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World Cup 2022’s orange wave (Or: They even have Christmas ornaments)

Posted on December 3, 2022 by Niki

This year the World Cup (soccer for the Americans among us) is being held in Qatar. The Netherlands is playing the Unites States shortly for a place in the quarter finals. (If you’re wondering, my allegiance is for the Dutchies.)

Due to the summer heat, the tournament was moved from the summer to the winter for 2022 only. This of course creates the unique opportunity to buy Dutch football Christmas ornaments:

These are some of the items on sale over at Xenos on the Grote Marktstraat. A few orange Christmas balls, orange clogs and a lion dressed in orange holding a football. Decorate your Christmas tree to show your orange pride!

Not to be out done, you can also buy football shaped bread at Albert Heijn:

You didn’t believe me, did you? Yes, they have football shaped bread. (I will wait for my Christmas tree bread, thanks.)

Lastly, if you’re at a local bar you can get free bittenballen with every goal the Duchies score against the Americans:

If you are wondering what bitterballen are, check out English Wikipedia. It’s basically a fried meat snack. The meat inside is a meat paste. You want to get high quality bitterballen so that you know the meat inside is also (hopefully) high quality.

Ride the orange wave, everyone!

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Hema’s smoked sausage flavored beer (Or: Would you try it?)

Posted on December 1, 2022 by Niki

One thing Hema is famous for is their smoked sausage (rookworst). When we eat stamppot (English Wikipedia) we always pair it with sausage from Hema. It is tasty! We eat stamppot once a year; Marco’s mom always makes us a batch around February or March when the weather outside is nice and cold.

But now Hema has come out with rookworst flavored beer (5.3% alcohol). Would you want to try it?

It’s definitely an interesting concept, and a bit easier to understand than their tompouce flavored beer last year. Tompouce is a Dutch pastry – see also this English Wikipedia page if you need a refresher.

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Sinterklaas-themed window displays (Or: Spotted at Bijenkorf)

Posted on November 27, 2022 by Niki

Bijenkorf is a high-end department store comparable to Macy’s in the US. Every year they hang up some gorgeous holiday lights and they decorate their store front windows for Sinterklaas (5 December holiday) and Christmas. The lights went up in early November this year, even before we left for New Year City. Here’s a look at a few of their Sinterklaas themed windows.

You can tell it is Sinterklaas because the child in the middle is holding the staff of Sinterklaas. What’s a Sinterklaas party without fashionable clothes and lots of gifts? Speaking of which, if you want to make sure kids in The Hague and Amsterdam area have gifts to open on 5 December, consider donating to Sintvoorieder1 (official website in Dutch). During their latest toy drive they received about 47,000 gifts for 22,500 children which is just awesome. The link is from omroepwest.nl in Dutch.

Happy Sinterklaas (in advance)!

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That is one sweet boat (Or: Sinterklaas display by Hema)

Posted on November 7, 2022 by Niki

By the Hema in The Hague’s city centre there is a display for the upcoming Sinterklaas holiday (5 December):

The display is a boat, a reference to the boat Sinterklaas uses to travel from Spain to the Netherlands every year in November (English Wikipedia). The actual contents of this boat are kruidnoten, small cookies which are a staple for the Sinterklaas holiday.

In other news:

  • Megastores helemaal gesloopt voor nieuwe woontorens from omroepwest.nl (article in Dutch). Megastores is a shopping mall on the other side of The Hague’s Holland Spoor train station. However most of the stores sell furniture or home goods, so the number of shoppers has been dwindling over the years. The article talks about how the entire shopping mall will be demolished in phases starting in 2024, to be replaced by about 2,000 apartments in residential towers.
  • The Zeldzaam mooi markt will be at the Lange Voorhout in The Hague on Sunday, 27 November. The name translates to something like “Rare, beautiful market”. They will be selling retro, vintage and reuse items like jewelry, clothes, home goods, etc.
  • You can donate Sinterklaas presents for kids at The Hague’s Central Library from 14-18 November (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch). The toy drive is sponsored by Sintvoorieder1.
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Oliebollen time! (Or: It must be November)

Posted on November 2, 2022 by Niki

You know it is (almost) November when you see the oliebollen (English Wikipedia) stand pop up in the last few days of October, a sign of yummy things to come. Oliebollen are a donut-like treat that is popular this time of year. They are eaten en masse on New Year’s Eve. Marco and I usually make oliebollen every year. These days the stands are allowed to open from 1 November until the end of January.

As you can see they still have their preferred spot at the end of the Grote Markt street. They used to be closer to city hall but moved to this spot when construction for the Amare cultural centre started some years ago. Speaking of Amare–apparently the building will be getting a Spar grocery store (indebuurt.nl, in Dutch).

In other news:

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Sinterklaas (Or: HTM’s newest tram driver?)

Posted on October 25, 2022 by Niki

I kid, I kid.

Sinterklaas (a figure based on Saint Nicholas) will be arriving in the Netherlands from Spain on Saturday, 12 November. This year he will be arriving in Hellevoetsluis, which apparently is a city in South Holland. Who knew? English Wikipedia apparently. His arrival in Hellevoetsluis will be televised. But on the day (or around the same day) he arrives in pretty much every Dutch city. How, you ask? Magic. He is Sinterklaas after all.

He will also be arriving in The Hague on Saturday, November 12, in the Scheveningen haven. But this year, due to all of the road work going on throughout the city, he will be taking the tram! And as indebuurt.nl reports (in Dutch), you might even see him driving the tram. But first he needs to take a driving lesson before he is allowed to do that.

The full list of places he will visit can be found at indebuurt.nl. The parade starts at 12:30 at Vissershavenweg and ends at Lange Voorhout at 17:05. If all goes to schedule, that is.

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Anyone ready for a heat wave? (Or: Issues with Buienradar)

Posted on October 22, 2022 by Niki

Buienradar.nl is a well-known Dutch website for weather. Buien = showers/rainfall.

A few days ago they had this as a 14 day prediction for The Hague:

In other words, late next week the temperature would go from about 66F to 95F. That sounds nice! But no, it was just an unfortunate bug in the data which has since been fixed. Actually the temperatures will be dropping from 17C to 13C (62F to 55F). It is probably for the best that it isn’t 95F in late October…

See also: Buienradar: in deel Zuid-Holland volgende week 36 graden from omroepwest.nl.

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Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine… (Or: Ovomaltine?)

Posted on October 17, 2022 by Niki

Ovaltine, I mean. Don’t forget to drink your Ovaltine is a line from A Christmas Story (1983), a film which was popularized by the the American TV channel TNT’s 24 hour marathons every Christmas Day. It was definitely always on tv every year at my house growing up.

Spotted at the local Asian store, and the inspiration for this blog post:

Apparently it is a “milk flavoring product” according to Wikipedia. Its original name was indeed ovomaltine, but it will always be Ovaltine to me. You can also get it at the local grocery store under the name ovomaltine (ah.nl in Dutch).

Speaking of A Christmas Story, there is a sequel coming out on HBO Max next month: A Christmas Story Christmas (tvline.com). Ralphie, the main character in the first movie, returns to his childhood home to give his kids a Christmas like he had growing up. We will need to wait and see how the film fares. Usually sequels like this don’t do well in the box office (Christmas Vacation 2: Cousin Eddie’s Island Adventure, anyone?) but one can hope.

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A long way from home (Or: Anyone looking for a shopping cart?)

Posted on October 11, 2022 by Niki

In September I went to The Hague’s Albert Heijn XL grocery store. As you might guess from the “XL” in the name, it’s a bigger version of the normal Albert Heijns. It still sells 95% of the same items that a normal Albert Heijn would, just more variety. The XL stores are a lot larger, closer to the size of an American grocery store like Shoprite, Jewel-Osco or Kroger.

I knew I was almost in the neighborhood of this Albert Heijn when I saw shopping carts in the neighborhood:

You could say that people are being nice by putting the carts together and stacking the smaller hand baskets on top, so if an Albert Heijn employee wanted to come get them it would only be one trip. Although this wasn’t the only place I spotted them in the neighborhood.

In other news:

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Somewhere it must be Christmas (Or: Decorations at TK Maxx)

Posted on October 4, 2022 by Niki

TK Maxx is a European apparels and home fashion store. And if you are American and wondering if this is the same company as TJ Maxx, why yes, yes it is.

This company thinks it is Christmas already:

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mind at all. I just find it a bit funny. And by the way, all of the things you see on the racks in the picture above are Christmas soap dispensers. Including the dog with the red sweater on the second highest shelf.

Maybe we skip straight ahead to Christmas in this country because Halloween isn’t that big here and Thanksgiving doesn’t exist. Although the Netherlands does have the Sinterklaas holiday (English Wikipedia) on 5 December, so who knows.

I have to admit these are cute: little wooden sleighs with a few packages and a mini Christmas tree. However, the packages must have been little mini bricks as the decoration was way heavier than I expected when I picked it up.

Anyone else spotting Christmas decorations popping up in stores?

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

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