Culture

Football (Or: Police and ADO Den Haag fans square off this Saturday)

Posted on August 5, 2015 by Niki

Quick. Name one thing you do NOT mess with in the Netherlands.

…if you guessed football you would be correct.

In most if not all European countries, football is the sport. Fans eat, sleep and breathe football. Sometimes viewing multiple games on multiple devices (television, smart phone, tablet…) at the same time. It is a way of life.

Unfortunately you can expect issues if you try to get in the way of that. Even if you’re the police. The police have been striking at various times over the least few months. I wrote about it back in May when 1,500 police officers protested around the Binnenhof. Of course it makes sense – they just want better pay. It’s not that much different from the farmers striking in Belgium and France by driving really slow on highways and obstructing traffic.

But, again… it’s football. You just do not mess with football, people. Someone forgot to tell the police that. Most of the opening games for the Eredivisie are postponed due to police planning to strike during the scheduled game times – police actions which threaten not just ADO Den Haag’s game but also other games across the country this weekend. (Note: Dutch police threatened to strike during the opening days of the Tour de France in Utrecht, but that did not go through.)

Now ADO fans have a plan of their own. ‘Wij geen wedstrijd, hun geen staking‘ which translates to “No game for us? No strike for them.” The plan is to have as many people as possible meet at the Plein in The Hague at the scheduled time of the game. A large group of people would require a similarly large police presence, which means that at least some of the police cannot strike during their planned strike time. It is an interesting tactic if you think about it!

From Volkskrant.nl (linked above, Dutch article)

Categories: Culture, Sports, The Hague | Tags: ADO Den Haag, Football | Leave a comment

A suitcase of WWII letters (Or: Found in The Hague)

Posted on May 2, 2015 by Niki

Recently a suitcase full of WWII letters were found in the French restaurant Walter Benedict in The Hague. (Article: in English | in het Nederlands). These letters were uncovered during a renovation and were written by Israel Bachrach, a Jew living in The Hague. He wrote to both his mother and his non-Jewish girlfriend about how horrible it was to live in a German-occupied city.

The Facebook page for the restaurant talks about how the letters were discovered. In Dutch: “Tijdens het strippen van het plafond in het achterhuis waar nu de keuken gevestigd is vielen oude brieven met daarin foto’s en kleding naar beneden. Een dag voor het strippen hadden we al vraagtekens bij de ruimte waarin onze keuken geïnstalleerd zou moeten gaan worden. Dus zijn we naar het gemeente archief gegaan om de oude bouwtekeningen van het pand te bekijken. We stuitten op een bouwtekening uit juli 1941 waarop duidelijk wordt dat een extra vloer in het achterhuis is geplaatst waardoor een geheime ruimte tussen de vloeren ontstond.”

In short – the restaurant was working on the renovations for the kitchen. They had questions about the room (dimensions or similar) and decided to go to the city hall’s archive to ask for the building’s blueprints. They were able to find blueprints from July 1941 which made it clear that there was an extra floor in the room (and thus a space in between the two floors to hide items). This is where the letters were found.

Walter Benedict was able to escape in September 1942 to Switzerland (via Belgium) though there were a few close calls where he was almost caught – but he made it out. After the war he returned to The Hague and opened a bookstore at the spot that would later be occupied by the French restaurant.

Jewish letters unearthed at restaurant in The Hague

Picture taken from https://www.facebook.com/WalterBenedictDenneweg

Categories: Culture | Tags: Dutch history | Leave a comment

In search of baking soda (Or: Zuiveringszout)

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Niki

Yesterday Marco made soft baked pretzels. The recipe called for baking soda; you dip the pretzels in it before they are put in to bake. We knew that you could get baking soda at the local expat store (Kelly’s) but I was curious to see if it was available at any Dutch stores. While doing some Google searches I came across this article from Kiwidutch. I found out that baking soda is zuiveringszout in Dutch and it is more likely to be found at drug stores rather than the local grocery store. Oddly it is cheaper as an import item than at the local Dutch store…

On the way to the expat store we came across an interesting metal sculpture depicting two bicyclists in the rain (note the umbrellas).

Dutch metal sculpture of bikers with umbrellas

click for a larger size

I just noticed the bicycle shop across the street (Top bikes), too. How Dutch!

Categories: Culture, Food | Tags: Bikes, Sculptures | 4 Comments

Green and yellow (Or: Artwork of The Hague)

Posted on February 26, 2015 by Niki

Here is a picture of random art from The Hague:

It is green and yellow, to represent the colors of The Hague (also the colors of The Hague’s flag). Above is a piece of art in a Dutch school.

Of all random things to do on a Thursday night, I am currently watching an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The Darmok episode to be exact. A good episode to see Patrick Stewart acting. 😉

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

Grand opening (Or: Paagman bookstore on Lange Poten)

Posted on February 22, 2015 by Niki

As mentioned in a previous blog post, Paagman has officially opened on Lange Poten. Lange Poten 41 was previously a film house, a store called Liefhertje, and a Mercendes Benz store.

There are two levels. Like the previous Paagman, the secondhand books are on the upper floor.

The roof is rather stunning – so let’s show another picture.

And below is a view from the second floor, overlooking the entrance.

Of course, if you’re visiting this bookstore, don’t forget to stop in at the American Book Center a few shops down!

Here are more photos of the new bookstore (article in Dutch).

Categories: Culture, The Hague | Tags: Books, Paagman | Leave a comment

A view of fishies while you eat (Or: M C Escher)

Posted on February 18, 2015 by Niki

A few weeks ago, Roger, Marco and I went to the café in Marks and Spencer for mid-afternoon coffee and cake. Yum! At some point I looked over Roger’s shoulder and finally noticed what should have been glaringly obvious as soon as we walked in. There was a fish staring back at us!

M C Escher’s Three Worlds; click to see a slightly larger version

It is a lithograph by Dutch artist M C Escher, “Three Worlds” (Wikipedia). Hopefully the picture above gives a good sense of the enormity of this copy – the fish itself is pretty much the size of an adult human!

Here is a close-up:

M C Escher Three Worlds at Marks and Spencer 2

Click for a larger version

The black and white colors blend in nicely with the the rest of the café as well. If you’re in the area (the central part of The Hague) make sure you check it out!

Categories: Culture, The Hague | Tags: Art, Cafes | 2 Comments

Ignoring illegality – gedogen (Or: B2-C1 course #5)

Posted on November 6, 2014 by Niki

This week, one thing that we covered in my Dutch class was the concept of ignoring what is officially illegal. The term for this (a verb) is gedogen. The Dutch do this with soft drug use (cannabis) – allowing “coffee shops” to exist. The rules call for no advertising to take place, no hard drug sales on the premises, no sales to those under the age of 18, no quanities greater than 5 grams, and no public disturbances. Ironically the coffee shop is allowed to buy and sell cannabis within the rules above, but the supplies of the cannabis are not allowed to grow, import, or sell it to a coffee shop. Thus the expression “the front door is open, but the backdoor is illegal”.

During the class we also discussed the various forms of certain words. For example, nu (now) is both an adverb and a conjunction.

Ik ga nu naar de bibliotheek. I am now going to the library.
Nu het te laat is, komt hij. Now that it is too late, he comes.

In the second example, nu translates to “now that”; you wouldn’t say nu dat het te laat is, but you still invert the order of the sentence as if you had done so. I’ll be honest – I had no idea about this one and could only stare at the teacher blankly as she asked if we had heard of this piece of grammar.

Something similar can be done with toen (then), which I knew. It is also a adverb and a conjunction, depending on the sentence.

Kids or new speakers to the language 😉 tend to say En toen… en toen… en toen… as they tell a story. “And then I did this. And then we went there. And then we ate this.” In that sense it is an adverb. But toen is also a conjunction – Toen ik naar huis ging, heb ik de hond gevonden. “When I went home, I found the dog.”

Categories: Courses, Culture | Tags: Dutch language | Leave a comment

News on the teletext (Or: Differences in culture)

Posted on July 10, 2014 by Niki

So about a month ago Marco and I were reading something from Teletext. That is a sort of information retrieval system for your television, created back in the early 70s. Of course, it is really ugly/gaudy/you name it, but it was apparently great before the advent of the internet. Below is only one color scheme. (I don’t really use it much, but I didn’t grow up with it either.)

Imagine my surprise reading this article. Not so much for the content, but for the random use of a swear in the middle of an official news piece. Although shit is not such a strong swear word in the Netherlands — somewhat more akin to the Americans use of ‘damn’.

The actual news item above talks about an American mayor who stepped down after getting caught throwing a bag of poop on the driveway of a political rival (who voted against the mayor’s plan for a dog park). He initially denied the charge but unfortunately for him he was filmed doing it.

But then there is the random English phrase thrown in there. Tja equals something like ‘yeah, shrug’. Shit happens. Puns…

But it is rather mild. Just weird to see in an official news source!

Categories: Culture | Leave a comment

Dutch spirit (Or: The World Cup begins)

Posted on June 11, 2014 by Niki

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the World Cup. If you visit the right places, you will see a lot of Dutch spirit.

Here we have the decorations in my father-in-law’s house – Dutch spirit against a pretty (mooi) backdrop.

1. The banner over the door was from the TUC brand crackers.

2. The orange soccer balls/footballs are actually lights.

3. The other things hanging from the plant are Albert Heijn hamsters (the mascot) which can you receive for free if you spend more than a certain amount of euros in a shopping trip (15, probably). Orange, of course!

Categories: Culture | Tags: Football | 3 Comments

Dutch influence (Or: The color of carrots)

Posted on May 10, 2014 by Niki

I did have my usual Dutch lesson on Thursday, however we mostly did exercises from the book and not much extra work. The class ends around mid June, so we need to finish the current chapter we are on and then start to talk about the Staatsexamen (programma II). Because we need time to cover that, we are going through the text book faster.

Thus I’ll tell you a random fact that I was reminded of when reading my copy of The Book of General Ignorance. We all know that carrots are generally orange. However, they did start not out like that – before the 17th century they were purple, white and red.

So, what changed? In the 17th century the Dutch cultivated carrots to be orange by crossing them with other colors. Some say this was in tribute to the House of Oranje and Willem van Oranje (Willem from the House of Orange). He led the Dutch to a revolution for independence from the Spanish.

Carrot mosiacs by Ilona Fried

Categories: Culture | Tags: Art | Leave a comment