When Marco and I took a walk this afternoon we spotted these flowers by the Hofvijver (English Wikipedia):
Fitting, since today is King’s Day (also Wikipedia), a Dutch national holiday.
Who else remembers that Koningsdag (=King’s Day) was called Woningsdag last year? Woning = home, so it was a play on King’s Day reminding people to celebrate from home due to the pandemic.
King’s Day is next Tuesday which means a lovely day off. That’s about the only advantage these days, since the usual King’s Night parties (the evening before) and the King’s Day market can’t take place this year due to the pandemic. But who am I kidding? I probably haven’t gone to a King’s Night party in the last 5 years (back when it used to be Queen’s Night, before she abdicated and gave the throne to her son).
It also means you see a lot of toxic orange baked goods at the grocery stores.
On the left in the back you have soesjes (profiterole according to the English Wikipedia). Those are pastries filled with cream. In the middle you have tompouce, which is just called tompouce over at the English Wikipedia because it is a Dutch/Belgium pastry. My sweet tooth doesn’t usually show itself so I don’t eat this kind of stuff that often anymore. The best tompouce I ever had was from Hema with a lime flavor, putting it a bit more on the sour spectrum than the sweet spectrum. But tompouces are tricky to eat, more like overstuffed hamburgers. If you bite wrong the cream in the middle squirts out in the back.
On the right you have a schnitte. I had no idea what this was. I told Marco and Roger this and they looked at me a bit incredulously. Apparently its a two or three layer cake with whipped cream between the layers, or sometimes jam. Marco said that Viennetta ice cream (English Wikipedia) could also be an example of an ice cream schnitte.
Viennetta was actually a possibility last week for celebrating my birthday, but we went for cheesecake instead. I will always consider Viennetta a luxury, since that is how I viewed it as a kid. With the commercial where the group would enjoy the ice cream in clear, tall glasses (obligatory YouTube link)…
You know it’s Friday when your phone says “No Alarm” for tomorrow. Finally! This was a long week. It wasn’t even work’s fault. It was just the week itself that was slow. It started on Monday when I thought it was already Tuesday… and yesterday I thought for sure it was Friday. You get the idea.
Tonight Marco and I watched the series (season?) finale of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Wikipedia) on Disney+. It’s a cool show. Not as crazy as WandaVision was, but still cool. It had some great moments. Marco has definitely converted me into a Marvel fan. I think we’ve done a marathon of all of the MCU films at least 3 or 4 times now over the years.
Here was Marco and I’s treat for surviving a long work week:
Slow cooker chili with cheese and crackers. The best part? How tasty it is. The worst part? It cooks for 8-10 hours. Since we both work at home these days, that meant delicious aromas wafting through the apartment. All. Day. Long.
Happy Friday, everyone!
In a sign that I no longer ride the tram every day, here is a photo of a new check in / out machine in the older Dutch trams. They were first installed back in January of this year in older red-and-beige trams (article in Dutch from omroepwest.nl).
The “no more gibberish” comment is in reference to a blog post that I did late last year where I showed how screwed up the older machines were getting. One of the bigger pluses with the new machines is the space for where you can put your card is much wider (basically hold your card against the screen or underneath). I still remember with faint embarrassment how I tried to put my OV chip card on the tiny green screen when I first moved here (see image in the blog post linked above). With the old machines you needed to put your card against the white part where the pink logo was. Opps.
And also public transportation related: Dutch trains to start return to old timetables within 2 weeks from nltimes.nl. If all goes according to the government’s plan the advice to only travel if strictly necessary will also expire next week, which means trains will get much busier.
But we will see how the coming days play out. On the one hand the government wants to ease restrictions to help the economy (among other things), on the other hand we had over 9,600 corona cases today, the most since early January. It will be an interesting few weeks, that’s for sure.
It’s still not that warm yet in the Netherlands. Maybe 10C (50F), depending on the day? But you can still find color if you wander through the city centre. For example these flowers at the Rabbijn Maarsenplein (a plaza):
The heavy stone planters were added by the city sometime this month, as they weren’t there the last time I wandered through this area. (You can see the major shopping street Grote Marktstraat in the far distance.)
In other, very random news: Poolse vrouw bang voor onbekend schepsel in boom, blijkt croissant te zijn from nu.nl. Or, Polish woman afraid of unknown creature in tree, turns out to be a croissant. Not sure why her being Polish matters, but okay. Apparently the “creature” was resting in the tree for a few days.
T Rex walked the earth slowly but was helped by its tail, Dutch researchers find from dutchnews.nl. Similar to how humans swing their arms and legs when moving, the dinosaur could have also been swinging its tail up and down.
The chips brand Lay’s has three new flavors in the Netherlands: Subway teriyaki, KFC original recipe chicken and Pizza Hut Margherita (lays.nl). I haven’t seen the flavors “in the wild” yet, but it is only a matter of time. Starting in May if you buy a bag you can use it to get your second meal free at that restaurant. Lays is known for some weird flavors. One that managed to stick around permanently in this country was “baguette with herb butter” (stokbrood met kruidenboter).
On Saturday Marco and I picked up some cheesecake from the Cheesecake Company in celebration of my birthday last week. This was our first visit in 2021. Last year we went right before the country went into a soft lockdown (talking with the owner about “the corona situation” while sipping our coffees) and we picked up some cheesecake later in the year. These days the company has a new owner to carry on the proud American cheesecake tradition. The store still sells the same flavors (and of course some new ones too), so it’s going fine.
For my birthday I chose lemon lime, Marco chose lime blueberry and for Roger we chose blueberry banana. (Do you see the nice chain of flavors we made by doing that?)
I couldn’t help but take a picture of some uncut cheesecake just waiting to be put out on display:
Lots of flavors!
I can cross something else off my corona list: shopping by appointment (winkelen op afspraak).
Yesterday I decided on a whim to check what the availability was for shopping appointments at C&A (English Wikipedia), a clothing store. Here in the Netherlands you are currently required to book an appointment at non-essential stores. You must book the appointment at least four hours in advance to prevent “fun shopping”, as the Dutch like to call it. The store can only accept 1 customer per 25 m2, with the maximum capped at 50 customers inside. The store chooses how long the appointment can last, but they are required to offer slots in at least 10 minutes.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had availability the next day (today). I was also surprised to see C&A was offering 30 minute time slots. On the one hand it seemed like a very long time, on the other hand 10 minutes didn’t seem like enough. Oddly they asked how many people would be coming, which is strange since the government rules say you should come alone. On the other hand, I’m sure people would just book separate appointments for the same time slot in that case… I asked Marco if he was interested in going. Since he was also in need of some new clothes, I put down 2 people.
Of course there is the fear that it will be really crowded, but oddly enough when we arrived the next day there really wasn’t a line outside. There was one older gentleman who entered right before us, but it turns out he did not have an appointment so they turned him away. I showed my email to the security guard and we were allowed in. We were both required to have separate bags. And the bags were kind of weird looking, with lots of times on them, crossed out in marker. Almost like they used that system in the beginning and then gave up after a few days:
The store was fairly empty thanks to the one customer per 25m2 rule. There were maybe 6-8 customers per floor? It almost felt like personal shopping. It was also easy to keep enough distance, so that was nice.
I managed to find almost everything I was looking for. A new jacket, 3 t-shirts and even a plain hoodie. It’s nice and warm. The only thing I didn’t find was a new pair of jeans. However I’m short and small, so sometimes finding that combination can be a pain in a country which favors tall people. Hmm. Marco got everything on his list, so that was nice.
I’m glad I went. Non-essential stores have been closed since mid-December (thanks to Black Friday and Christmas shopping insanity) so we definitely needed to buy a few new things.
Earlier this week I received a small box in the mail. In Dutch it’s called brievenbuspakje. Brievenbus = mail box, pakje = little package. (A normal package is called pakket and the Dutch have the habit of adding -je to the end of the word to make it cute and tiny. If you’re interested in the reasons why, feel free to read Make it small: the Dutch love affair with diminutives at iamexpat.nl.)
But I do love brievenbuspakjes or brievenbuscadeautjes (mail box gifts). For whatever reason I am not a fan of having a company deliver something to our door, probably because the doorbell for downstairs is so heart attack inducing when you press it too long. Or something like that. I will go out of my way to order something at bol.com (effectively Dutch Amazon) if and only if it has the option to deliver to the local Albert Heijn grocery store.
But brievenbuspakjes are even better because they are guaranteed to fit in your mail box, meaning you don’t have to be at home and the deliver doesn’t have to spend time ringing your doorbell. Just put it in the mailbox and move on to the next delivery.
But back to that small box I received in the mail. I was thrilled to see the tiny gift in our mailbox earlier this week, though had no idea who it was from. The spoon is in the back of the picture to give a bit of reference to how small this box is.
It was from work to say happy birthday! It was a brownie from a local Dutch site, www.mmoodwineandfood.nl. At first when I read the flavors on the card (caramel, white chocolate and m&m topping) I thought it was one really, really extragent brownie. But no, luckily it was separate flavors:
It was so rich Marco and I split the one on the left, the m&m toppings. (Also, I’d not call that m&ms. They were more smarties size, aka the UK chocolates (English Wikipedia). Which apparently pre-dates m&ms by a few years.) The other two brownies were saved for another day.
But: yummmm. Even though we weren’t able to get to them for a few days it was still moist and delicious.
Happy Friday, everyone!
On Monday I wrote about a cheese hack that was disrupting deliveries of cheese to the Albert Heijn grocery stores. The hack was resolved and deliveries could resume again. Most of the cheeses had been replaced, although there are still some gaps here and there. But I had to laugh when I saw this pile of shredded cheese:
Note: this was actually the overflow area for the extra shredded cheese they had in stock. They put it in the “weekly sale area”. The normal place for shredded cheese was also overflowing with bags and bags… and bags. It looks like two or three deliveries worth.
In other news… did you hear about the world’s first fish doorbell in Utrecht? It has been pressed 32,000 times so far in the first two weeks (nltimes.nl in English). Utrecht had a problem. At this time of year there is less boat traffic in the canals so fish would frequently find themselves stuck at a locked gate without any way to get to the other side. To solve this, viewers can watch a special webcam at visdeurbel.nl to see if they see fish in view. If you do spot one, you press the red doorbell on the right. If enough people press the doorbell, a human will manually check and if needed open the gate. Note that when you first access the page you might need to refresh it see the webcam properly.
The camera also takes a screenshot and shares the photo with you. Since there are limited moments when you might see fish (the best time of day is in the early evening or evening), the website also has a page with the best photos taken by viewers. Note that the webcam is temporary as it is only needed during the fish migration season.
I’m now officially two years old.
(in corona years, of course)
Today’s my birthday. At least this year and last year I have a good excuse for not knowing what I want, since official birthday parties are out and non-essential stores are closed. Let’s ignore online shopping for this excuse. I have definitely reached the age where I am okay with not knowing what I want. Especially since my birthday falls on a Tuesday and that is not an ideal time to take off work or having a big celebration. But I received some nice cards and a few small presents from friends and family which I enjoyed going through.
To give you an idea of how today went: last week I told Marco that I was excited to choose something a bit less healthy for my birthday meal (think something American like a deluxe hamburger and fries, nachos, chili cooked in a slow cooker, or similar). And then yesterday and today I promptly forgot about it. I was in meetings most of the afternoon so I suggested something easy (but still tasty): tomato soup and a tosti, a ham and cheese sandwich with a fancy name. Still tasty, but not extragent birthday material.
Marco was however on top of his game, surprising me a small apple crumble pie from Albert Heijn, my favorite:
It’s my favorite because you get a bit of powdered sugar on top but it’s not too thick or messy, so not too filling. And that’s whipped cream on the side, slightly deflated since I didn’t take a picture right away. (I had to make the required cup of coffee first. It’s required.)
Check out this homemade card from Marco’s dad and his wife (best described as “beautiful” and “clever”!):
This is a birthday card on steroids. And what’s best is you can open it up:
The card stays in that position since you can rest it against the white rose. I also like the 3D element with the butterfly wings. I’m always amazed by the creations I get from them.
Here’s hoping I don’t turn 3 in corona years!
Life in the Hague 