from 28 April. Of course, that date is deliberately chosen as 27 April is a holiday here in the Netherlands (King’s Day).
Read more about step 1 over at the Dutch government’s website (actually available in English right away, for once!). These rules will take force as of 28 April. For full details, check the link:
The next step of the reopening plan will not occur before 11 May (think of things like being able to go to gyms inside, zoos opening, etc.).
On Saturday Marco and I picked up some cheesecake from the Cheesecake Company in celebration of my birthday last week. This was our first visit in 2021. Last year we went right before the country went into a soft lockdown (talking with the owner about “the corona situation” while sipping our coffees) and we picked up some cheesecake later in the year. These days the company has a new owner to carry on the proud American cheesecake tradition. The store still sells the same flavors (and of course some new ones too), so it’s going fine.
For my birthday I chose lemon lime, Marco chose lime blueberry and for Roger we chose blueberry banana. (Do you see the nice chain of flavors we made by doing that?)
I couldn’t help but take a picture of some uncut cheesecake just waiting to be put out on display:
Lots of flavors!
I can cross something else off my corona list: shopping by appointment (winkelen op afspraak).
Yesterday I decided on a whim to check what the availability was for shopping appointments at C&A (English Wikipedia), a clothing store. Here in the Netherlands you are currently required to book an appointment at non-essential stores. You must book the appointment at least four hours in advance to prevent “fun shopping”, as the Dutch like to call it. The store can only accept 1 customer per 25 m2, with the maximum capped at 50 customers inside. The store chooses how long the appointment can last, but they are required to offer slots in at least 10 minutes.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had availability the next day (today). I was also surprised to see C&A was offering 30 minute time slots. On the one hand it seemed like a very long time, on the other hand 10 minutes didn’t seem like enough. Oddly they asked how many people would be coming, which is strange since the government rules say you should come alone. On the other hand, I’m sure people would just book separate appointments for the same time slot in that case… I asked Marco if he was interested in going. Since he was also in need of some new clothes, I put down 2 people.
Of course there is the fear that it will be really crowded, but oddly enough when we arrived the next day there really wasn’t a line outside. There was one older gentleman who entered right before us, but it turns out he did not have an appointment so they turned him away. I showed my email to the security guard and we were allowed in. We were both required to have separate bags. And the bags were kind of weird looking, with lots of times on them, crossed out in marker. Almost like they used that system in the beginning and then gave up after a few days:
The store was fairly empty thanks to the one customer per 25m2 rule. There were maybe 6-8 customers per floor? It almost felt like personal shopping. It was also easy to keep enough distance, so that was nice.
I managed to find almost everything I was looking for. A new jacket, 3 t-shirts and even a plain hoodie. It’s nice and warm. The only thing I didn’t find was a new pair of jeans. However I’m short and small, so sometimes finding that combination can be a pain in a country which favors tall people. Hmm. Marco got everything on his list, so that was nice.
I’m glad I went. Non-essential stores have been closed since mid-December (thanks to Black Friday and Christmas shopping insanity) so we definitely needed to buy a few new things.
Life in the Hague 