Last week when Marco and I went to an ING bank to open an account, we walked past the Grote Kerk. I was able to take a lovely shot of a rather majestic tree.
This tree fits in rather well with the urban landscape – it’s in the middle of the city, but you still have cobblestone plaza and old trees growing through the cement.
A few weeks ago, I went to Kelly’s Expat Shopping in The Hague. I was looking for a few surprises to give Marco for Valentine’s Day. Originally I wanted to go there because the website said that they had sour nerds in stock, but that proved to be wrong unfortunately.
The store was bigger than I expected, and the aisles were definitely wide enough. Since it was my first time there, I took my time looking up and down the aisles to make sure I didn’t miss anything good.
I did end up getting him five things – a bag of sour skittles (to replace the non-existent nerds), Frank’s hot buffalo wing sauce, a small bag of Synder’s Jalapeno pretzel bits, Welch’s grape jelly, and Jack Daniel’s spicy barbecue sauce. The main one was the barbecue sauce, since it is classified as a liquid and thus can’t be ordered from America or the UK. You can bring it over in luggage, though. The grape jelly is good for peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, since it is hard to find jelly in this country. Mainly they just have jam, which is a slightly different taste.
Since there is currently roadwork going on this year, I was not able to take tram 17 like I said planned, but instead had to take tram 3. It just meant a bit further of a walk. But due to that I was able to get this image:
It’s a candy dispenser, repurposed to sell polished rocks. You can see a sign underneath with a list of the various types of rocks available.
Ignatious Parish, a nearby church
As I mentioned earlier, we went to a BRAD concert on Thursday night. This concert featured Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam. The opening art was the New Killer Shoes (why don’t they have a Wikipedia page yet?!)
setting up for the opening act (New Killer Shoes)
A piano solo (YouTube)- “Crown of Thorns” – from the night we went. The singer/player is Shawn Smith from BRAD. Much different from the rest of the songs which had the guitars and drums you would expect. 😉 There’s some history to the song – it used to be sung by Mother Love Bone until the frontman Andy Wood passed away. Most of the band’s members went on to form Pearl Jam.
The crazy soundboard from the concert. I never know how they know what button to tinker with. Maybe they just tinker randomly to make it look like they know what they are doing. 😉 Oh wait. That would be me.
And on the way home, in the tram…
Do you see the smiley face?
Two different designs for the check-in/out machines. The one in the back has the phrase kaart hier, with a hand holding the card and two arrows pointing where the card should be placed. But still, it’s easy to forget where the card goes. (In my defense, I haven’t had any trouble in the last 3-4 weeks.)
Marco, his mother and I traveled to the city center of The Hague today for the Chinese New Year celebrations. This included a few different parades, dragon dancing, a speech from the vice-mayor of The Hague, and more. The main action occurred just outside of de Bijenkorf (a department store) near Gedempte Gracht (street) in a parking lot (Google Maps).
The opening of the ceremony began with the waking of the two dragons using drums.
Along with drums there were also cymbal players:
And more dragons:
The movement of the dragon was simulated by pulling the steel rods up and down – one person up, the next person down.
I just liked the look of concentration on his face.
The end of the opening ceremony featured one dragon jumping from pedestal to pedestal. As there are two people underneath each costume, it takes a bit of coordination. Here’s a picture of the height of the highest pedestals:
The guy in orange has the job of catching the performers if they fall. They did twice – once in the beginning and once in the middle, on the highest pedestal. But no harm came – they were always caught before falling to the ground.
One performer on the other performer’s shoulders, to give the illusion that the dragon was rearing up.
And finally…
catching them in the act of jumping from one pedestal to the next.
Afterwards, they unveiled the “statue” for each of the years. This is the year of the snake.
A crowd forms near the beginning of the parade that came later.
It was pretty fun, but very cold, considering!
To get to the IND building at Stadhoudersplantsoen 24, you have to cross a short walking bridge over a river. On my way back to the tram stop last week, I decided to take some pictures of the scenery.
It’s also right next to the Gemeente Museum. When I signed up for my library card, I was also given a key chain which enables you (and some friends) to visit the museum for free through March of this year.
Today I checked the mailbox after coming back from the library. I noticed another letter from the IND. My VVR (identification card) was ready for pick up! Twenty days after the appointment with the IND – not too bad.
So I took a trip to Stadhoudersplein 24 (where the main IND/Gemeente offices are in The Hague) to pick up my identification card. I am now 100% legal and have an official address in the Netherlands. Most amusingly, the back of the card has Marco’s name on it, as he is my registered partner.
To celebrate, Marco and I went to Athene Palace, a Greek restaurant in The Hague which I have blogged about before. This time I had #102 (Rhodosschotel), which has lamb chops, chicken filet, souflaki and gyros.
As is the typical Dutch tradition, afterwards we had a cup of coffee (cappuccino for Marco).
And near the end of the meal, the conversation switched to our upcoming wedding later this year. Offiicially we couldn’t do much stuff with the wedding until now, as I needed to be an official resident of The Hague.
But now it is time for wedding talk… it’s happening!
On my way home yesterday from Albert Heijn, I saw some gentlemen playing instruments:
Along with the accordionist, there was also a saxophone player, but he is pretty hidden.
Just in front of the accordionist, you can also see a pigeon. They are attracted by a local fish market and usually have fierce competition for food with the seagulls who come in from the nearby sea.
As you can see, the ice and snow finallllly melted around here. The temperature rose to about 40F (4C) on Sunday and hasn’t looked back since. Of course, the rain all day Sunday definitely helped. But for now I have said goodbye to my snow boots and put my sneakers back on!
It’s always interesting to walk the streets. Today I was stopped by someone trying to sell local newspapers. When I explained that I didn’t know that much Dutch*, he stated that he was trying to sell a newspaper but it only came in Dutch, so it wouldn’t be that useful for me, but would I give him a bit of spare change anyway?
* = I will only be able to use that excuse for so long, as Invader Stu mentions. I already have that particular phrase pretty perfected…
When I was in the central library last week in The Hague, I came across a poetry exhibition using magnetic poetry:
I had a few magnetic sets of my own over the years, but they ended up just gathering dust in my closet. I did give instructions to Mom to give them to the neighbor’s kids if they were interested, so maybe the random joy of making (and destroying) poems can come alive again.
So, it started snowing today. Not a lot of course, but something:
Today was definitely a slower day. I went to Albert Heijn to pick up some grocery items. I did pretty good in terms of figuring out the language, even correctly figured out that the cashier was asking if I had an extra 20c piece (truthfully all I heard was ‘twintig’ and I guessed). I was thrown off a bit when she asked for my bonus card, as I did not think I picked up any bonus items or anything on discount. But when I looked over the receipt later I did see some savings, so it is probably best to just present it each time.
I wandered over to the library again but was thrown off by later opening hours on Mondays – the library does not open until 12PM. Marco explained that some stores or other establishments still have later opening hours on Mondays, but that practice goes back to when not many stores were even open on Sundays at all.
A few hours before Marco returned home from work I decided to take a crack at organizing his DVDs again. As he had moved around a lot of stuff in his apartment to make room for me and my items, his DVDs ended up being put back in rather jumbled order. Today I just worked on sorting his blue rays and his wrestling DVDs. I still have TV shows and DVD movies to go (whenever). Those tend to be the two largest sections.
Lastly Marco and I watched the 2009 Star Trek movie, the reboot of the original series. I never watched that TV show, although I understand most of the Kirk/Spock/etc jokes that have entered the culture. Growing up I generally watched Next Generation, Voyager, and DS9. But I never got into the last version, Star Trek Enterprise. Even if it did have Scott Bakula from Quantum Leap…
Today was a pretty fun-filled Saturday, although I definitely started to drag by the end of it. At 1PM, Marco’s mother dropped by. All three of us went to Megastores in the Hague, which is a larger sized mall. As the temperature has been dropping a bit, it was nice to find that it was an indoor mall. Most of the stores in the mall are furniture stores, although you can also find Dutch staples like Hema, Kruidvat, and Xenos (a thrift store of sorts).
Kind of interesting – this mall uses flat escalators rather than step escalators. It’s a bit of a steeper incline, but otherwise it works.
The first store that we went to was Woon XL, which was an Ikea-like store. Complete with routes to follow (arrows on the floor), various room design displays, pencils to fill out your order card with, a back area to pick up larger items, and a cafeteria at the end. We picked up a nightstand and a medicine cabinet, although we have to figure out how to get the latter up on the bathroom wall.
A crazy looking, huge rug with stuffed animal-like objects stitched onto the top. Good luck finding anything if you drop it in this rug. Seriously… what were they thinking?
Afterwards, the three of us went to a few other stores to look at perspective washing machines and also to McDonald’s to split an order of chicken nuggets.
Just for mom – an from-afar look at an Aldi store (since my parents also have Aldi stores near Chicago where they live). You can even see the carts in the front, presumably also requiring a coin to release them. But I am not sure.
By then it was time to go home. As we walked up to the front entrance of our apartment, we spied Roger who had arrived just before us and was waiting in the foyer by the mailboxes. So the four of us went upstairs together.
Dinner was from Warung Mini, a Surinamese/Indonesian restaurant. I had Rijst kerrie lams groenten – which was a large container of lamb in curry sauce, with vegetables, and a large container of white rice. The lamb in curry sauce was so good – perfectly spiced (but not spicy). Dessert was a baked banana (bakabana).
