Culture

“Out is inside this year!” (Or: UIT festival in The Hague)

Posted on August 21, 2020 by Niki

The UIT festival is a cultural festival normally held on the Lange Voorhout in The Hague, about a 5-10 minute walk from the city centre. Uitgaan in Dutch means “to go out”. This year, due to the coronavirus, the festival was renamed to “Binnen uit”, or “Inside uit”, referring to the fact that the cultural events will mostly be held inside this year. Reservations are also generally required.

If you are interested in reserving tickets for one of the cultural institutions, you can read more information over at the UIT festival website. Here’s an example: Around the Grote Kerk, a carillon concert from the Tong Tong Fair. In that case no reservations are needed since the bells can be heard over a wide area.

And behind the promotional material in my photo you can see work being done on the building. A Japanese clothing store with the name Uniqlo will open in October of this year.

…Can I have my Marks and Spencer back instead please? They had good food and coffee! I still have an incomplete stamp card for a free coffee, darnit!

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Willem II on horseback (Or: A statue reborn?)

Posted on July 21, 2020 by Niki

Today’s photo is of the Willem II statue by the Buitenhof:

There’s some interesting tidbits with this statue.

  • Before 1924 a different statue of Willem II was in this spot (link to Dutch Wikipedia). For unknown reasons The Hague government wanted to instead install a replica of a statue found in Luxemborg: still Willem II, but on horseback. The original statue at the Buitenhof was sold to Tilburg for 1000 gulden (the equivalent of about 7,500 to 8,000 euros today). This replacement is recorded at the base of the statue in the photo above.
  • In the early 1990’s The Hague government wanted to install a “freedom carillon” to commemorate the 50th anniversary of World War II. The bells would have either been placed quite close to the statue or in the statue’s very spot. Part of the problem was that the bells would have been 25 meters (82 feet) high, which might have been too jarring in that area. Momumentenzorg Den Haag has some scans of news articles from the 1990’s covering the situation, if you speak Dutch. But in the end the plans for the “freedom carillon” were thrown out (article from cobouw.nl).

As expected, the weekly coronavirus numbers from the RIVM were a bit high: about twice as many cases as last week (987 compared to 534), 19 hospitalizations and 7 deaths. But not all of those were numbers from the past 7 days, at least.

Outside of that, it’s mainly keeping on top of work during the day and relaxing at night. But the work days do go by quick, at least!

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Anniversary year (Or: 150 years of Bijenkorf)

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Niki

Bijenkorf is a Dutch department store which opened its first store in Amsterdam in 1870. 150 years ago! To celebrate this, they scheduled a year of celebrations in 2020 (thehagueonline.com). For example, there are unique shop windows (Bijenkorf always has beautiful holiday windows), unique merchandise to buy, guided tours, events to attend…

The only problem – which you can see coming with the date of March 10, 2020 in the article from thehagueonline.com – is the corona crisis rearing its ugly head. The carefully scheduled events and tours now read tijdelijk niet beschikbaar or temporarily not available.

In other news:

  • The Dutch corona app will be called CoronaMelder (nltimes.nl) and will use Bluetooth. CoronaMelder translates to Corona Reporter.
  • Kuikentjes bevrijd op de Oude Trambaan from regio15.nl – baby chicks fell through a pedestrian bridge and couldn’t get out on their own. They were ultimately freed by firemen who removed a few of the bridge planks to reach the chicks.
  • The Guardian has a very interesting article called ‘Landscape of fear’: what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists although that topic admittedly isn’t for everyone. But there’s an informative tie-in with the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve (where thousands of animals ended up starving due to a lack of predators in the area) and the ultimate changes to the ecosystem which occurred because of the abandoned carcasses. This caused a great amount of controversy in The Netherlands because it was a conscious choice not to feed the animals to help them survive the winter.
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Time to steal some cows (Or: Random side street in The Hague)

Posted on May 17, 2020 by Niki

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.

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Stay Strong (Or: Haagse Harry signs in The Hague)

Posted on May 9, 2020 by Niki

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).

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The beauty of The Hague (Or: Unseen flowers)

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Niki

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.

https://twitter.com/CityOfTheHague/status/1258332219573141504

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.

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Art in the city centre (Or: Heaven holds a sense of wonder)

Posted on March 21, 2020 by Niki

The Hague is home to many pieces of art, especially in the city centre. One of those is is called Heaven holds a sense of wonder by the artist Femke van Wijk.

It is a bronze sculpture created in 2011. You can find it on the Kalvermarkt – to the right is the Kalvermarkt-Stadhuis tram stop and in the background is the Primark retail store. In the distance is the Grote Marktstraat, a large shopping area.

A close up of the crown:

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In plain sight (Or: Squatting in Amsterdam)

Posted on October 13, 2019 by Niki

On Friday Roger, Marco and I went to Amsterdam to see a performance of The Book of Mormon musical. Along the way we spotted a building that definitely wanted to be noticed:

“Kraken” is the Dutch translation of squatting, or taking over a building or residence currently not in use. Squatting in the Netherlands goes back to the 60s (Wikipedia). “Kraken gaat door” means that the squatting hasn’t stopped, regardless of the action the government takes against them.

The musical was held at Amsterdam’s Carré theatre. It’s a beautiful theatre, though a bit disconcerting if you have a fear of heights.

I was thinking about how cool that backdrop would be as a background on my iPhone.

And above is a look at the seating, although I have been at places with even steeper seating arrangements. The best part was that the row in front of you was rather far down, so you don’t have to worry about someone tall in sitting in front of you.

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Horses and trumpets (Or: Practicing for Prinsjesdag)

Posted on September 22, 2019 by Niki

Last Sunday Marco and I were enjoying coffee at the central library when we saw a commotion outside the window. The police were practicing with the royal horses in advance of Prinsjesdag (held last Tuesday), with the route going past the library.

The final day of practice is traditionally held the day before the event, with the horses being trained on the beaches of Scheveningen. The horses have to navigate loud crowds, fireworks, sudden movements, etc., as preparation for the ceremony.

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Eurovision Song Contest (Or: Close to home)

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Niki

Today it was announced that Rotterdam had won the right to host the Eurovision Song Contest (Eurovisie Songfestival in Dutch) next year in May. This is because the Netherlands won the 2019 version of the song contest with Duncan Lawrence’s Arcade (YouTube) in May. It was their first win in 44 years.

Now, if I am being honest – this whole concept of a European song contest seems polarizing at best (you either love it or hate it) and political at worst. There are two components to the voting – each country has a panel of five judges which cast their vote for other countries using a points system, and each country also has votes coming from televoting from the fans. You are prevented from voting for your other country. Whomever gets the most points from the two combined voting areas wins.

Next year the song contest will be held at the convention centre Ahoy in Rotterdam (Wikipedia) after it was announced that Rotterdam had beaten Maastricht for the right to host the event. I’ve been there a few times for concerts and WWE wrestling events – it is a nice venue. The only annoying thing is that you need to use special tokens to buy food and drink, so we usually don’t buy anything.

Hotel prices in both Rotterdam and The Hague are skyrocketing (article in Dutch). The Netherlands will have a busy month in May 2020, as it was also recently announced that the newly-granted F1 race will happen on May 3 in Zandvoort (in the area of Amsterdam). That’s actually one of the reasons Amsterdam dropped out of the race to host the Eurovision song contest rather quickly – there was already going to be issues with having enough hotel rooms in the area, especially as a lot of press and groups arrive about two weeks early for the song contest.

It should be an interesting May next year!

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