oudjaarsavond = Old Year’s Eve. I can’t believe it’s been two years since my last oudjaarsavond celebration.
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The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 16,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals
Today Marco and I went to his dad and wife’s apartment for another Christmas meal. (Yay – two official days of Christmas means two meals!)
We had soup for an appetizer, which was noodles, chicken, and some sort of small green leaves. Afterwards, we were served a baked egg resting in tomato sauce, which was interesting. I have not eaten many eggs in my life, but it was nice as a rare appetizer. You can actually see it in the image below, on the plate.
The main meal is pictured below:
The furthest left dish was chicken legs (chicken on a bone). The second dish on the left was green beans with onions. The following dish was chicken with sauce, and then furthest right dish was rice with curry.
Dessert was chocolate and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and a yellow sauce that can only be described as “bitter eggnog” (it was good) and a hard waffle to sample. Afterwards we all enjoyed a cup of coffee (zwarte or black for me). As you can tell below, the dessert was already half eaten when the picture was taken. ;p
At some point during the night Marco set up the Christmas present he gave his dad – a new wireless router. It only took two tries and a hard reset of the router and modem to get it started, but it worked after a bit. Then since they had wireless internet Marco and I could finally set up their Apple account for their iTouch. Once that was finished, I downloaded a Dutch news app for them (Nieuws RTL) and a Mahjong app. I figure by tomorrow both of them will have downloaded twenty game apps… each. 🙂
Today we managed to get up a bit earlier, with the help of a carefully crafted alarm clock scheme which was set to go off earlier in the morning. It mostly worked…
For lunch we went simple this time – my request was bread with cheese and jalapeno slices. It wasn’t slices of bread but rather little bread pockets which you bake and then cut open to stick the cheese and jalapenos inside.
Marco’s mom visited at 1PM, so we had a lot of fun torturing Marco as she tried to explain various events and stories in Dutch and English (though I am not sure Marco calls that type translating fun!). Now after a cup of tea she has departed, and here I am writing the blog post.
Of course, I am writing this blog post earlier in the day as we will be going over to Roger’s in a few hours to have dinner and watch various tv shows and wrestling. Generally Marco doesn’t get back until pretty late so I didn’t want to have to start the blog post at that time of night.
Here is the Christmas tree that we put together (Marco did 98% of the work on the branches and the lights, but I got pretty into the decorations even though you cannot see that them well here):
I am still not quite out of the eastern time zone yet… suffice to say Marco and I woke up quite late again. Both of us thought it was much earlier in the morning than it actually was when his alarm went off.
After lunch we decided to go out for a bit to see the city, and also to pick up some stamps for Christmas cards and go to Albert Heijn for some more provisions. My new second home!
Along the way we stopped at El Passage (The Passage) and looked at some of the stores. We also stopped to get a picture of the Christmas tree that they set up in the center:
If you look up at the top you can see that the area is technically enclosed (there is material above the other hallways which prevents rain getting inside).
While we were there, we stopped at Selexyz, a bookstore I always manage to drool over and enter because, hey, I am a librarian after all.
a shot of some of the Christmas decorations in the Hague Selexyz bookstore
As you can see in the background, they have the “cliché” of using books to make a Christmas tree. At least they wrapped them! It seems that this particular store will be merging with De Slegte down the street, which is a secondhand book store. Should be interesting…
Along the way, Marco secretively led me to the stroopwafels vendor and bought me a nice hot stroopwafel. A large size too. We then toured the area looking at phone shops to buy me a phone, though at the moment we are still browsing.
When we got back we had dinner. Greek seasoned chicken stuffed into pita bread pockets, with potato bites on the side. Later on in the night, we watched Iron Man, a first for me. It was particularly enjoyable because I turned on the Marco commentary track to help me understand all of the little comic book references. ;p Our snack during that was a little bit of chili cheese Fritos chips (from America – smuggled from my parents’ hometown) and Bolognese Lays brand chips, an Italian flavor — see the Dutch selection of Lays brand chips.
All in all a fun night!
This morning Marco and I woke up early (ish!) as we wanted to call IND before the wait times increased. It is 10 cents per minute, so… But when Marco called at 9AM he heard a recorded message that the IND had technical difficulties and to call back later. Long story short, he was able to get a hold of live person after 11AM or so.
As it was the Christmas holidays, the next available appointment was January 11th at 9AM. A bit longer than we had hoped for, but oh well. Apparently since we live in the Hague we don’t need to visit city hall to register there – it is all combined with the IND appointment.
After breakfast Marco and I met up with Roger outside of the Hema, although we first went to Kruidvat (a store like CVS or Walgreens in America) and Xenos, a high end thrift store. Finally, we made a stop at Hema to pick up the Christmas tree that Marco ordered, as well as some extra Christmas ornaments and hooks.
Afterwards we went back to our place (!) to watch some random tv (wrestling and tv shows). At the end, Marco and I started to put the Christmas tree together. We mostly finished it sometime after Roger left for the night, although Marco wants to wait another night before letting me take a picture since he is a bit of a perfectionist about such things it seems. 😉
Continuing the tree theme of the previous post, I also took a few pictures of various decorated trees in New York City.
The first photo was from a distance as I had to get to the consulate. But it is the Macy’s Christmas tree at the main entrance. The “yellow blob” is actually the word “Believe”, which could be seen in the Macy’s parade for Thanksgiving Day.
Taking this picture when I went to the consulate also helped out last Friday, since I popped out of the subway on the other side of this street. But as I saw the Macy’s decorations to the left of me, I knew to go left down to the street to get back to Penn Station.
The second tree was on 39th street and 3rd. There were actually 4 lighted trees, although I was only able to photograph one of them.
The morning itself was dreary…as you can tell from the wet roads. Drizzling on and off most of the morning.
Another good tree to see is the one in Bryant Park, with blue lights. But that is another day. And of course the tree in Rockefeller Center…
This picture was actually taken the morning that I went to the Dutch consulate to pick up my MVV sticker. The last time that I had gone, I had taken a slightly later train but found myself running through New York City to get to 3rd avenue in time.
So this time I took the 6:45am train, which meant leaving the house just before 6:30. (The little bit of extra time meant I could mail a few Christmas cards to send out to people.)
But under the cover of darkness, I was able to get a photo of the town’s Christmas tree by the train station.
It was nice to be in the city so early, as it meant I didn’t have to run across the city to get somewhere on time, be it the consulate or the bus terminal to get back to work. My feet definitely thanked me for going for an earlier train this time.
Today is my last day. And it is also the Christmas party at work, which Marco has graciously decided he would attend. (Graciously, since he might get a few dirty looks for stealing me away!)
The first Christmas card of the season has arrived from one of mom’s friends. This particular friend always sends out her Christmas cards the day before Thanksgiving, so that people in the local area (Chicago) get the card two days later on Friday.
Legend goes, she only missed that goal once, when she was down vacationing in Florida and everyone’s card didn’t arrive until Saturday… But otherwise, a perfect record.
Those specks of light you see should make it clear that the entire front of the card is covered in glitter of the red variety, minus the letters and decorations themselves. It does make me remember my childhood, when I absolutely adored glitter cards. I remember my parents finally got me a card much like this one…
But I am wiser now. I can hear the telltale scraping before I even open it, letting me know that glitter is in our midst, waiting to strike.
It’s a fun card to look at. And the few bits of stray glitter do match my red couch.
I never had the guts to go on this ferris wheel. It’s taller in person than it looks.
Navy Pier ferris wheel in Chicago, December 2011
Height: 150 feet
Seats: 40 gondulas seating up to 6 each
Time: 7 minutes
Navy Pier information (Wikipedia)
From Marco…
Saturday is an important day for every kid in the Netherlands.
It’s when Sinterklaas arrives. Sinterklaas (or, “De Sint”) is the Dutch version of Santa Claus.
In fact, Santa Claus is based on him.
Unlike Santa, Sinterklaas doesn’t just visit one day, he’s in the country for three weeks! Though he gives you gifts on December 5th, his birthday.
So tomorrow, the 18th, is that day. Most towns have their own Sint arrive,
and then there’s the “tv-Sint” and they broadcast his arrival on national tv.
Here’s a picture of some Sinterklaas decoration at a bakery.
Zwarte Pieten (Black Pete, his side kick) on a bike!
Life in the Hague 