Recently Marco and I ended up leaving the house together in the morning, as he had to catch a train to Utrecht for work. As we were walking, we were passed by a fruit seller riding his cart. It caught my eye because the road was so bumpy I was amazed that none of the oranges fell off…
Later on in the day Marco sent me a photo. It turns out the fruit seller was selling his wares at Centraal Station. It’s a bit blurry, but you get the idea:
Bikes really are the “transport of choice” around here!
Marco and I had a bit of time to kill this weekend so we decided to buy a few things at Big Bazar, a discount store. We were in the toys section when Marco spotted an interesting Playmobile set:
That’s right – there is a bank robbery in progress! And the side of the box shows the ATM and how you *ahem*… withdraw money from it.
Playmobile is actually kind of cool. But I’ll always be a LEGO kind of girl.
You heard me. Coloring books… for adults! You thought coloring was only for kids? Think again. I asked (and received) one as a Christmas present, along with a nice set of coloring pencils. I decided to start coloring it in while waiting for the SpaceX launch this past Sunday (Spoiler: the overall mission was successful but the attempt to land the rocket on a barge in the ocean failed).
Of course, the designs are more intricate in an adult coloring book than one for a kid:
This one took me two and a half days (though, being an adult I can’t spend the entire day coloring. Sadly.) But it’s about as relaxing as putting a jigsaw puzzle together, something I used to do last year. Actually, I need to start doing that again…
Even libraries have started to notice this new hit, offering “social coloring groups”.
Here is the coloring book I have (which Dutchies can buy at bol.com):
And a few looks at the pages inside:
The only thing I wish was that the format was a spiral book. The pictures go right to the edge of the page, which makes it hard to color. Another type of coloring book is the mandala coloring book. A mandala is a sacred symbol in both Hinduism and Buddhism made from squares and circles. The original research about coloring mandalas as an anxiety reducer can be found in the Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association (pdf available through ERIC).
The weather is absolutely, positively cruddy today. It’s been raining all day — even pouring during the evening commute. Yuck!
On another note, it is my 4 year anniversary by WordPress today. Hard to believe.
Albert Heijn (a grocery store) has been running a promotion the last few months. Save up 50 stamps and you can exchange them (for a bit of money as well) for luxury silverware. You can get one stamp for every €10 you spend. Don’t get me wrong – it’s an expensive way to get the silverware. But if you don’t change your buying habits just to get more stamps it works out. Marco and I have about two cards full (with help from Roger and others). Marco is specifically saving up for a few of the knives.
An Albert Heijn stamp booklet
A look at the knives on offer
Some of the knives are so sharp they even come with instructions on how to get them out of the packaging safely.
If you are also saving stamps — happy (future) slicing!
As of January 1st, Dutch stores are required to charge for plastic bags. Here is an advertisement at the tram stop:
Advertisement in the Netherlands for “no more free plastic bags”
It basically says “You (will now) pay for your own plastic bag” and underneath in small letters “your own bag, better for the environment”.
I think it is a good law change. Marco and I almost always have extra bags with us (I have one at work in my drawer and one permanently stored in my backpack) so there isn’t much effect on us. I did find it funny to go to Action (a “dollar” type store) as the sign said the charge for one bag was 3 cents. We don’t even have pennies in the Netherlands — thankfully! I wish I had taken a picture of that sign.
Most stores have had signs up for a few months now, so it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.
A few days ago I was at Albert Heijn. I thought this would be a fun topic for the blog:
I did not post the picture to show how tall the shelves are/how short I am. I already know that! Usually Marco is around when I need something from a tall shelf so it works out, thankfully.
The photo is actually of a cleaner called “Mr. Proper”. If you’re American you’ll probably more easily recognize it as “Mr. Clean”. But like most things, names are translated into local languages. And that doesn’t stop at everyday purchases – for example Hermione in the Harry Potter books is named Hermelien in Dutch. Hmm.
I read the Wikipedia article for “Mr. Clean” before writing this blog post. My favorite random fact was the following: “make mrproper is a command in the Linux kernel build system, used to “clean up” all files from past builds and restore the build directory to its original clean state.” And of course proper was used in place from clean because the creator of Linux was from Europe.
Finally, I am also amused by the simplest thing: the pronunciation of “Mr. Proper”. Mr. is actually an abbreviation for Meneer (which still translates to Mister). You would pronounce it something like: Meh-neer Pro-per, with emphasis on “pro”. The syllable splitting of proper gets me; in Dutch if you have one consonant it always attaches itself to the second syllable, not the first. Prop-er would be incorrect in Dutch. (If you have two consonants one goes with the first syllable and the other with the second syllable: kap-per.)
And thus ends our random Dutch supermarket lesson.
On Thursday night Marco and I went to the Asian store. It’s near the Pathe movie theater in the centrum – underneath it, in fact. It is a larger store, usually crowded on the weekends but not as much on Thursday nights. As I’ve said before, The Hague has “koopavond” on Thursday nights, which means a lot (though not all) stores stay open until 9pm.
Rice and soups
More one serving soups. I usually raid this section as one of the brands is “6 halen 5 betalen”, or “Get 6, pay for 5”.
And why were we in the Asian store? Because on Saturday we wanted to make sushi of course! Which we did, with Roger. Sushi with salmon, cucumber, tuna and even chicken. And a soy sauce dip, with a bit of wasabi paste to mix in. We’re still working on perfecting it – but it was pretty good. We also shared a bottle of sake between the three of us.
Note in the middle the McCormick logo (which started in Baltimore, Maryland, US). It is interesting to see how international the brand has become.
We also had some wasabi sauce (in addition to the paste mentioned above). Man oh man was that an unexpected experience. It had a kick! A little spicy for a few seconds, and then you inevitably breathe in and it rushes up your nose and into your brain. I suppose it’s good for cleaning out the sinuses…
All in all, good food.
It’s a relaxing night here over in The Hague. Marco is currently playing Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag (a free game offered recently on Xbox One) and I am writing this blog post. While preparing for this blog post I came across another post I had done only the second day after moving to the Netherlands: Second day (Or: Settling in and unpacking). It was interesting to re-read all of the little things we did that day to get me settled in. One of the benefits of keeping a blog I guess!
Here is a random photo I took in the So Low in the centrum of The Hague. Sometimes you see the randomst things from American culture make it over to Europe (due to being used in films or TV shows mainly).
These cups are world famous for alcohol consumption at frat (fraternity) parties. Just to make sure the customer knows the connection, they are called “American cups”. My favorite, though? When you see something marketed as American or with an American flag which is most decidedly not American. I do not have any examples at the moment unfortunately.
And that puzzle that I blogged about a few days ago? Done!
The lady at the bottom (in the pink bikini) is looking a bit concerned at the destruction of her world…
The next one I have to put together has a car garage theme. Body paint to be exact.
This week I have a new puzzle, again from the cartoonist Jan van Haasteren (read a previous puzzle post about him here). This week’s puzzle is called “Camping chaos”:
In the lower right you have a panicked mass of people trying to escape the man on the diving board. Well, actually, trying to escape the shark underneath the man on the diving board… There’s also a lot of people with cameras in this puzzle, occasionally filming scantily dressed women. That’s the Dutch humor for you.
And of course the usual random floating hand coming out of unexpected places, a trademark of his. No Sinterklaas in this puzzle, though.
Let’s see how long it takes to finish all of the paths and green areas…
I made a quick trip to Albert Heijn to pick up some broccoli. (If you had told me five years ago that I would willingly buy broccoli, I would have laughed. Hard.) Anyway, it was rather busy when I went so I had plenty of time to stare at the items for sale around the cash register, especially the “Congrats! You survived the hell that is school!” cards.
And then I noticed one of them isn’t quite the same as the others. You don’t even need to know Dutch to guess which.
For your information, geslaagd means that you passed. Gezakt, with the sad looking smiley above on the right? Bummer. You failed. I took a peek inside – blank.
Life in the Hague 