Everyday purchases

Temptation at the checkout lane (Or: It’s not quite like the US)

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Niki

In the last year Albert Heijn started adding candy and other snacks to the area by the self-service registers. It’s not very tempting though, probably because they don’t have that much room to show off the “goods”:

So, five choices generally. And they aren’t well-stocked and they don’t look that appealing visually. At least try to get the barcodes looking a bit more similar, please? Although I suppose there will come a day when I desperately need that extra purchase to get me over ten euros to get a stamp. If you get 10 or 20 of those you can usually get something good (if the promotion is right).

In other news:

  • I don’t know if you remember the train derailment in The Hague at the start of the year, but the report of what went wrong was released earlier this week (omroepwest.nl). The type of train that derailed is often used in routes which require hard and frequent braking, however the maintenance schedule for this train type did not take this into account. The train’s brakes were worn, causing two wheels to completely derail and damage to a few dozen meters of track. A conductor and passenger were both injured, but not seriously.
  • Did you know that the Show/hide formatting marks button in MS Word has the nickname onderwater tekens or onderwaterscherm in Dutch? I mean the button which shows you carriage returns or non-breaking spaces. In English that translates to “underwater marks” or “underwater screen”. In other words: looking under water to see what you normally can’t see. Hmm. It’s not the formal name, of course.
  • Great, now I am thinking of the MS Word paperclip. “Clippy” was his name (theverge.com).
Categories: Everyday purchases, Transportation | Tags: | Leave a comment

Coffffeee (Or: A cappuccino by Lebkov)

Posted on June 17, 2020 by Niki

What can I say? I didn’t like coffee growing up. I actually didn’t start drinking it until after grad school, when I used to live in New York. Two things happened to change that:

  • Marco and his mom took a trip out to New York to see me, but I was warned she liked her coffee first thing in the morning. And since my previous residence was on the top of a very steep hill, walking to the nearby deli every morning was not an option. So I bought a cheap one-cup coffee maker. (Maybe I didn’t like coffee back then, but I did love smelling the fresh coffee grounds.)
  • In 2011 the Halloween nor’easter hit, which brought lots and lots of snow. Easily up to my knees. But the bigger problem was the lack of power: my apartment lost power for 3 or 4 days, which meant it was bitterly cold within a day inside my apartment. Let’s say it was something like 50F / 10C, but I don’t remember exactly anymore. I do remember that I spent the last night at a coworker’s because I just couldn’t get warm enough. And that cold in my bones stuck around for weeks. I started drinking coffee shortly thereafter to warm up and then once I moved to the Netherlands it became part of the evening routine.
Cappuccinos by the local Lebkov café. Yum!

In other news:

  • Good news! Diego the tortoise, father to hundreds and saviour of his species, finally retires from theguardian.com. Diego was one of 25 giant tortoises released from captivity recently. With his species threatened with extinction (he was one of only two males on his island, along with 12 females) he was moved to California’s San Diego zoo back in the 1960s. There have since been 2,000 giant tortoises born from a breeding program, with estimates saying that Diego was responsible for 800 of those young! Wow. He has been returned to the island he left as a teenager.
  • And continuing the animal theme, here is a YouTube video from the Dutch safaripark Beekse Bergen, where a extremely rare sort of deer was born late last month:

These sort of deer don’t live in the wild anymore, and there are about 1,500 in captivity (from 16 at its lowest).

Categories: Everyday purchases | Tags: , | 2 Comments

What is your R number? (Or: Corona dashboard)

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Niki

Last week the RIVM (Dutch ministry of Health) released a prototype of the Corona dashboard which can be found at coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl.

As you can see it shows things like ICU intakes and hospital intakes averaged over the last three days (6 and 8.7), number of infected persons per 100,000 residents (9.9) and the very well known R number, which is currently 0.87. There are also data points about nursing homes and a list of data points they are looking to add in the coming weeks.

In completely other news: sometimes trips to the grocery store can be very, very interesting. Today I wanted to grab a water bottle however there was already another customer there looking at multipack water bottles. Okay, he was right in front of what I needed, so I decided to wait. Even in non-corona times, it would have probably been perceived as rude, and it’s not like he would take that long right?

Wrong. After 2 minutes of semi-patient waiting I decided to look at my watch to start timing the rest of this experience. He had a pack of water in his basket already and he would grab another slightly different pack and look at the label. He would then put it into his basket and then pick up something else and look at the label of that water pack.

After the first minute someone else stopped and was clearly waiting to grab something from the water as well. After three minutes I did start to get a bit impatient, but tried to keep it from showing on my face. It must have been obvious that I was still standing there waiting, right? The other person was behind him on the other side of the aisle, so I could forgive him not seeing her. In the meantime about 15 people walked down the middle of the aisle, probably wondering what the heck the bottleneck was. But this was the last item I needed to get, and I was morbidly curious to see how this would play out.

After switching out the multipacks in his basket about 5 times, and staring at labels about 10 times, he finally picked one, grabbed the rest of his stuff and got a move on. The other customer politely waited for me to grab my water which I quickly did. Her and I shared a smile, neither believing what we had just experienced. I whispered fijne dag while deftly grabbing my water with my left hand. Total time it took him: 5+ minutes. Total time it took me: about half a second.

But now I have a good story for the blog, so it was worth the extra five or so minutes, right?

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Enter the showers (Or: Coronavirus measures at the local Albert Heijn)

Posted on May 7, 2020 by Niki

I promised my parents a photo of the local Albert Heijn and one particular coronavirus measure: the curtains that hang from floor to ceiling. This measure has been in place since the beginning of the lockdown, however this morning was a particularly quiet day where there was no one around so I could more easily take a quick photo.

Originally there was a curtain between each of the self-scan areas, but as you can see at least one curtain is now missing in the background. On the other hand, when it was first implemented it was hard to see if a register was already in use or not. So I don’t mind removing one or two curtains to be able to more clearly see where you need to walk.

One thing that I do hope they implement soon is walking routes. Right now you can go in any direction you want in the grocery store, and even double backwards in the same aisle if you forget something. That means that people pass each other frequently. Although it is more annoying, I think it would be better to say that you can go only go down this aisle, and up the next aisle, and etc. If you forget something then you need to go around again.

On the other hand, on a more personal level the better solution is to keep visiting at times when the store is quiet, either in the early mornings or later in the evening.

Random links of the day:

New Banksy piece celebrates superhero health workers (theguardian.com)

NS scraps group discounts, bans bikes in trains as it prepares for more travelers (nltimes.nl)

And an article about the new panda cub in Dutch: Pandababy in Rhenen met ‘uitzonderlijk lange staart’ maakt het goed (nos.nl)

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Support local (Or: Lebkov in The Hague)

Posted on May 2, 2020 by Niki

This morning I took an extended walk, ending at Lebkov which is a café not far from Centraal Station. I ordered two large cappuccinos, both with an extra shot espresso. One for me, one for Marco. (Or maybe both were for me – you’ll never know!)

Since I used to steal their wifi so much during weekends–and want to do so again in the future–I need to make sure they survive. I love that place.

Are there any places that you want to highlight for the #supportlocal movement?

In other news:

  1. For those of us with Disney Plus: Prop Culture is now available. These roughly 30 minutes episodes show you props from various Disney movies, including Honey, I shrunk the kids!, Mary Poppins, Who framed Roger Rabbit, Chronicles of Narnia, and more (8 episodes total, all available now).
  2. Just a few more days until Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian starts, also on Disney Plus. Premiering on May 4th, of course. May the fourth be with you. This is the behind the scenes show for The Mandalorian.
  3. Available to everyone: have you seen the At Home With Olaf series?! Each clip (lasting anywhere from 30 seconds to 90 seconds) is a-dor-able. If you’re an Olaf fan. Which you are, right? Unfortunately yesterday’s clip was the last. Boo!
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1.5 meters (Or: Social distancing at the local Asian store)

Posted on April 30, 2020 by Niki

Here is a quick photo taken outside of the local Asian store, Amazing Oriental. Sometimes it is busy enough that you just gotta social distance yourself. There are small bits of caution tape along the wall letting you know where to stand.

Kudos to the store for keeping a manageable amount of people inside at the one time – you’re only able to enter when the worker brings back a free shopping cart. It was also a relatively fast moving line as the average wait was only two or three minutes.

Categories: Everyday purchases, The Hague | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Anyone need some toilet paper? (Or: A treasure at Albert Heijn)

Posted on April 18, 2020 by Niki

This photo is from last Tuesday, April 7. I just had to take a photo of this much toilet paper together in one spot (who knew that would be an important photo):

Anyone need some toilet paper?

There’s some things to note with this photograph:

  • While this photo was taken on April 7, it was only the second time I had seen a lot of toilet paper. The first was a few weeks previously at another Albert Heijn in the city centre.
  • This photo was taken from the side. The pictured path is well travelled, so I didn’t want to be in anyone’s way. I have to remember that social distancing after all. I’d say this was about one third of the toilet paper on offer.
  • This Albert Heijn receives these ‘voordeelpaks’ (bonus packs of 40, or sometimes 48 rolls) only in weeks when the toilet paper is on sale. During normal weeks you can’t purchase this many rolls in one pack.

Otherwise I would say most things are back – maybe pasta and rice are still a bit low, but they are definitely always at least half stocked. Pasta sauce is still a bit hit or miss, as noted in a previous post.

What is your local grocery store still missing in these coronavirus times?

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Wow, they have that again! (Or: Albert Heijn stock levels)

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Niki

Marco came home today with a surprise: our Albert Heijn has their spicy pasta sauce base in stock again!

The last time I saw this item was before the big coronavirus scare. Let’s see – that means it has been almost a month.

Check out the photo I took of Albert Heijn’s pasta section on 17 March:

Marco would proceed to joke for the next month that only expensive items were left on the shelfs, since Dutchies are still Dutchies after all.

Interestingly enough I saw toilet paper for the first time a few weeks back already. The rice section is still fairly low, but they were able to start re-stocking that a few weeks ago as well.

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Chocolate eggs by Hema (Or: Stroopwafel flavor, anyone?)

Posted on March 25, 2020 by Niki

It feels like a lifetime ago, but a few weeks ago (13 March) I was browsing in Hema. I could not resist snapping a few photos of their chocolate egg collection:

Some of the flavors included dark chocolate banana cream, white chocolate matcha lemon, milk chocolate cookies and cream (that one was almost empty), milk chocolate orange, milk chocolate coconut, milk chocolate peanut butter… I definitely learned that everyone’s favorite flavor is milk chocolate, not dark chocolate.

There was also a display near one of the entrances.

But the best (and most Dutch) flavor was…

You guessed it… Stroopwafel flavored chocolate eggs!

Categories: Everyday purchases, Holidays | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Milka chocolate stand (Or: Vote for your favorite cow)

Posted on March 8, 2020 by Niki

Traveling through the city centre of The Hague means you always see interesting promotions, especially on the Grote Markstraat (in Dutch), one of the larger shopping areas of the city.

Today’s promotion: Milka. Milka is a German company specializing in chocolate confections. You can vote on which of the four cows you like the best (link also in Dutch). The top prize is a trip to the Alps, with smaller prizes including chocolate packages or Milka-branded mugs.

The most interesting thing about the photo is on the left: one worker is helping another put on their cow head for the costume.

And no, I didn’t vote. They were still setting up and there’s no way I could choose who was my favorite cow: Marisa, Lotta, Lola or Katja (heh).

I will also mention that all of the names end in a… is there no love for a Sophie or Zoe?

Categories: Everyday purchases, The Hague | Tags: , | Leave a comment

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