Author Archives: Niki

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About Niki

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

Navigational failures (Or: Scheveningen’s pier mistaken for the harbor)

Posted on April 30, 2021 by Niki

A few days ago a German speaking man accidentally rammed his yacht into the pier at Scheningen. In the dead of night he accidentally mistook the brightly lit pier for the harbor. Opps? The ship is most likely total loss. When he rammed into the pier it also knocked over some of the fencing above. Oh, and he is responsible for getting it towed.

And in other news:

Happy Friday, everyone.

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Orange, orange, orange (Or: Cheese and nuts for King’s Day)

Posted on April 29, 2021 by Niki

Over the weekend the intercom unexpectedly buzzed. It turned out to be a surprise package from work. Inside were gifts to celebrate King’s Day with.

Think of things like a toxically orange lei (you can just see it hidden behind the orange ballons), nuts, cheese blocks, Valencian orange tonic water, and a game of tic tac toe with wooden blocks. Oh, and an elderberry syrup mixture to stir into your water.

The two drinks were Aperol Spritz, an Italian drink (aperol, sparkling water and prosecco). They actually weren’t part of the package. I still had leftover aperol spritz from last year when I celebrated King’s Day with my coworkers! Virtually, of course. Luckily the bottle is now empty. It’s an okay drink… once a year?

Categories: Food, Holidays | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Way more people than usual (Or: Even Google can’t handle it)

Posted on April 28, 2021 by Niki

Today was the first day of relaxations for corona measures. Think of things like:

  • The curfew has been lifted.
  • Restaurant terraces are allowed to open from 12:00-18:00 daily.
  • Appointments are no longer required for shopping at non-essential stores.

Some stores (especially Ikea and Primark) have been bombed with an influx of clients due to the restrictions being lifted today. Primark is a discount clothing store – it is quite easy to find a T-shirt there for €2-3.

Enter Google trying to tell you exactly how busy it was by the Ikea in Delft (screenshot was around lunchtime):

Check out that red bar on the left. It can’t even fit on the graph. I checked 10 minutes before they closed and it still looked like that, although it didn’t dip quite as far below the graph. But that could be because they were closing in 10 minutes…

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

King’s Day 2021 (Or: A sea of orange)

Posted on April 27, 2021 by Niki

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.

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

Beautiful flowers (Or: Here’s hoping they last)

Posted on April 26, 2021 by Niki

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.

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Books and coffee (Or: 5 months later)

Posted on April 25, 2021 by Niki

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.

Starbucks in the city centre, waiting in line

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.

Categories: Reading | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Orange sugar (Or: King’s Day in the Netherlands)

Posted on April 24, 2021 by Niki

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)…

Categories: Culture, Food, Holidays | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Slow cooker chili (Or: Friday meals)

Posted on April 23, 2021 by Niki

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!

Categories: Food | Leave a comment

“New” check in machines in older Dutch trams (Or: No more gibberish)

Posted on April 22, 2021 by Niki

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.

Categories: Transportation | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Flowers by Rabbijn Maarsenplein (Or: A touch of Spring)

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Niki

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).

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

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