When I came home from grocery shopping today, I decided to take a picture of the bike that usually sits in our courtyard.
Dutch boy’s bike complete with anti-theft protection (device on front wheel)
I mostly took a picture because of the beads that hang on the wheels of the bike. When I was younger my brother had similar spoke beads on his bike. I always liked the sound that it made, though I fear it probably drove parents nuts…
The month of May seems to be full of holidays within the Netherlands. Saturday the 4th was Dodenherdenkingdag (Remembrance Day). doden = (dead, plural), herdenking (remembrance), dag = day. This is the day to remember all of the dead in wars or peacekeeping efforts since World War II began. For The Hague, the local church bells began ringing at 7:45 until 8:00PM, when two minutes of silence are observed.
The following day is Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day), when the Dutch celebrate the country’s liberation from German occupation in World War II. There are a lot of festivals around various cities, so Marco and I decided to visit the one in The Hague and check out the music. Here are some of the pictures:
US army tanks on display at the entrance
one of the stages. Did I mention the weather was gorgeous?
view of The Hague’s skyline
school bus converted into “American” food stand. (A lot of things labeled American truly aren’t…)
Last night Marco and I went out to enjoy Koninginnenacht, or the night before Queen’s Day. (If you live in The Hague you should really drop the ‘t off nacht, but I digress.) In The Hague you have several stages set up throughout the center of the city, with 7 stages this year. You have various musical acts throughout the night, generally lasting 45 minutes to an hour each.
Even Google got into the Queen’s Day festivities…
Hovering over the Google logo gives you: Queensday 2013: Best wishes to King Willem-Alexander!
Marco said that a few years ago (or so) they made the cardinal mistake of only having a few stages and advertising a rather popular band to the main stage at some point in the night. The result was chaos as hundreds of thousands of people tried to converge on the main stage. Since then, they have increased the number of stages and used slightly less popular bands.
Hommerson casino decorations
Tomorrow is Koninginnedag, or Queen’s Day. It’s also when Queen Beatrix abdicates the throne for her son, Willem-Alexander. There will be a lot of events going on, especially in Amsterdam where the main festivities are (schedule). One of the local movie theaters in The Hague will also be showing the abdication live.
Here are some pictures of the various random things you can buy to mark the event. I already did a blog post on the first photo, but the rest are new:
Frilly orange scarves and more
Albert Heijn “Wuppie” – royal version. (you receive one for every €15 you spend).
We have some friends visiting over the weekend so we decided to buy some flowers to brighten up the place a bit. I was left with the buying task, so of course I am going to choose something orange to reflect the upcoming Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) holiday on Tuesday.
Today Marco and I visited the new Selexyz-De Slegte book store in The Hague. The two stores merged after Selexyz’s previous store front was taken over by a real Apple store (not just an official Apple supplier store). The Apple store hasn’t opened yet though.
The store itself was a bit of a disappointment because I couldn’t find the language section. It seems like the first floor houses the Selexyz materials, and the second floor is the 2nd hand materials (from De Slegte).
But one thing I did come across was a small board game section, complete with games translated to Dutch.
It even had the Settlers of Catan! (Kolonisten van Catan, originally a German game)
Two different sodas (“pop” if you’re from Chicago… And no, Marco/Roger, not ‘Pop! Pop!’ from Magnitude.)
It’s Holy Soda! On the bottom of the label it says 100% goodness, so I am sure they are playing off that with the name. Of course, next to it you have Good Energy. Compare that with the Spam energy drink from a few days ago…
And then, also at Albert Heijn, you now have… Mountain Dew in bottle form (0,5 liters/17oz).
The scary thing? This bottle is empty. That’s right, the bottle is also neon green! In America, it’s a bit darker to make it look more like regularly colored soda. At the moment it costs €1.09, or $1.43. Not horrible considering it’s an import product. It’s been cropping up everywhere lately. First the can form at Subway a year or two ago. This year more stores have been selling the cans. And now the bottles are for sale as well.
Personally, I will just call the color radiation green.
I saw a link this morning which reminded me of an experience I had a few weeks ago in Etos, a beauty&etc type store. I was with Marco’s mother. I came across the baby aisle and was confused to see a sign over the infant formulas, similar to this one from another website:
http://www.nrc.nl — sign in an Amsterdam Etos store limiting customers to one baby formula item
It turns out that the melamine milk powder scare of a few years ago in China has, since the beginning of the year, caused a shortage of baby formula in countries as close as Hong Kong and as far away as Europe or, and the Netherlands in particular. It has also affected the UK.
And that is my random news of the day.
Sometimes you just come across something a bit unexpected in the Netherlands. I would think SPAM energy drinks qualify…
The two well-known meanings of spam in America..
1. Spam: the food – who knew it was short for spiced ham? spiced-ham? That almost makes it sound edible. I know some people in this world like eating it. I think.
2. Spam: e-mails you don’t want and didn’t ask for.
And now, I guess I have to add ‘energy drink’ to the mix! It even has its own Facebook fan page.
I took this picture last week (in March). Hema has already put a small store display with decorations for Koninginnedag 2013 (Queen’s Day). The last one in fact. Since Queen Beatrix is giving up the throne on that day, the following year we will have Koningsdag (King’s Day) for her son.
But really – I didn’t know people needed their decorations 5 weeks in advance!
Life in the Hague 
