Okay, I’ll admit I’m not a big fan of delivery. I would gladly do takeover over delivery any day. I think I am in the minority, though!
Check out the sign by the local Momiji Sushi and Momiji Ramen. They are special enough to have two websites and two entrances (normally) – even though they are run by the same company and you can walk from one part to the other.
A sign saying they are open for both takeout and delivery, and giving their opening times.
I am definitely a fan of the color work on that sign. I think maybe I’ll suggest we get some sushi… or ramen… this weekend. Yum!
Fun side note: “Ramen” means “windows” in Dutch. Let me tell you, Marco loves to make jokes about their windows every time we walk past. (I love that. Usually…)
Support your local business and stay safe, everyone.
The National Association of King’s Day organizers announced today that Koningsdag (King’s Day) will become Woningsdag (Home Day) this year. Even if you don’t speak Dutch you can see the subtle change in the word to encourage people to stay at home while celebrating Koningsdag.
King’s Day is a day of birthday celebration for King Willem-Alexander who is turning 53 this year. It is a nationally recognized holiday where (most) people don’t need to go in to work. Previously the holiday was known as Koninginnedag or Queen’s Day until Princess Beatrix abdicated the throne in 2013. She also celebrated the day in April, in honor of her mother. Probably a good thing for us as Princess Beatrix was born in late January – brrrr.
Here are some of the activities planned for the Woningsdag later this month:
hanging Dutch flags outside (both for the king on his birthday and for each other)
bell ringing between 09:45-10:00 throughout the country
singing of the national anthem at 10:00
NOS (the national broadcaster) will air a program at 10:10 looking at previous King’s Day events
a digital market for clothes in the afternoon. I have no idea how they will make that work – but the Dutchies are well known for their King’s Day flea markets. See also:
an old photo from Queen’s Day 2012
The king will read some of the digital letters written to him by children
At 16:00 there will be a toast to the king in which everyone can participate (woo! alcohol at 16:00!)
In the evening NOS (the national broadcaster) will air a program looking at how Woningsdag was celebrated throughout the country
As one might (unfortunately) expect, all of the public libraries in The Hague are closed. Libraries are something you definitely miss when you don’t have them anymore!
Luckily there is a solution to my current problem, and not just reading the handful of books I have lying around the house already, either. E-books can also be downloaded at onlinebibliotheek.nl and read either on your computer, via an app on your phone or tablet, or via your e-reader. You have three weeks to read the book, after which they are removed from your device and you need to download them again. Note: most titles are in Dutch, although there is a bit of English in the mix.
eBooks app – for members with a Dutch library card number or a subscription to onlinebibliotheek.nl. As noted there is a bit of English titles here, but it is mostly Dutch.
LuisterBieb app – audiobooks; for members with a Dutch library card number or a subscription to onlinebibliotheek.nl. A select number are also available for those without a membership.
ThuisBieb app – this app has about 100 titles for adults and 100 titles for children – it’s free for everyone, but everything is in Dutch.
It was really simple to download my first eBook – I simply entered my library card number on the website to make an account, found a book, downloaded the eBooks app, entered my login details one more time, and started reading.
I chose “The traveling cat chronicles” in Dutch, and just finished it last night. It’s a great story about a cat and his owner going on road trips so that the owner can find a new person to take care of his cat. Each chapter features a different road trip and has a flashback about how the owner met each of these friends during his school years. After the flashback, the chapter returns to present times and you move to the cat’s point of view again for the rest of the chapter.
Warning: a box of tissues is a good thing to have around for this one.
Last night Marco and I went for a walk, a bit later in the evening around 20:00. While the weather was turning cooler it was still a nice walk through a fairly peaceful city centre. Actually, when we walked through the (deserted) Binnenhof what I noticed the most was the silence – not even the birds were chirping.
One thing we noticed was a face mask on the statue of “Jantje” or “Little John”:
Jantje was a boy who died at the age of 15… in the year 1299. He’s part of a Dutch children’s song about The Hague. If you ask him where his father lives, he’ll point with his finger to the Binnenhof, as his father’s estate used to reside in the space where the Binnenhof now stands.
Marco remarked on the dislocation of the finger – most likely a lot of people touch it due to the song.
Happy Easter, everyone! It’s a quiet holiday – we’ve opened the windows nice and wide today to get that spring breeze circulating through the apartment. This year Marco and I ordered Easter Brunch from a local restaurant, FOAM Catering. You can find them at Frederikstraat 44.
We were tempted after Marco saw the menu on Facebook:
We went with the meal and added one massive chocolate chip cookie and one banana bread muffin to the spoils. Check it out:
From left to right we have the massive chocolate chip cookie, and then next to that the banana bread muffin (sort of hidden). In the box above we have the two sandwiches – BLTA (tempeh bacon, lettuce, tomato and avocado – YUMMM!) and the wakame baguette with scrambled tofu, chives and tomato. I can easily say it is the best tofu I’ve ever had. It was great and did actually look like scrambled eggs. You can see the scrambled tofu container in the lower right, as you needed to warm it up separately and then add it to the sandwich.
Underneath the sign “Like our food?” is the mango jalapeño gazpacho, my second favorite item after the BLTA sandwich. It wasn’t that spicy, and the mango wasn’t too sweet. To the right is the scrambled tofu, as earlier mentioned. In the box on the far right is the coconut power balls and underneath the two brownies. Sweets wise we kept it at the coconut power balls, which were unbelievably tasty. We saved them until last and had them with a cup of coffee. The two closed containers in the far back are the extra scrambled tofu and gazpacho.
If you’re in The Hague I would definitely recommend this restaurant – it was well worth the price and we’re already planning our next visit. And without this experience I wouldn’t have ever known tempeh bacon existed, so that’s a definite win.
Today’s blog post will focus on the use of drones to fly over various parts of The Netherlands during the coronavirus pandemic.
So without further ado, here is a look at how drones have been used to capture the oddness of this situation:
First, a recently posted drone video of the Efteling theme park:
This fantasy theme park was built in the 1950s and can be found in the east part of The Netherlands (Wikipedia).
Here is a look at a video produced by the national news service NPO:
The video above explains how The Netherlands came to a standstill due to the coronavirus and includes some statistics. Spoken Dutch with English subtitles.
Happy Friday everyone! ☀️ We made it to the weekend.
I would also like to give a shout to my mother who has an irregular job which is not only Monday-Friday – hope you’re getting some time off here and there!
It has now become routine to check the numbers from RIVM (National Institute for Public Health and the Environment) in the afternoon, as they release statistics about the coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations around 14:00 every day. They seem to have increased their server load in the last week or so as the site doesn’t freeze around that time anymore.
Note: The Netherlands has increased testing capacity in the last week, so the number of confirmed cases is going up due to that. They are now able to test healthcare workers outside of hospitals, including workers who work in home healthcare.
The statistics regarding ICU beds can be found at NICE (National Intensive Care Evaluation) although that page is not available in English. Daily numbers are released sometime after 16:00 each day. Also note the time stamp at the top of the page is whatever the time was when you visited the site, not the last time that it was updated. But keeping an eye on the ICU beds is important is this country as we needed to quickly increase our numbers to be able to handle the expected strain in the ICU.
In either case, the numbers aren’t complete yet as some hospitals send in their reports a day or two later. For example our country generally has a higher number of deaths on Tuesdays as they include deaths over the weekend and on Monday.
Here’s a photo from The Hague Centraal train station earlier this morning:
Care for each other, keep 1.5 meters distance
ProRail is responsible for the infrastructure and capacity of the rail transport lines, while NS (which I mention sometimes in this blog) is responsible for most, but not all, of the passenger transport in The Netherlands.
And a look at the current tram schedule at the train station:
At the moment, trams operate every 20 minutes during the day on a weekday and every half hour in the weekend.
Ahh, weekend! It’s an early one, but we’re getting four days off. My work gives both Good Friday and Easter Monday as paid holidays, and Marco took tomorrow off and gets Easter Monday as a paid holiday. This has been a long work week. It’s not the work itself, just the constant working from home situation, I think.
This is the end of week #5 for working at home, and my expectation is that we’ll also be working from home in May as well. Or at least partially working from home so that the social distancing and 1.5 meters rule can be enforced on the work floor. For instance by saying only half the workforce can go into work each day, and alternating who goes in each day.
So hopefully that explains the long walk Marco and I took in the afternoon yesterday – sometimes you just need to get out and stretch. Here is a look at Malieveld – unbelievably empty on a day when temperatures reached 71F / 22C. It was the first time I took off my jacket in many months, I must admit. And the first time in a while that I wondered if I should have put sunblock on…
There were a few people in the grass in the distance, but not many. You can also see that the grass still hasn’t completely recovered from the farmer protests back in October of last year. Check out this aerial photo: Reddit link.
Looking forward to sleeping in a bit tomorrow. And maybe stretching my legs and going for a socially distant walk at some point.
It’s a bit too small for you and me, but I found the perfect hotel for bees and insects here in The Hague:
Marco and I took a walk in the afternoon to get some fresh air. We walked along the Malieveld, a large grass field not far from The Hague Centraal train station. It’s perfect for hosting concerts, carnivals and other events. Oh and farmer protests, too.
The bee and insect hotel was on the property of the Provincial house of South Holland (The Netherlands is split up into provinces, and this is the main contact address for the province).
Good news of the day: for the first time since the corona crisis began, more patients have left the ICU than entered it. In total there are 16 fewer occupied beds (1424 beds yesterday versus 1408 today), including the ICU beds in Germany housing Dutch patients (52).
Oh, sunny days! (which makes me think of the song “Oh Happy Day” from Sister Act 2 – obligatory YouTube link).
But today’s temperature was about 66F / 19C. Spring is coming. I took a break from work to take a short walk, finding bits of sun while practicing my social distancing responsibly…
I took a photo of the old city hall, where Marco and I were married in September 2013. See the stairs in the lower right? We took some wedding pictures there. I was reminded again of how much taller Marco is than I am, as I had to stand a few stairs above him in the pictures.
There was another press conference this evening with Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Healthcare Minister Hugo de Jonge. For the most part the message was Hou vol! Or “Keep going! You’re doing great!” With a few exceptions, we managed to use our common sense and stay home over the weekend, only going outside if needed and going out alone, etc.
There was also a reminder that Easter was coming and we needed to celebrate it at home responsibly and not travel throughout the country to visit family. With a similar amount of “You’re doing great! Don’t stop now!” and a reminder that the only way the country can consider relaxing the measures (piece by piece, slowly) is if we all individually and collectively make smart decisions in the near future. You get the idea.
Minister de Jonge also mentioned that the government was looking into two apps to help in the fight against the coronavirus: one app to let you know if you have been in contact with someone who had later been diagnosed with the virus, and another app to help potential patients stay in touch with their doctors. They don’t know if the apps will be compulsory (my guess is no, as people tend to be stubborn around here) and how they will work with regards to privacy and user data.
Life in the Hague 