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If you like hagelslag, try these… (Or: Variations at Albert Heijn)

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Niki

Hagelslag in Dutch is basically chocolate sprinkles. I like to eat them occasionally, but I’ll admit I don’t eat them in the traditional way: on buttered bread. The butter is needed to keep the hagelslag from sliding off the bread as you raise it to your mouth. No thanks, I’ll skip the butter and take a risk. …and listen to the clink clink clink as a few pieces of chocolate fall off and crash into my plate. It’s all good.

I recently saw that Albert Heijn came out with variations on the traditional sprinkles theme:

The brownie bites caught my eye first. However I did not purchase them as I am afraid that I would eat them directly out of the box. Yum. Strooifeest, seen at the top of the box, translates to something like “sprinkle party”.

Oh, to be a kid again and enjoy eating that much sugar with breakfast. I have fond memories of eating Rice Krispies cereal with a few spoonfuls of sugar at my grandparent’s house. Luckily I was already too old for sugary cereals by the time Reese’s Puffs hit the market in 1994, which is a chocolate and peanut butter cereal. Very American, really. I remember being quite shocked that anyone would put peanut butter (or peanut butter flavor) into cereal. But it seems rather normal these days…

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

Leaves of yellow and green (Or: Megastores)

Posted on July 11, 2020 by Niki

This morning Marco and I walked over to Megastores and a few stores in the surrounding area to do some Saturday shopping.

Megastores has always been an interesting mall. Most of the stores are furniture related, with some additional everyday stores like Hema, Blokker, Big Bazar and Xenos. They have had issues with unoccupied stores throughout the years, although we didn’t see as many this time. However in general it is the same issue American malls have: walk down the “wrong” wing and you will find yourself in a ghost town.

In other news:

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Temptation at the checkout lane (Or: It’s not quite like the US)

Posted on July 9, 2020 by Niki

In the last year Albert Heijn started adding candy and other snacks to the area by the self-service registers. It’s not very tempting though, probably because they don’t have that much room to show off the “goods”:

So, five choices generally. And they aren’t well-stocked and they don’t look that appealing visually. At least try to get the barcodes looking a bit more similar, please? Although I suppose there will come a day when I desperately need that extra purchase to get me over ten euros to get a stamp. If you get 10 or 20 of those you can usually get something good (if the promotion is right).

In other news:

  • I don’t know if you remember the train derailment in The Hague at the start of the year, but the report of what went wrong was released earlier this week (omroepwest.nl). The type of train that derailed is often used in routes which require hard and frequent braking, however the maintenance schedule for this train type did not take this into account. The train’s brakes were worn, causing two wheels to completely derail and damage to a few dozen meters of track. A conductor and passenger were both injured, but not seriously.
  • Did you know that the Show/hide formatting marks button in MS Word has the nickname onderwater tekens or onderwaterscherm in Dutch? I mean the button which shows you carriage returns or non-breaking spaces. In English that translates to “underwater marks” or “underwater screen”. In other words: looking under water to see what you normally can’t see. Hmm. It’s not the formal name, of course.
  • Great, now I am thinking of the MS Word paperclip. “Clippy” was his name (theverge.com).
Categories: Everyday purchases, Transportation | Tags: | Leave a comment

Anniversary year (Or: 150 years of Bijenkorf)

Posted on July 8, 2020 by Niki

Bijenkorf is a Dutch department store which opened its first store in Amsterdam in 1870. 150 years ago! To celebrate this, they scheduled a year of celebrations in 2020 (thehagueonline.com). For example, there are unique shop windows (Bijenkorf always has beautiful holiday windows), unique merchandise to buy, guided tours, events to attend…

The only problem – which you can see coming with the date of March 10, 2020 in the article from thehagueonline.com – is the corona crisis rearing its ugly head. The carefully scheduled events and tours now read tijdelijk niet beschikbaar or temporarily not available.

In other news:

  • The Dutch corona app will be called CoronaMelder (nltimes.nl) and will use Bluetooth. CoronaMelder translates to Corona Reporter.
  • Kuikentjes bevrijd op de Oude Trambaan from regio15.nl – baby chicks fell through a pedestrian bridge and couldn’t get out on their own. They were ultimately freed by firemen who removed a few of the bridge planks to reach the chicks.
  • The Guardian has a very interesting article called ‘Landscape of fear’: what a mass of rotting reindeer carcasses taught scientists although that topic admittedly isn’t for everyone. But there’s an informative tie-in with the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve (where thousands of animals ended up starving due to a lack of predators in the area) and the ultimate changes to the ecosystem which occurred because of the abandoned carcasses. This caused a great amount of controversy in The Netherlands because it was a conscious choice not to feed the animals to help them survive the winter.
Categories: Culture, Shopping | Tags: , , , | Leave a comment

Food halls (Or: Haagse Bluf in The Hague)

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Niki

Food halls have only recently become a “thing” in The Netherlands, lets say the last five years. A few examples I have been to include the Markthal in Rotterdam and MingleMush in The Hague. Apparently MingleMush re-opened today! I’ll have to schedule a (safe) visit, as it has been too long… It looks like they are open Tuesday through Saturday, 12:00-21:00.

Another food hall Marco and I still need to visit is the food hall in the Haagse Bluf, an upscale shopping area in the centre of The Hague:

It’s a great place to walk through, with very photogenic areas. Just click the tag “Haagse Bluf” at the bottom of this post to see more. My favorite photo was of the red scooter, but the photo of the iced chai tea at the end of this post serves as a great memory for me. We only had it a few times before Kaldi stopped selling it. It was delicious!

In other news:

  • It’s official: Amsterdam to London direct train without Brussels stopover now ready from nltimes.nl. Now it only takes 3 1/2 hours to get into London by train (from Rotterdam)! Considering how long you’re waiting around in an airport, that’s pretty good.
  • The Netherlands now reports deaths and hospital intakes on a weekly basis on Tuesdays. RIVM reported 19 Covid-19 deaths and 9 hospitalizations in the last week (from nltimes.nl), although due to delayed reporting not all of those were in the last week. They can say that 5 deaths occurred between June 28 and July 5, and two of the hospital admissions occurred after June 30. There were also 432 positive cases reported.
  • ICU intakes are (for the moment) still reported every day at lcps.nu. There are currently 24 Covid-19 patients in the ICU, with a low of 18 last week.
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The taste of durian (Or: Spotted at the local Asian store)

Posted on July 6, 2020 by Niki

The inspiration for this blog post: last month I mentioned a news article from The Guardian about a durian fruit causing the evacuation of a German post office. Apparently it is a very divisive fruit. You know how I know that? I wanted to check my spelling of “divisive” so I typed in “divisive fruit” into Google, and durian was the top result. Hmm.

Are you in the camp that thinks it tastes like rotten eggs or gym socks? Or do you find it tastes of almonds, a bit creamy? (If you have ever had it, that is. Apparently it can be hard to find if you’re not in Asia.)

I didn’t realize it might be at the local Asian store until I saw sweets on the shelves:

That doesn’t look too bad, does it? Or these cakes:

But the fruit itself is indeed available at the local Asian store, as long as you are willing to try the deep freeze version. (I know, deep freeze is never as good as fresh.) Amusingly the page only describes it as having a “pungent odor”, which sounds… more bearable than it probably is in reality. Or you have another version which might be easy to break open.

I’m not sure I’m up for buying the deep freeze versions to start with, but maybe I can purchase a snack or two first and see how it goes…

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Coconut cookies and books (Or: A visit to Lebkov)

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Niki

This afternoon I spent a few hours at Lebkov in The Hague, something I hadn’t done for a while. I have had takeout coffee from Lebkov over the last few months but this was one my first time sitting down. Well, there was one exception: I did meet a coworker there shortly after the rules were relaxed to allow customers to dine-in again. It was strange. We did not stay that long.

I purchased a coconut cookie, which was tasty, soft and slightly sticky on the inside. I also brought a book along, Night Train to Lisbon, although I ended up fiddling with Affinity Designer on my tablet instead. While I just started the novel last week I am enjoying it. It’s a bit dense (in a good way) so I’m glad I am reading the English translation and not the Dutch one. These days my reading habits seem to be me alternating Dutch and English with every book, which is fine.

In other news:

  • The Amsterdam zoo posted a video on YouTube of their newest baby elephant enjoying its first bath.
  • Would you like to see a pink limousine stuck on a Delft canal bridge? Then check out this Reddit thread.(And really. Who wouldn’t want to see that?)
  • You can also follow the Twitter account of Winston bureaukat (@Winston_topkat) for adorable photos of a local police station’s cat.
(“Look at me being so cute! You’ll just need to overlook the fact that I’ve destroyed half the station!”)
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Waiting for the tram (Or: Summer days)

Posted on June 28, 2020 by Niki

Yesterday I took a picture of a group of riders waiting for the tram at the front of The Hague Centraal:

It looks a bit chaotic with not enough distance between passengers, but in any other year except 2020 this would have been 3 or 4 times more crowded, as tram 9 is the tram to the beach. So this is actually a vast improvement.

As noted, today there may or may not be activity at the Malieveld due to the Viruswaanzin or “Virus madness” demonstration that was (for a second time) banned by The Hague mayor. You’ll never guess what the police confiscated last night:

…sidewalk chalk (!).

Or read the article from regio15 (in Dutch): Politie neemt stoepkrijt in beslag bij het Malieveld. I think that is going too far – if you check the pictures the persons were drawing lots and lots hearts and writing ‘vrijheid’ and ‘liefde’ (freedom and love) occasionally. There are still chalk messages on the paths around Malieveld about Black Lives Matter and ‘Racism is not just an American problem’, which is true. According to the police the problem isn’t the demonstrators so much as the other people who plan to come, including football hooligans. That was the case last week, but only time will tell if that is the case today.

On an interesting note: officially sidewalk chalk was banned on all public surfaces before 2017, even if little children were drawing. But that rule was never really enforced. You can read more in Dutch at nu.nl: Gemeente Den Haag heft stoepkrijtverbod op.

And finally, the police are already starting to warn people to stay away today: Politie waarschuwt eerste betogers die naar het Malieveld zijn gekomen (ad.nl).

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Beer and chicken (Or: Zwarte Ruiter in The Hague)

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Niki

Today Marco and I went to the Zwarte Ruiter in The Hague. It is one of the bar/restaurants on the Grote Markt. Since I took a vacation day today we were able to go a bit earlier in the day when it wasn’t too busy yet.

My beer (the Blurred lines on the left) was definitely fruity! It had citrus, passion fruit, peach, pineapple and mango.

In other news:

  • Do you remember the country-wide issue with the emergency number 112 last year? They released a report this week about what happened and the unique set of circumstances that made it even worse. You can read about it in English at nltimes.nl or in Dutch at nos.nl. One of the worst mistakes? They sent an NL-Alert to everyone which said the police were contactable on WhatsApp via <phone_number>. That phone number was incorrect; it was actually a number for the tip line by De Telegraaf, a Dutch newspaper. Yikes!
  • Van der Sar: play big Eredivisie games in second half of season from dutchnews.nl. It’s a good article if you’re into football/soccer – it talks about moving the big matches to after the winter break to adjust for a lack of home advantage, since stadiums will not have fans right away.
Categories: Food | Tags: | Leave a comment

Viaduct art (Or: Hofvijfer mural by Centraal Station)

Posted on June 20, 2020 by Niki

Have you seen the murals by the entrance to the Centraal Station yet? There are murals painted on both sides of the tram viaduct (used by trams 2, 3, 4 and 6) which you can view from the tram stops outside of the station.

Check out this mural of the nearby Hofvijver:

As I walking into the kitchen this morning to start breakfast I heard a loud BAM! A bird flew against our back window, or at least the door frame between the two windows. Either way, I found it lying on its back twitching, rolling from side to side in an attempt to get up. But it was pretty obvious it wasn’t going to last long; within 5-10 minutes it was dead.

After waiting the appropriate time to make sure it was dead (and admiring an unexpectedly beautiful patch of blue on its wings), Marco carefully used a broom to push it into a box and place it into the waiting garbage bag (which is itself was put into a second garbage bag). We disposed of it in one of the public trash containers on the street.

And that is our tale of “…at least the window didn’t break…”

Categories: The Hague, Transportation | 2 Comments

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