I’ve always wanted to write a blog post about this street!
Every time I walk past this street I have to laugh, but it seems so silly. The name of the street is Koediefstraat, which translates to Cow thief street. Hahaha. I’ll admit I had images of someone dragging an unwilling cow down this street while being chased by an unhappy army of Dutchies wielding pitchforks. But alas, the reason is a bit different.
If you go to the Haags Gemeentearchief website (The Hague city archive) and search for Koediefstraat, you’ll get two results for from the Straatnamencollectie, or the street name collection. The street had a few different names in the last 500+ years. One was Kromme Poten or Crooked legs but I’m not sure why. It was also named Wijnstraat or Wine street for a while due to the winery in the area. Another name was Burenstraat which was a reference to someone living in the area in the 1650s: Jacob van Buuren.
But the current name, Koediefstraat is likely a reference to Adriaan Janszoon Colijn whose nickname was Coedyff, which had a similar pronunciation to Koedief.
Also interesting to note: the painting on the side of the wall appeared recently; I don’t remember seeing it before. It caught my eye and reminded me that I wanted to do a blog post over the street name. There was no trace of it on Google Maps, whose most recent image was from June 2018.
The national train service NS has added additional measures by train stations in anticipation of the schedule returning to normal on 2 June. The delay of one day is because Monday, 1 June is a holiday here in The Netherlands.
Note: the schedule is returning to normal due to the expected increase of travelers, however the government still requests that people avoid public transportation when possible and instead take the car, bike or walk to their destination.
The latest measure related to the coronavirus situation is the use of one-way entrances and exits. As you can see in the photo above, you can only use every other door, depending on what side you’re on. There’s a lot of doors at the Centraal station, about 10 on each side. At least most of them are working these days… In the beginning at least half were defective. I wish I was joking!
Another common complaint after the station was remodeled was that it was really hard to see what was a door and what was a glass wall. I think most people are used to it these days although it still requires you to pay attention a little bit.
There’s also notes spray painted in the ground inside, although that’s been around since the beginning of the crisis, in some form or another. From the upper left it says ‘vermijd drukte’ (avoid busy areas, the rule that recently replaced the stay home as much as possible rule, ‘houd afstand’ (keep your distance), ‘was vaker je handen’ (wash your hands more often). In the middle is the main measure about keeping 1.5 meters distance from others, and at the bottom ‘voorkom €400 boete’ (avoid a €400 fine).
The NS train company have also recently added a ban of taking your bike with you in the train unless you have a special bike for medical purposes. They also temporarily removed the ‘Samenreiskorting’, a 40% discount when you travel with the train outside of peak hours with another person; this person must have either a season pass or a student product for you to qualify for the discount. Here is more information in English.
From 1 June you are required to wear a face mask in all public transportation. I’ve also seen information that only seats by the train window will be available for use, although this page (in Dutch) doesn’t say that directly. It does mention that you should only sit where green stickers are placed, however.
HTM, The Hague’s bus and tram service, is also working on new measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
This is also by The Hague Centraal station. As you can see, when you leave the tram you are required to exit to the right and walk along the path noted with arrows. Travellers who are waiting for the tram need to wait in the spots marked with blue or red stickers behind the line. The blue stickers show two feet and the red stickers have a QR code. Once everyone has exited the tram they will be allowed to move forward and enter the tram themselves. As The Hague Centraal is a rather busy area, there are workers present if you have questions (you can just see a man standing there in the upper left of the photo).
Back in mid-March HTM implemented a measure asking that travelers not use the button to open or close tram doors or to use the stop button to signal to the driver that they want to get off at the next stop. For the foreseeable future buses and trams will be stopping at every stop and opening every door so that travellers do not have to touch anything extra during the journey. As you can see above, there’s a sign on the tram door requesting that you do not press any buttons as it is no longer required.
It will definitely be interesting to see what the first week of June is like. At the same time that public transportation will be back to a normal schedule, restaurants will be re-opening with limited capacity as well.
Okay, admittedly this photo was taken last Sunday, late in the afternoon. The Hague city centre gets busy at those times, even on the best of the days. Throw in some coronavirus and you have a recipe for pedestrian congestion.
Let’s see… about 50 people that we can see waiting to get inside the local Primark (a discount clothing store), probably another 20-25 around the corner. Admittedly, it is a double line which makes it look twice even more crowded.
And here I used to joke that people were insane when they would walk around the city with four fully loaded Primark bags. It really is a discount clothing store – I think I got a shirt there for 2 and a half euros once. Oh, and a very awesome Christmas ornament that I probably don’t have a photo of. But trust me, it was cute.
But probably not worth waiting in line for with 75 others.
Recently I noticed a new coronavirus measure that appeared in The Hague: clear walking paths near the Chinatown gate, which is found between Bijenkorf and Superdry.
On this side of the walkway the signs tell you to walk on the right and that cyclists need to get off their bike. Perhaps the one-way walkways are because of the construction around the gate taking up a lot of the space?
It’s an interesting idea, but I feel like this situation has shown me just how much the human race can ignore rules: I watched a couple walk on the left side, not a care in the world. As I emerged on the other side, I met someone who was walking in the wrong direction as well, taking the path I just exited. Some days I feel like a lot of measures are just for political show. But okay. It is what it is.
So that you can understand what I mean by “Chinatown gate”, here is a photo from early 2017:
Ironically, it also had construction around it on that day, although a lot less than what you would see currently.
Did you know that gates like this are entirely an American invention? They were invented in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Check out the episode “It’s Chinatown” on the 99% Invisible podcast to learn more.
Last week Marco and I went through The Passage, which serves as both a passage between shopping areas in the city centre as well as being a shopping area in its own right.
There were stickers in the ground reminding visitors to keep appropriate distance from one another:
These signs weren’t that big, but they were big enough to catch your eye for sure. What I was less impressed with was the attempt to create one-way walking areas near the entrances to The Passage, as the arrows were tiny, hard to see and easily ignored. In fact, I watched two people walk right over them in the wrong direction, not a care in the world.
I do think the one way arrows will need to be ‘improved’ in the coming weeks as this part only gets busier and busier. They should have been more of them, with clearer lines in the floor. Also perhaps a dividing line that went straight down the middle for the entirety of the shopping area. But we will see how it works out in the coming weeks and months.
Everyone is thinking about how visits to restaurants and cafés will look after 1 June when terraces will again be allowed to open – if the coronavirus numbers allow it, of course.
The Grote Markt plaza has a plan in the meantime, and it involves food trucks:
Does anyone else think that the shadow of the close umbrella looks like a perched Batman?
Here is a look at what they are serving (or selling):
From upper left (“Bloemen”): Flowers, coffee, pizza, croissants, ice cream, sandwiches, Thai food, Cold Turkey (a type of beer from the nearby restaurant Hoender en Hop, apparently), fries, and vinyl records. There isn’t much information available online about this food truck action, but it could be that it is only running Thursday through Sunday.
And here are some more chalk drawings. I’m unsure if they are supposed to mark the distance between 1.5 meters or not, as some of them are more haphazardly placed. Or maybe they are just decoration, which is cool too.
The weather yesterday was pretty good, around 25C or 77F. This of course meant that a lot of people were outside yesterday. Marco and I also took advantage of the good weather, but we tried to go outside earlier in the morning before it got too busy. We mostly avoided the city centre as much as we could.
And not without reason: yesterday NS, the national train service, was asking people to stop traveling to Zandvoort to go to the beach. And a popular shopping street in Leiden was briefly closed yesterday (article in Dutch at omroepwest.nl)
Near the end of our walk I took a photo of the canal that crosses alongside the Palace Garden:
In the photo you can see a small group of boaters enjoying the good weather as well as a few people sitting on the edge of the canal on the right.
Researchers discover seabed volcano 100 km from Texel (dutchnews.nl) – the volcano was given the name ‘Mulciber’ after the Roman god of fire. Fortunately (or unfortunately, if you like a bit of risk in your life) the volcano is long dead.
As I’ve noted previously, Haagse Harry is a comic book character created by Marnix Rueb. Here’s a statue of the character unveiled in 2014 after Rueb’s untimely death. Remember most of the text you see below is phonetically spelled in The Hague’s own dialect. I have a lot of trouble reading it, which always makes Marco laugh.
In these corona times, banners have appeared throughout the city centre from the Dutch group Fan Support Den Haag (Instagram | Facebook).
It says in the middle:
Stay strong Hagenen (The Hague residents). Anderhalve meter = 1.5 meters
The shirt on the left says Mijn hart behoort aan Den Haag = My heart belongs to The Hague
The shirt on the right says 1 team, 1 taak = 1 team, 1 task
And a banner above the Bleyenberg restaurant.
Ik wil mijn bier en vreten, dus laten we de horeca niet vergeten! = I want my beer and food, so let’s not forget the restaurants and cafés! Although ‘vreten’ is more a verb for eating, but you get the idea.
As noted last month, I love the dutch word horeca which is simply a shortened form of ‘hotels, restaurants and cafés’ (ho-re-ca).
As with most places in the world, beauty is blooming and yet there is no one around to see it. But this is where technology can help – be it cameras or drones. The first example is Clingendael, a Japanese garden situated in The Hague. I actually haven’t visited yet, partially because it is only open for a short time in the spring.
The second place is Keukenhof, not too far outside of The Hague. I mentioned it a few weeks ago in this blog already. It is a large tulip park, open for a few months in the year. Last year they had 1.5 million visitors. This year they weren’t even able to open before the crisis took hold.
The latest video they posted was of the violinist Rosanne Philippens playing during a sunrise:
They post videos of Keukenhof every few days – check out their YouTube channel for more.
While it is still minimal, there is a growing sense of unrest in The Netherlands regarding the lockdown – that the economy is suffering because of it, that people’s freedoms are being taken away. This is apt because 4 May is the day where the Dutch remember the victims of WWII and 5 May is the day where the Dutch celebrate the freedom they have.
While our lockdown is labeled as an “intelligent lockdown” where you are asked to stay inside as much as you can and work from home as much as you can, it is nothing like the lockdowns seen in France, Italy or Spain where you were only let outside for emergency reasons with what basically amounts to a permission slip from the teacher. Those countries are just beginning to relax the harsh lockdowns.
Today someone had left anti-lockdown messages (article in Dutch) outside the Lewyeg shopping center and the entrance to the Zuiderpark. There was also anti-lockdown demonstrations in The Hague and Utrecht.
Oh, and the country also has issues with persons burning down cell towers as some believe there is a link between 5G and the coronavirus (article in Dutch). Of course sometimes they burn down cell towers that are not 5G and are instead used for the national emergency number 112. Hmmm.
Life in the Hague 