Author Archives: Niki

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About Niki

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

In the meantime, at Albert Heijn (Or: Different batches, I guess?)

Posted on February 18, 2021 by Niki

Earlier this week I was at Albert Heijn and idly looking at the focaccia breads on sale. My eye was immediately drawn to a focaccia that looked almost burnt, next to a pale one that looked okay.

I suspect I’d probably buy the lighter version if I really wanted it, but I can’t say that the darker version didn’t look tasty as well. Just… slightly burnt. (You can also see some dark exemplars in the back, so it seems like there was just a difference in the batches.)

Today is kind of a weird day, probably a day when I should stay away from checking the news. A few days ago we were at 2,700 infections, then yesterday 3,600, and now today 4,600. Last week’s winter weather could be a culprit, since a lot of testing areas were closed. There were also closures this past Monday when rain came while temperatures were still around freezing. Still, I think it is a sign I should read less news, to avoid feeling frustrated.

For a crazy-but-very-interesting story, check out: People are rescuing thousands of ‘cold-stunned’ sea turtles in Texas from theguardian.com. The cold-blooded sea turtles became paralyzed due to the temperature of the water. At this point over 3,500 sea turtles have been brought in. They will be released once the water warms up, but that will take some time as another cold front is expected in the coming days.

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Lange Voorhout under snow (Or: Before it all melted, of course)

Posted on February 17, 2021 by Niki


Quick update on where we stand with the curfew: it is still in place until a new court session this Friday. In the meantime the government is also working on an emergency law (done the proper way this time) which they hope to have passed on Friday. That way even if they lose the court case, which said the original curfew law was not legal, the curfew itself is still active. It was a crazy day yesterday, that’s for sure!

In happier news: I have a few remaining pictures from last week of a snowy Lange Voorhout. Taken by Marco, of course. He braves the snow and ice better than I do!

The Lange Voorhout is an L-shaped path in the city centre (article from denhaag.com in English).

Beautiful, isn’t it?

And a photo of the Escher museum, with snow. Of course, by now all the snow and ice has melted away. If you’re lucky you might find a pile here or there. But I am not complaining – I had my fun last Sunday (blog post). I am looking forward to the Spring-like temperatures this weekend as well. It should be nice!

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Dutch courts strike down the curfew (But: Maybe it will still be in effect?)

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Niki

It has been a bit of a confusing day, especially due to speaking Dutch as a second language. A few times I have had to stop and ask Marco what this or that meant, as my knowledge of judicial terms (even everyday judicial terms) isn’t that great.

The Dutch courts unexpectedly struck down the Dutch curfew law which said that everyone must be inside between 21:00 and 04:30, unless you have a valid reason. I say unexpectedly because I didn’t even know there was a court case going on. The Dutch anti-lockdown group Viruswaarheid (Loosely translated: Virus Truth) went to the courts to strike down the curfew. The curfew had been in place since 23 January and was extended on 8 February until the early morning of 3 March. And then suddenly it was gone – or so we thought. I can’t say that I’ve been pretty disrupted by it, beyond Roger coming over earlier in the weekend. (Note: Roger is pretty much our only contact for some months, with a few rare exceptions.) Oh, and also that Marco has to get up early to bring the garbage down. The Hague decided that you can only put your garbage out between 04:30 and 07:45, rather than late in the evening the night before. Ick.

Curfew must be scrapped immediately, court rules from nltimes.nl. The court didn’t say that the curfew itself was wrong, rather that the government did not follow proper procedure and bring it before the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives) and the Eerste Kamer (Senate) before bringing it into law. The government instead used an “acute emergency” ruling to bring it to pass. The court disagreed that it was indeed an acute emergency.

Viruswaarheid says there will be a party in the streets tonight; the leader invites everyone to go outside and celebrate after 21:00 (article in Dutch, from nos.nl). That does not sound like a good plan…

The Dutch government said wait a minute – we want to appeal that, and we want to keep the curfew active while we’re appealing. Government appeals against curfew ruling, also from nltimes.nl.

The government appeals, and the sitting is scheduled for 16:00. During the hearing, the leader of Viruswaarheid accuses the courts of not being impartial, and he says he wants a different court to hear the case. A special court will look at his request, saying they need until 18:30 to decide, give or take. It’s 19:00 now… At 19:08 the court said that they are dismissing his request for a new court.

So like I said: a confusing day. At the moment, the curfew has been struck down, until the court says otherwise. For now. We will see.

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Valentine’s Day box from FOAM (Or: Two roses)

Posted on February 15, 2021 by Niki

Marco ordered the Valentine’s Day box from FOAM for the two of us. How cute!

The two extra roses were a nice touch. The box contained fruit salad, an avocado and smoked almond sandwich and a beetroot wrap with black pepper cream cheese, tempeh bacon and cress. On the sweet side we had French toast, banana bread and a chocolate/coffee cupcake. Oh, and juice made of beet/apple/ginger/blueberry. Yum yum. The only thing that I personally didn’t like as much was the black pepper cream cheese, perhaps because I didn’t know the cream cheese had black pepper in it to begin with. It was an interesting flavor either way! The unexpected star of the dish was definitely the fresh toast.

Marco likes to take the artistic photos. I benefit from getting to post them on my blog!

After half a day of rain, the snow and ice has begun to melt. Tomorrow we’re looking at highs of 10C/50F and the weekend might (if we are lucky) get up to 16C/60F. Oh course I read my parents back in the US are facing another snowstorm today… brrr.

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All fun must end (Or: The last skaters on the Hofvijver)

Posted on February 14, 2021 by Niki

Marco took some photos of the last few skaters on the Hofvijver this morning.

There weren’t that many skaters because the city had put up fencing around the entrance to the water:

The fun didn’t last long, however. More skaters found themselves in problems this morning and afternoon. After the fire department got everyone back to dry ground they started breaking up the ice along the walls to make it impossible to get back on. See also this article from district8.nl in Dutch: Politie haalt grote groep schaatsers van ijs Hofvijver Den Haag.

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Frozen Hofvijver (Or: Ice skating craziness begins)

Posted on February 13, 2021 by Niki

Marco took some photos yesterday of the Hofvijver (the pond outside the Dutch parliament) beginning to freeze over.

Cool photo, huh?

Here is a look at the Hofvijver from the side of parliament:

Technically you’re allowed to ice skate on the Hofvijver (and a lot of people do), but it does raise some security concerns.

To prevent people from getting too close to the parliament, the part of ice next to the buildings is always deliberately broken.

Of course, a lot of people went through the ice yesterday. Check out this article in Dutch from regio15.nl (including photos and a video): Meerdere mensen door ijs gezakt Den Haag. In the afternoon, someone went through the ice and was rescued. Shortly thereafter a few more people went through the ice, so the rest of the skaters were told to wait on the island in the middle. Eventually they were led away by the firemen, mostly using ladders. Today The Hague has put fencing around the Hofvijver to prevent people from ice skating, but that really hasn’t stopped most people.

Bekijk het witte Haagse groen eens vanuit de lucht, from hethaagsegroen.nl in Dutch. (Aerial pictures of some snow-covered nature areas in The Hague).

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Cat and mice graffiti, Achterom (Or: Awww, cute)

Posted on February 12, 2021 by Niki

Marco was kind enough to take a few pictures for me this week. He found some more graffiti. This time in the Achterom, a small side street which cuts through the Passage shopping area.

And this one:

Yarn is definitely a theme in this graffiti. And check out the ice in the next photo:

There’s also a white cat above the string of yarn, balancing precariously on his bike. Cute, right?

Happy Friday, everyone.

Categories: The Hague | Tags: , , | 3 Comments

Snow by the Buitenhof (Or: Waiting to buy fish)

Posted on February 11, 2021 by Niki

Here is a look at the snow by the Buitenhof earlier this week:

The small building in front of the tree in the photo is a fish stand, and yes, there was a line of people waiting to buy fish. How very Dutch.

And I spotted some weird headlines recently, all from nltimes.nl

Man arrested for calling cops 100 times. Apparently he was unhappy with their IT technology. Somehow I don’t think tying up their phone lines will help.

Man fined after breaking ice on Amsterdam canal. Don’t mess with the ice in canals when Dutchies are hoping to get some ice skating in. Officially he was fined for violating the sailing ban, not breaking the ice. (I read on NOS.nl that he was fined for sailing in the wrong direction.)

Weird snowman sends Amsterdam police responding to reports of dead body, complete with a photo of the “dead body” in question. I guess you could think it was a dead body, if you look quickly or something…

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Four days later (Or: Still cold and windy)

Posted on February 10, 2021 by Niki

The Netherlands is wrapped in a cold spell, with temperatures set to get even colder over the next few days before gradually warming up from Monday.

Code Yellow: Roads still icy, trains still running on adjusted schedule from nltimes.nl. For the most part Sprinters (stop trains) are running to serve all stations, but there are not as many Intercity trains which run between cities. Although the NS promised to put in longer trains, people are still seeing packed trains:

A tweet showing full trains without the ability to keep 1.5 meters distance, noting that shops are closed but this is allowed.

Speaking of shops, they are now allowed to be open for click & collect, but a lot of bigger stores are not offering this option, including H&M, Bijenkorf and Zara (article in Dutch at nos.nl). In some cases because they think the work involved won’t be worth the money gained.

Arnhem zoo brings penguins inside due to the cold from nltimes.nl. Considering these penguins occur naturally in South Africa and Namibia, this does make sense. It does say that the only the partner-less penguins and young penguins without a cave to keep them warm were brought inside (awww, they have their own caves?)

And, finally, while not related to the Netherlands at all, I must simply share this tweet:

Combination cat-lawyer!

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Possible curfew extension (Or: An icy, wintry day)

Posted on February 9, 2021 by Niki

The Dutch cabinet is consider extending the curfew to 2 March. The curfew runs from 21:00 to 04:30 every night. See also: Outgoing Dutch Cabinet says it will seek curfew extension through March 2 from nltimes.nl. That would be an extension of 3 weeks and bring the measure into line with other measures that are currently in place until (at least) 2 March.

I forgot to post this yesterday but here are some pictures from regio15.nl (in Dutch) of what The Hague looked like under a thin layer of fresh snow on late Saturday into early Sunday morning. We got some more after that, of course.

Skating on the canals? Amsterdam take steps to accelerate ice formation from nltimes.nl. Amsterdam and other Dutch cities have introduced a temporary ban on boating within canals to help stimulate ice growth so that the chances of skating on natural ice are higher.

Van Ark [the minister of Sports] to consider allowing ‘corona safe’ competitions on natural ice from dutchnews.nl. The Dutch government is in a very difficult position at the moment. Dutchies are very fanatic about being able to hold an Elfstedentocht (11 city skating competition, English Wikipedia) at the first possibility of natural ice being thick enough. An Elfstedentocht had already been ruled out late last year due to corona, but now that we are in a situation where we will have at least a week of ice, everyone is thinking about it again. A majority of the Dutch cabinet is for it (article from ad.nl in Dutch), with limited or no public. However it does seem like a bit of a double standard when other things are being cancelled. On the other hand, the last Elfstedentocht was in 1997 due to climate change, so…

And finally, a bit of crazy news: Politie vindt onderkoelde man die in vrieskou van Gouda naar Weesp liep from omroepeest.nl in Dutch. In summary, the trains were not running this weekend so a man decided to walk from Gouda to Weesp (about 54 km or 33 miles) in the evening during the snowstorm. He actually almost made it to Weesp before he called his mom and said he was in trouble. The connection was then lost, so his mom called the police. They finally found him using a police helicopter. He was found not far outside of Weesp, laying on a bike path, suffering from hypothermia of course. But the story ends well: after some care he was reunited with his family. Sounds like he wasn’t fined for breaking curfew, either….

(The Hague has a herd of Scottish Highland cows in Westduinpark, or West Dune Park.)

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