“tompouce”, a type of cake that goes with coffee. Here with a festive orange color due to the World Cup going on.
Woohoo. A much closer game but we survived. This time someone in the neighborhood had a lot of fireworks and set them off after we went ahead 3 to 2 (a bit premature if you ask me!). But we made it – and they set more firewoks off after the game was officially over.
Today we received the results for the B2 course I have been taking at ROC Mondriaan. I passed all four sections – reading, writing, listening and speaking – with no problems. I did ironically have some comments about how to work on my writing, but it was mainly due to a lack of time to check over my work when I was done writing. I tend to write a lot – a bit too much probably!
When I got home I saw a small gift on the table from Marco. The message he wrote on it makes me wonder what I should have done with it if I hadn’t passed the tests. Burn it?
“open me if you passed the exams – Marco”
If you know what ‘Jamin’ is (what it sells), you can already guess what the gift is. ;p
Chocolate! geslaagd = successful, in the sense of success at passing a test (a school exam, a driving test, etc).
Wow. Very cool to watch! After they scored, we would sometimes turn off the volume briefly and just listen to everyone shouting outside.
And as much as Marco likes to say otherwise, he was shouting at the tv too!
I have to say my favorite goal was the “flying Dutchman” goal by van Persie – a header right before the half to tie the score at 1-1.
Tomorrow marks the beginning of the World Cup. If you visit the right places, you will see a lot of Dutch spirit.
Here we have the decorations in my father-in-law’s house – Dutch spirit against a pretty (mooi) backdrop.
1. The banner over the door was from the TUC brand crackers.
2. The orange soccer balls/footballs are actually lights.
3. The other things hanging from the plant are Albert Heijn hamsters (the mascot) which can you receive for free if you spend more than a certain amount of euros in a shopping trip (15, probably). Orange, of course!
Here is one of the items we had at De Gezelligheid (a restaurant in Leusden) a few weeks back. A strawberry slush drink. Yum!
Of course the drink would have gone over even better today, as it was officially shorts weather after getting home from work. Heat wave!
A few weeks ago Marco and I went to Amesfoort for a birthday party for Marco’s uncle. On the way back we were waiting at the Amesfoort train station. We were greeted by this sign, which amused me:
Depending on what your destination was (The Hague or Rotterdam) you had to get into the train at a different point. The train splits at Gouda station. And of course they say a-zijde and b-zijde (a and b side) rather than rather than simply specifying whether you needed to get in the train at the back or the front. Though standing in the center of the platform solved the problem nicely!
I did have my usual Dutch lesson on Thursday, however we mostly did exercises from the book and not much extra work. The class ends around mid June, so we need to finish the current chapter we are on and then start to talk about the Staatsexamen (programma II). Because we need time to cover that, we are going through the text book faster.
Thus I’ll tell you a random fact that I was reminded of when reading my copy of The Book of General Ignorance. We all know that carrots are generally orange. However, they did start not out like that – before the 17th century they were purple, white and red.
So, what changed? In the 17th century the Dutch cultivated carrots to be orange by crossing them with other colors. Some say this was in tribute to the House of Oranje and Willem van Oranje (Willem from the House of Orange). He led the Dutch to a revolution for independence from the Spanish.
Carrot mosiacs by Ilona Fried
I spotted this a few weeks ago at a cooking store nearby work and I just had to take a picture of it. Some of the comments are in Dutch but you can assume they all follow the same theme that is shown on the right side: “Love my curves”.
For example, the top comment is “Heb ik een dikke kont in deze broek?” and “Lekker kontje”. Or “Do I have a fat butt in these pants?” with the reply “It’s a nice butt.” Yeah.
The Netherlands got a little taste of “orange mania” this week as Saturday was Koningsdag (English: King’s Day) in The Netherlands. Of course you see some wacky items that come about this time of year – both for the previously mentioned holiday but also for the FIFA World Cup in June.
See at Albert Heijn. “Hup Holland Hup” translates to “Go Holland Go”
Don’t forget to check out the title on the can. See also this previous post, Hup Holland.
Marco and I went shopping this afternoon — I needed a new pair of sneakers as mine had seen better days. We knew we wanted to go somewhere for coffee afterwards but we weren’t sure where. We were going to try Hometown Coffee (the last time we tried there were no free tables and it was a bit too cold to sit outside) but we ended up elsewhere.
More specifically, in De Haagsche Bluf (English), a luxury shopping area in the middle of centrum. We decided to have coffee at Kaldi (English). I had my usual coffee and Marco his cappuccino, and we split an American cookie with white chocolate chips (American = large, soft cookie). Yum.
But unexpectedly we also had some musical entertainment:
It was pretty cool, as the “stage” was actually the front part of the building, simply pulled down like a drawbridge. Here is a close-up.
Great music! Sort of jazzy, with the drums and clarinet alongside.
Life in the Hague 