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King’s Day merch (Or: I hope you like the color orange?)

Posted on March 29, 2024 by Niki

King’s Day is a Dutch holiday on April 27. This year it falls on a Saturday. Annoying for those who don’t get the day off, as it isn’t standard practice in the Netherlands to give an adjacent day off if a holiday falls in the weekend. On the other hand, if the weathers good, you still have all day to party on Saturday.

Oh, and this means The Life I Live – a free music festival held the night before in The Hague’s city centre – falls on a Friday this year. The Hague government donated an extra €50,000 to the festival to keep it it around, on top of the already earmarked €400,000, as a one time (extra) donation. I can’t imagine The Hague or King’s Day without The Life I Live festival. Here are some photos I took back in 2022.

A lot of people dress up in orange for King’s Day (and some also dress up in orange for the festival the night before). Most Dutch stores take advantage of that by offering orange merchandise in the 4–6 weeks leading up to the event. Here is a look at the King’s Day offerings at Xenos:

I also saw some orange tompouce themed t-shirts being sold at Hema. Tompouce (English Wikipedia) is a pastry that is delicious, if extremely sweet and messy to eat. And of course it gets sold with orange frosting for King’s Day!

Categories: Culture, Holidays | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Random internet activities (Or: The fish doorbell)

Posted on March 23, 2024 by Niki

Have you heard of the fish doorbell? (I think I posted about it at some point.)

There’s a canal in the Dutch city of Utrecht in the middle of the Netherlands. The canal is shared by boats and fish, with a boat lock that opens and closes as needed. But this is also the time of the year that the fish move upstream searching for places to spawn.

What do the fish do if the boat lock is closed? They wait.

What do they wait for? For you to press the doorbell of course!

If you see a fish on the live stream waiting at the door, you can push the doorbell. The page is at: https://visdeurbel.nl/en/the-fish-doorbell/. A bit further down on the page you see a live stream, probably full of murky water and no fish. On the right side there’s a doorbell. If you see a fish, you press the doorbell. This lets a human know they should check and open up the boat lock so the fish can pass through. (Note: if there are more than 950-999 viewers, you’ll see a YouTube stream instead with no doorbell, due to capacity issues.)

The fish doorbell news report – a YouTube channel with weekly news about what fish they saw in the last week and predictions for next week, with subtitles in English.

Nicest photos – a look at some of the nicest photos taken this year.

Categories: Culture, Utrecht | Tags: | Leave a comment

Gummy noodles (Or: Interesting finds at Xenos)

Posted on March 6, 2024 by Niki

Here’s a look at some candy I found earlier in February at Xenos:

Unfortunately I am not a kid that craves high levels of sugar anymore. Maybe I can eat a few noodles a day?

I like shopping at Xenos, though. You never know what you are going to find as the selection is usually fairly random (stuff for the home, cooking, eating and drinking).

In other news:

Groningen egg balls to roll off production line into rest of NL from dutchnews.nl. I’m not a fan of eggs, so that is an easy pass for me.

Happy hardcore Europapa is this year’s Dutch Eurovision entry, also from dutchnews.nl. It definitely has a nice beat going. It’s in Dutch (and a bit of German!), although the news article does a good job of explaining what the themes are.

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

One long hot dog (Or: A set of plates by Berlage)

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Niki

Last weekend Marco and I were walking past Berlage Office & Gift which sells – you guessed it – office supplies and gifts. Their window display caught my eye. I just had to stop and take a photo.

It reminds me of my previous blog post where I wrote about a new store I found in The Hague: Meow & Muse.

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Meow & Muse in The Hague (Or: Gifts for all the cat lovers out there)

Posted on February 25, 2024 by Niki

I walked past a new store in The Hague today. Or at least it was a new store for me. It was at Nieuwstraat 120, walking towards the old city hall at the end of this street.

They have a website here: https://www.lovecatsclub.nl/webinar-registration. I’m not sure why that page of the website points to “webinar registration” nor am I sure why it is spelled “Moew & Muse” on the page heading, but the Shop Online tab definitely has some cute stuff.

Here are the opening hours:

Here is a look at what they were offering in the window. My apologies for cutting off the bottom of the card. It said “overflowing with sexy”. Heh.

And another look:

If you have any friends who love cats, check out this place for some cat themed gifts!

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Time of day (Or: Sundial by the Kneuterdijk Palace)

Posted on February 9, 2024 by Niki

A few weeks ago I was wandering around in The Hague and I came across a piece of art. A sundial, to be exact. This was behind the Kneuterdijk palace.

Here is a close up:

Kneuterdijk palace was built in 1716. The garden where the artwork can be found is in the back of the palace. The gate was open when I walked past, so I assume it is usually open during the day. You can read more about the palace at denhaag.com (in English).

In public transportation news – random, I know – it has been a busy week in the Netherlands.

Hopefully HTM can bring back their full schedule later this year. But I’m aware of how good I have it, considering trams currently run every 10 minutes. But I remember when it was every 7 minutes…!

Categories: Culture, Transportation | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

A tasty lunch (Or: Amier restaurant in The Hague)

Posted on February 1, 2024 by Niki

Last weekend Marco and I decided to go for Lebanese at Amier restaurant in The Hague’s city centre, in the same street as the American Book Center. I’ve walked past the restaurant time and time again over the years, but we had never been.

Since it was lunch we decided to share some small plates. Here’s a look at what we had:

We ordered four things:

  • Batata harra (spicy baked potatoes with lemon)
  • Arnabeet (cauliflower with lemon, pomegranate and tahini sauce)
  • Falafel with tahini sauce
  • Samboesek djaj (pastry dough filled with marinated chicken, lemon and bell pepper)

It also came with a side dish of Lebanese bread. The meal was quite tasty, as expected. A bit more subtle than I was expecting, but definitely in a good way. Lots of lemon, but it was fine! It was also fun to have a lunch date with Marco.

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Hiding behind some houses (Or: Art in de Bogaard)

Posted on January 24, 2024 by Niki

In the nearby city of Rijswijk there’s a shopping area called Bogaard stadscentrum or “Bogaard city centre”. There’s a small indoor shopping area and lots of shops on the outside as well. The area had a bit of a downturn, especially when the Mall of the Netherlands opened, but there has been some work to restore it. Part of the plans including removing some of the shopping area to add more housing instead, which makes sense.

Here’s a look at an interesting piece of art on the way back to the tram stop:

Unfortunately I don’t have too many details about it. It is cute, though!

Categories: Culture, Rijswijk | Tags: | Leave a comment

Bagels (With: A Dutch flag in them)

Posted on January 21, 2024 by Niki

A few weeks ago Marco and I tried Netherlands Bagels for the first time. It’s in the city centre, a few minutes walk from the Grote Kerk. This bagel shop sells New York style bagels (the owner is originally from New York). Read more about the shop’s history.

First, our drinks arrived. Very tasty chai lattes that definitely hit the spot.

I can’t lie – we were amused when the bagels came out. Why, you ask?

I mean, it is in the name: Netherlands Bagels. So the flags make sense. It’s still funny, though.

I had an everything bagel with peanut butter on the side. A bit of a rare combination, I admit, mixing the salty menu with the sweet menu (I had to double check that I could mix it like that). My tongue also thought it was a weird choice, but it worked fairly well. For me. And as always I requested the peanut butter on the side.

Marco had a bodega bagel (eggs, bacon and cheese). It looked so good I even had a bite or three. That says a lot considering I am very much not a fan of eggs (if it looks or tastes like egg, anyway). I mean, I have a tiny bit of scrambled eggs about every 5 years or so. That’s good, but only in limited amounts. But this was nice – the salty bacon paired nicely with the egg and I could see why people liked it. Hence my having three bites! I think Marco got concerned that I might eat all of it, but nope, I gave it back.

These were some tasty bagels; we’ll definitely go back to try some of the other varieties.

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Homemade tentamen ramen (Or: Yumyumyum)

Posted on January 14, 2024 by Niki

Over the weekend, we made homemade tentamen ramen. That is, ramen with spicy ground beef. (Exceptions to “homemade” were the noodles, egg and chili oil.) The inspiration for making this broth came from Roger who gifted Marco a copy of Let’s Make Ramen!: A comic-book cookbook.

First we started with a yasai broth, which has among other ingredients shiitake mushrooms, carrots, green onions, onions, apples and ginger. After the flavors infuse into the water for an hour you take it off the heat and add a few sheets of kombu dried seaweed for 10 minutes to give it more of an umami flavor. They expanded to ridiculous levels after those 10 minutes. it was crazy!

Lots of mushrooms! But the most unexpected ingredient was the apples.

Skipping ahead, here is a look at the end product:

To make the final product we added “tare” which was a homemade mixture which gave the broth its depth of flavor, plus bok chow, an egg for Marco and Roger, spicy ground beef and dried nori seaweed. Yumyumyum!

Marco and I are already looking forward to the next recipe. We think we’ll tackle a 4 hour broth next, but this time putting it into our pressure cooker (which has way more capacity than our normal pans anyway).

Here’s to Marco, the awesome chef and Roger for the great inspiration!

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