Here is a quick photo taken outside of the local Asian store, Amazing Oriental. Sometimes it is busy enough that you just gotta social distance yourself. There are small bits of caution tape along the wall letting you know where to stand.
Kudos to the store for keeping a manageable amount of people inside at the one time – you’re only able to enter when the worker brings back a free shopping cart. It was also a relatively fast moving line as the average wait was only two or three minutes.
Here is a sign spotted a few days ago by the Sostrene Grenes store:
I’ll admit I just thought it was a nice sign in the corona times, but Marco explained that it also a pun on the existing phrase ‘Houd je haaks!’ which is said when someone leaves. It means something like ‘Stay safe’, ”Keep well’ or ‘Take care’. The two phrases–Houdjehaaks and HoudjeHaags–sound very similar when spoken aloud, but of course #HoudjeHaags is the phrase Dutchies from The Hague would use.
And if you’re interested, the city of The Hague would like to sell you a t-shirt with that phrase, with a bit more than half of the proceeds going to charity.
For those reading the United States – yes, I’ve gotten used to the convention of calling soccer football.
Recently I was in the Albert Heijn and I spotted some Pringles cans in the chips aisle:
The Dutch football season was canceled earlier this week after the Dutch government said that large events would not be allowed before 1 September at the earliest. Even so, the Pringoooals promotion is still going on, at least in some countries (Dutch link).
The Dutch football association was left with a puzzle after deciding to cancel the remainder of the football season. They let the affected clubs vote, but of course not everyone is happy and there is talk of lawsuits. The FA has decided the following (see also DutchNews.nl):
Although various teams are unhappy, the chances of winning in court are quite low (Dutch article from nos.nl).
I’ll admit I am definitely missing sports on TV. I wasn’t always a big football fan, but sometimes it provides the perfect amount of entertainment or background noise. And since Marco and I have Ziggo, we have seen a lot of English Premier League games over the years.
Marco spotted this poem on the side of a building in The Hague city centre. It’s across from the MediaMarkt (to the left of the photo is the Rootz restaurant).
In English it reads:
Mirror, mirror on the wall
I want to walk on the beach, hand in hand
I want to greet people on the street
and give a hug to the neighbor
with whom I talk
I want to eat something with others
without having to measure 1.5 meters
I want to look at how the tulips bloom
and stand in line for a party
I want to enjoy the spring sun
and walk with friends around the block
But for now we need to call each other
and be nice, even if it is with a small gesture
And then—before we know it—
we’ll be with each other again…
As mentioned in a previous post, the “intelligent lockdown” rules have been extended through 20 May, with a few exceptions for children. Unfortunately this means that The Hague public libraries have extended their closure date through Sunday, 24 May with a hopeful reopening on Monday, 25 May. Good news: the free-even-for-non-members app “ThuisBieb” (Home Library) with around 100 e-books can now be used through 1 June. Read away!
I also mentioned in a previous post that I love the online library service (onlinebibliotheek.nl) and have already used their E-books app for one book, The Traveling Cat Chronicles (review from theguardian.com). I have since moved on to another book, Where’d you go, Bernadette, which is a completely different type of book, and not just because of the subject matter. The book is made up of emails, invoices, memos, letters – written by different characters that know Bernadette. It’s good, although work is a bit more taxing the last few days so I haven’t been reading as much as I could be at night.
Online is good, but there’s something to be said about the feel of printed pages and the random things you find which could loosely be labelled as “bookmarks”. In my case the last “bookmark” I found was a pressed purple flower. Or I think about browsing through the stacks, having a coffee downstairs in the café…
If anyone from the library world is reading this, just know that I’m taking good care of the four books I have in my possession until I can return them again. (And seriously, if I had known I would have checked out another five at least!)
You never know what you miss until you don’t have it anymore. What are you missing because of this current situation?
Prime minister Mark Rutte and RIVM director Jaap van Dissel held a national press conference this evening to discuss the corona situation in The Netherlands, including which measures could be relaxed and which needed to be extended.
Official rules in Dutch are available at rijksoverheid.nl. Here are some highlights in English:
And the rules that haven’t changed and will likely be in effect through 19 May:
In the week before 19 May, the Dutch government will hold another press conference describing what measures will be lifted or extended.
Tomorrow the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte will announce what coronavirus measures will be lifted, and in some cases what measures will be extended. For us normal folk, it’s a guessing game.
One expectation is that the ban on events will be extended. Some Dutch mayors are hoping for an extension of the ban until 1 September: Burgemeesters willen tot zeker 1 september een verbod op evenementen (nos.nl, article in Dutch). This one I do expect to happen as it’s unlikely that the government would ignore them.
Another measure that people are quite interested in is the re-opening of schools. Scholen open of langer dicht? ‘Zelfs leerlingen beginnen school nu te missen’ (nos.nl, article in Dutch). The headline reads: Schools open, or closed for longer? Even students are beginning to miss school now. Yikes! Meivakantie (“May vacation”) begins next week, from 25 April to 3 May. After that… working parents everyone are looking for a break. If we see any change here, it might be the elementary schools opening first.
The other big one is whether or not restaurants will be fully open, rather than just open for takeout and delivery. This one I don’t expect to change any time soon. June at the earliest. However, that doesn’t mean restaurants can’t plan in the meantime. For instance, some restaurant owners on the Scheveningen beach have presented how they see life in the ‘1.5m society’: Strandtenten klaar voor serveren op anderhalve meter: ‘Zee aan ruimte’. (nos.nl, article in Dutch).
Work is another interesting dilemma, especially in the office – that one I can’t predict. I don’t think they are ready to lift the ‘work from home if you can’ advice, so I expect we will be working from home a bit longer. But perhaps they will remind businesses that now is the time to start thinking about how it will look in the future.
Continue readingI am one of the lucky folks who should be celebrating a birthday during these corona times. Officially I’ve said I’ll celebrate it later in the summer (I mean come on: when will I ever have a chance to celebrate my birthday in the summer again? Who could pass up that opportunity?).
On Friday I received an email from my workplace’s HR department, wishing me a happy birthday and telling me they would be delivering cupcakes on Saturday (yesterday).
The delivery itself was anti-climatic but still tinged by the coronavirus: Someone rang the doorbell. I open the door. The box of cupcakes have been carefully left on the doormat, with the deliveree standing at the edge of the stairs at a safe distance. She points to the box, we exchange the standard pleasantries, and then she is gone again.
Cupcakes! Yum!
This photo is from last Tuesday, April 7. I just had to take a photo of this much toilet paper together in one spot (who knew that would be an important photo):
There’s some things to note with this photograph:
Otherwise I would say most things are back – maybe pasta and rice are still a bit low, but they are definitely always at least half stocked. Pasta sauce is still a bit hit or miss, as noted in a previous post.
What is your local grocery store still missing in these coronavirus times?
As one might (unfortunately) expect, all of the public libraries in The Hague are closed. Libraries are something you definitely miss when you don’t have them anymore!
Luckily there is a solution to my current problem, and not just reading the handful of books I have lying around the house already, either. E-books can also be downloaded at onlinebibliotheek.nl and read either on your computer, via an app on your phone or tablet, or via your e-reader. You have three weeks to read the book, after which they are removed from your device and you need to download them again. Note: most titles are in Dutch, although there is a bit of English in the mix.
eBooks app – for members with a Dutch library card number or a subscription to onlinebibliotheek.nl. As noted there is a bit of English titles here, but it is mostly Dutch.
LuisterBieb app – audiobooks; for members with a Dutch library card number or a subscription to onlinebibliotheek.nl. A select number are also available for those without a membership.
ThuisBieb app – this app has about 100 titles for adults and 100 titles for children – it’s free for everyone, but everything is in Dutch.
It was really simple to download my first eBook – I simply entered my library card number on the website to make an account, found a book, downloaded the eBooks app, entered my login details one more time, and started reading.
I chose “The traveling cat chronicles” in Dutch, and just finished it last night. It’s a great story about a cat and his owner going on road trips so that the owner can find a new person to take care of his cat. Each chapter features a different road trip and has a flashback about how the owner met each of these friends during his school years. After the flashback, the chapter returns to present times and you move to the cat’s point of view again for the rest of the chapter.
Warning: a box of tissues is a good thing to have around for this one.
Life in the Hague 