In the last week I’ve seen various holiday decorations. It seems a bit early but Bijenkorf, a store, was busy putting up their winter lights:
(Here’s what Bijenkorf’s lights looked like last year.)
And here are some Halloween decorations:
Haven’t seen any Thanksgiving decorations yet…
Over the last week or so I’ve seen a lot of Christmas trees around The Hague. One tree that I was not expecting to see was in De Passage. It’s not the best picture but it’s not a small tree either! (The black wall in the background is the construction area before the Apple store).
This was unexpected because of the agreement between a not-yet-opened Apple store and De Passage. In the contract between Apple and the shopping area, it was stipulated that there would be no more Christmas tree in the center as it would block the view of the storefront. Of course, people were quite annoyed by this. But Marco and I found out a few days ago that the tree was back! Only for this year, as a consolation because the Apple store isn’t yet open.
I also found a smaller Christmas tree at Central Station in The Hague:
Good news for Marco – the rest of his Christmas presents just arrived (via Amazon UK/PostNL) so he will have a present filled Christmas this year! He was even nice and went downstairs to get the package from the mailman. Nothing like waiting until the afternoon of Christmas Eve, but I ordered things pretty late this year.
Here are the Christmas lights that Bijenkorf put up a week or two ago:
The decorations are not actually strands of individual lights, but rather sections of net which descend down the entire length of the windows and have the lights woven into them.
In other news, I officially got the news last night that I passed all four sections of B1, so it is on to B2! There are two sections starting next month, both Tuesday/Thursday nights. One starts the 14th and one starts the 21st. The class will be done by the end of June. That seems like a far away date right now… but it is really not.
Okay, so we still have a few weeks to go for Christmas. Though you wouldn’t know it in the Netherlands – it seems the day after Sinterklaas all of the Christmas decorations start going up. Though Marco keeps saying that Sinterklaas is a more important holiday for a kid than Christmas is…
This is at the Grote Markt Plein. Of course, the tree was being constructed the day after a somewhat annoying storm. It was still raining when this picture was taken, with occasional high wind gusts. But they persevered!
When I turned the television on this morning I switched to Nick, Jr. For most of the summer I used to watch only children’s tv programming when I was alone, though these days I only watch one program: Timmy Tijd (Wiki: English) on that channel. What can I say – the animation is for this little preschool sheep is cute. It uses the same animation as Wallace & Gromit. I don’t even watch it for the language as there are no words! After watching Timmy Tijd I switch over to Comedy Central for episodes of Sam Sam, Het Zoonetje in Huis, and Kees & Co – all Dutch comedy shows.
But I noticed this morning that the show after Timmy Tijd was something different – a show by the name of Kleine Klaas. The description reads:
Deze oude, wijze man die elk jaar op 5 december cadeautjes uitdeelt, was ooit natuurlijk een kleine jongen. This wise, old man who gives out gifts every year on December 5 was also of course once a small boy.
Van wie heeft hij eigenlijk die stoomboot gekregen? Waarom kan hij zo goed gedichten schrijven? En waarom stopt hij zomaar cadeautjes in je schoen? Kortom, hoe werd hij Sinterklaas? Je ontdekt het door het kijken van deze leuke filmpjes. Who did he actually receive the steamboat from? Why can he write such good poems? And why does he put gifts in your shoe? How did he become Sinterklaas? You can discover this by looking at these fun videos.
Sinterklaas arrives in the Netherlands on November 17 this year (usually he arrives on a Saturday). There will be a parade in The Hague. And of course he does not arrive alone – Zwarte Piet (black Pete) comes along as well. This year the discussions of racism seem to have intensified, with even the United Nations briefly involved before retreating and dropping the case. The controversy with the character is that the actor uses “black face” as decoration, although this is used regardless of your skin tone.
Of course, Sinterklaas (celebrated on December 5) is not the same as Santa Clause (celebrated on December 25 in America and other countries). Sinterklaas leaves gifts in your shoe and is real in a child’s mind. Santa Clause is not celebrated as such in the Netherlands – the gifts you get on December 25 (and 26!) are known to be from your parents. The idea of Santa Clause actually originated from Sinterklaas – which I found a bit odd as an American!
Just like many cultures, the Netherlands has this crazy thing where the Christmas displays and food related items appear earlier and earlier every few years. This year it seems the agreed-upon date for all of the supermarkets was September 1 for Sinterklaas sweets, especially kruidnoten (yum) and gevulde speculaas (double yum – thanks Roger for showing me that one). I made sure my parents went home with a package of that, as it’s a seasonal treat.
At least Albert Heijn realizes that the treats are ending up on the shelves earlier and earlier. Above the seasonal area they had this message:
Voor iedereen die kan niet wachten op al het snoopgoed.
For everyone who cannot wait for all of the treats/candy. 🙂
Today Marco and I went to his dad and wife’s apartment for another Christmas meal. (Yay – two official days of Christmas means two meals!)
We had soup for an appetizer, which was noodles, chicken, and some sort of small green leaves. Afterwards, we were served a baked egg resting in tomato sauce, which was interesting. I have not eaten many eggs in my life, but it was nice as a rare appetizer. You can actually see it in the image below, on the plate.
The main meal is pictured below:
The furthest left dish was chicken legs (chicken on a bone). The second dish on the left was green beans with onions. The following dish was chicken with sauce, and then furthest right dish was rice with curry.
Dessert was chocolate and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce and a yellow sauce that can only be described as “bitter eggnog” (it was good) and a hard waffle to sample. Afterwards we all enjoyed a cup of coffee (zwarte or black for me). As you can tell below, the dessert was already half eaten when the picture was taken. ;p
At some point during the night Marco set up the Christmas present he gave his dad – a new wireless router. It only took two tries and a hard reset of the router and modem to get it started, but it worked after a bit. Then since they had wireless internet Marco and I could finally set up their Apple account for their iTouch. Once that was finished, I downloaded a Dutch news app for them (Nieuws RTL) and a Mahjong app. I figure by tomorrow both of them will have downloaded twenty game apps… each. 🙂
It’s hard to believe that I have already been in the Netherlands for a week. It does not feel like that – although that might be because Marco still has vacation for a bit longer. Who knows. 😉
This afternoon, the three of us went to the movies to see the Hobbit. This time we went to Pathé Buitenhof, a new movie theater for me. The Hobbit was pretty good, although I didn’t know until a few days ago that they were going to make this story a three part movie as well. The scenery was bright and colorful, while the 3D wasn’t too distracting in the movie.
Afterwards, we went back to our place to have hamburgers and mashed potatoes while we watched a bit of the 49ers – Seahawks game. We finished up the night watching A Christmas Story, which was a gift Roger gave me for Christmas. So I can pretend that I am back in America watching the movie on the TBS channel’s 24 hour marathon (Christmas Eve through Christmas day).
One thing I forgot to mention – when we were at Roger’s a few nights ago we ordered takeout. I ordered shoarma with garlic sauce (also known as shawarma) which was a delicious meat dish. I also ordered raspatat, which is like (french) fries, just slightly more condensed. I am looking forward to ordering that meal again!
Today we managed to get up a bit earlier, with the help of a carefully crafted alarm clock scheme which was set to go off earlier in the morning. It mostly worked…
For lunch we went simple this time – my request was bread with cheese and jalapeno slices. It wasn’t slices of bread but rather little bread pockets which you bake and then cut open to stick the cheese and jalapenos inside.
Marco’s mom visited at 1PM, so we had a lot of fun torturing Marco as she tried to explain various events and stories in Dutch and English (though I am not sure Marco calls that type translating fun!). Now after a cup of tea she has departed, and here I am writing the blog post.
Of course, I am writing this blog post earlier in the day as we will be going over to Roger’s in a few hours to have dinner and watch various tv shows and wrestling. Generally Marco doesn’t get back until pretty late so I didn’t want to have to start the blog post at that time of night.
Here is the Christmas tree that we put together (Marco did 98% of the work on the branches and the lights, but I got pretty into the decorations even though you cannot see that them well here):
I am still not quite out of the eastern time zone yet… suffice to say Marco and I woke up quite late again. Both of us thought it was much earlier in the morning than it actually was when his alarm went off.
After lunch we decided to go out for a bit to see the city, and also to pick up some stamps for Christmas cards and go to Albert Heijn for some more provisions. My new second home!
Along the way we stopped at El Passage (The Passage) and looked at some of the stores. We also stopped to get a picture of the Christmas tree that they set up in the center:
If you look up at the top you can see that the area is technically enclosed (there is material above the other hallways which prevents rain getting inside).
While we were there, we stopped at Selexyz, a bookstore I always manage to drool over and enter because, hey, I am a librarian after all.
a shot of some of the Christmas decorations in the Hague Selexyz bookstore
As you can see in the background, they have the “cliché” of using books to make a Christmas tree. At least they wrapped them! It seems that this particular store will be merging with De Slegte down the street, which is a secondhand book store. Should be interesting…
Along the way, Marco secretively led me to the stroopwafels vendor and bought me a nice hot stroopwafel. A large size too. We then toured the area looking at phone shops to buy me a phone, though at the moment we are still browsing.
When we got back we had dinner. Greek seasoned chicken stuffed into pita bread pockets, with potato bites on the side. Later on in the night, we watched Iron Man, a first for me. It was particularly enjoyable because I turned on the Marco commentary track to help me understand all of the little comic book references. ;p Our snack during that was a little bit of chili cheese Fritos chips (from America – smuggled from my parents’ hometown) and Bolognese Lays brand chips, an Italian flavor — see the Dutch selection of Lays brand chips.
All in all a fun night!
Life in the Hague 