Did you notice flavors are getting crazier every year? Marco recently took a photo of some red velvet kruidnoten (English Wikipedia) at Albert Heijn:
Apparently this flavor was the winner of the ‘kruidnoten thuisverkiezing’ or ‘kruidnoten home vote’. I can believe that.
Still, it doesn’t beat the Lay’s potato chip flavor “Baguette with garlic butter”. That was memorable!
The Elfstedentocht is an 11 city ice staking race. The length is about 200 kilometers (120 miles) and is held in the north of the Netherlands in the Friesland province. It can most accurately be described as “the event that stops the Netherlands”. Or it would be, if the weather would cooperate. As you might expect, the race can only be held if the ice is thick enough along the entire course. The last time that happened was 1997. There was a glimmer of hope in 2012, but it didn’t work out. This event averages about 2 million spectators.
About a month ago Marco and I looked at each other and thought of the worst possibility ever: that the weather would finally cooperate and there would be an Elfstedentocht… and the coronavirus.
Well, the organization responsible for the event saw the chaos that was about to come and reported that no matter what, there would be no Elfstedentocht. As dutchnews.nl reports: Elfstedentocht cancelled because of…coronavirus, oh, and the weather. (Since the prospectives of ice don’t look good anyway.)
And here is a fun one:
The city carillonneur played “Paint it Black” from The Rolling Stones on the church bells in Groningen (also in the north of the Netherlands). This is something he does often, but because Mick Jagger saw the video and placed it on his Instagram with 2 million followers, the video quickly went viral. You can read more in Dutch over at nos.nl: Groningse stadsbeiaardier klinkt wereldwijd met Paint it black van The Rolling Stones.
It seems like lately my only moments of fresh air are during quick trips to Albert Heijn for groceries. But because the quietest time to go is in the mornings, that always happens during my work day so I have to rush. But it is now weekend, which means it is easier to get outside and take a walk. Although it is getting colder these days…
The baby panda born at a Dutch zoo earlier this year is now on display:
Still, I have found something even cuter: the tiny owl that was discovered in the Christmas tree at New York City’s Rockefeller Center (nbcnews.com). So cute!
In other news: Netherlands has world’s highest English proficiency for non-native speakers from nltimes.nl. Not that we didn’t know that one already. I still remember my first trip to The Netherlands, sitting in the train to The Hague at close to midnight, nervously trying to ask something of a random stranger in Dutch (Marco and I wanted to sit near him due to a lack of seats elsewhere). Ha. To this day, I still have people switch to English randomly when they hear my American accent. That’s okay. I just keep talking in Dutch, they get a chance to practice their English, everyone is happy…
And here is an article in Dutch from nos.nl: Rutte waarschuwt ministers voor Twitter-slordigheid na incident met geheime code. In summary, the Dutch ministry of Defense is sitting at home in quarantine. She is attending an online meeting with other defense ministers in the European Union. The problem? She let her assistant take a photo of her, but a Dutch news site spotted the login code and 5 of the 6 digits for the password in that photo. They logged into the meeting and quickly introduced themselves as a Dutch journalist and then left again. They logged into a SUPER SECRET MEETING WITH OTHER DEFENSE MINISTERS. Yikes.
While shopping at Albert Heijn I noticed they had gingerbread men baking mixes:
The box is in the upper right. Of course I’m not sure if it is actually gingerbread, since the box calls them “Winter holiday cookies”, translated.
And even though you can’t really see it in my photo above, if you go to AH’s website you will see that the box says (in the bottom left): “Good for Halloween, Sinterklaas and Christmas!”
I’m trying to imagine making gingerbread men for Halloween, but I can’t.
One of the weird things about The Hague that I read once in a while: there is actually a herd of Scottish highland cattle (English Wikipedia) hanging out in the dunes, in Westduinpark. In the summer they can be found in another part of The Hague: De Uithof. They can be viewed from a distance; visitors are asked to stay about 75 feet away and to talk to them so the animals know they are in the area. You can see some photos over at indebuurt.nl: De Schotse Hooglanders zijn weer terug in de Haagse duinen.
Another animal article, though not as positive: Covid-19 mink variants discovered in humans in seven countries from theguardian.com. The Netherlands was one of the first countries to report Covid-19 infections in mink, although it was infections from humans to mink. The mink fur farms in The Netherlands were due to be closed by 2024. After the corona crisis started, that date was moved ahead to next spring. There was talk of closing all farms by next month although that probably won’t happen.
I consider this way too ambitious, but the Dutch health ministry announced that they want to expand Covid-19 testing to 10 million tests every month (our entire population is under 18 million). The article is in English from nltimes.nl. Their goal is to allow everyone who wants it to get tested once a month, symptoms or no symptoms.
And finally an interesting story from nltimes.nl in English: Swedish sailor identified 25 years after body was found. It was a 25 year cold case, solved when Dutch authorities realized that the sailor had a few Swedish items in his possession. They contacted the Swedish media who placed information about the case in about 50 newspapers. A relative of the missing sailor saw the ad when she was up late reading the paper due to insomnia.
Living in The Hague has some interesting side effects. One of them is that most of the protests happen in your city. But when farmers come to The Hague to protest, they bring their tractors. Which as you can imagine causes traffic chaos. (I guess that is one of the benefits of most people working from home these days, then.) They were protesting the government’s new plans regarding farming pollution, among other topics.
Omroep West has a great article (in Dutch) with many photos: Boeren voeren weer actie in Den Haag. Or you can check out this article in English from dutchnews.nl: Radical farmers drive into The Hague to protest at government regulations.
Things are going a bit better in The Netherlands, in terms of the coronavirus: New coronavirus cases at lowest point in 44 days from nltimes.nl. The Dutch government is holding a press conference at the moment to discuss the current situation, although reports have already said that it is too early to think about what the plans are for Christmas. At best we would get a loosening of restrictions for a few days around the holidays (article in Dutch at nos.nl).
And finally, here is an interesting article (unfortunately in Dutch) about the newest use of drones – The Hague is going to use drones to inspect the sewer system! Gemeente Den Haag gaat drones inzetten om riolering te inspecteren from omroepwest.nl. There are over 1,700 kilometers (just over 1,000 miles) of sewers in the city. The city is fairly ambitious – their plan is to combine work on the sewers below with any needed work on the ground above, to save costs.
And here you thought you wouldn’t read about sewers today. You thought wrong.
It’s Monday again. It was quite a crazy work day for both Marco and I. On the plus side, the workday flew past for both of us – blink and it was 17:00 (or really 17:25… opps).
Here is some random news for you:
Fotoserie: Stille aankomst van Sinterklaas in Den Haag from indebuurt.nl. Photo series: The silent arrival of Sinterklaas in The Hague. The man next to him is the current mayor of The Hague. There are four pages; click the orange arrow before or after the photos to go to the next page. The photos on page 2 (where he is in De Passage, a covered shopping area) are my favorite.
Georgian man infected with coronavirus arrested at Schiphol from nltimes.nl. Note for my American readers: That’s Georgia the country (not far from Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan), not Georgia the US state. I will admit it took me a bit of time to get used to that when I first moved here. As the article states: a man from Georgia was discovered at Schiphol Airport with a letter in his pocket informing him he tested positive for coronavirus. Needless to say, he was immediately arrested by the Marechaussee (the Dutch military police, who oversee the airport) for bringing others into danger.
Belgian racing pigeon fetches record price of $1.9 million from nbcnews.nl. The pigeon was purchased by a Chinese buyer. She was probably bought for breeding purposes – apparently she has very good lineage – and won’t be used for racing again. Another article (from nos.nl, in Dutch) stated this was because she would try to fly home to Belgium from China. Now that’s a trip…
At the moment the Netherlands is under an additional layer of coronavirus restrictions, with additional community areas closed like libraries, theaters, cinemas, zoos, theme parks, etc. These additional restrictions will automatically expire on Wednesday (article in English from nltimes.nl) because there has been some improvement in hospitalizations.
Another restriction that is about to expire group sizes outside are currently limited to three (instead of the usual four). The Hague found an interesting way of getting this temporary amendment across:
That’s right. A nice big X of black tape where it says you can only be outside in a group of four. It works, I guess…
In other, Sinterklaas news: as you may or may not know, the subject of Zwarte Piet (Black Pete; link to English Wikipedia) is quite controversial because traditionally the character was portrayed by a white person, in blackface, with black curly hair, red lips and huge golden earrings. You can see the issue there…
But in recent years the trend (at least nationally) has been to have Black Petes with chimney soot on their faces, no curly hair, etc. The national children’s news program Sinterklaasjournaal already adapted this a few years back. The changes have sadly been much slower on a local level (if you remember from an earlier blog post this week, there’s a national Sinterklaas but also a local Sinterklaas for each city).
Dutch libraries are taking another step towards the future by banning all children’s books which depict a black-faced Black Pete, either removing them from their shelves or not buying them in the first place. Read more at the guardian.com: Will Dutch library ban on ‘Black Pete’ books spell end for ‘racist’ festive tradition?
Last week my company’s Human Resources department mailed us a surprise gift:
The note says: “The month of November has started with its beautiful autumnal colors but also rain and storm. HR has prepared an enclosed gift which already looks ahead to springtime. We hope you will enjoy this small token!” Cute.
I heard from some colleagues that their gift didn’t even survive an hour in their kid-infested house…
Marco and I spotted this amusing joke at FOAM‘s breakfast / lunch restaurant:
Cute, huh?
Unfortunately the number of coronavirus infections are increasing again; we’re back at around 6,100 after hitting a low of around 4,700 earlier this week (article at nltimes.nl).
In other news: Billion euros raised to extend Amsterdam subway to Schiphol Airport, also from nltimes.nl. I’ve always in favor of more public transportation options from the airport to your destination. Of course it will be years before that project is completed.
And a few days ago I reported on Sinterklaas’ plan to arrive at a non-existent village to prevent crowds of parents and kids from going there in these corona times. That’s the national Sinterklaas, but a lot of cities have their own local Sinterklaases as well. Check out this blog post that I wrote about the 2013 parade in The Hague.
Well, this year the story is that the boat of Sinterklaas had some favorable winds during its journey from Spain to The Hague’s harbor, so he unexpectedly arrived early. The mayor advised him to go into a short quarantine at an undisclosed location, which he did. Sinterklaas will receive a corona test on Saturday so that he can participate in Sunday’s parade (which children can watch on TV at home). Read more (in Dutch) at omroepwest.nl.
Life in the Hague 