Wednesday March 31st, 2010: Over the last few days we have been trying to find somewhere to live which is not a full time job, but involves making and waiting for phonecalls and sitting by the computer waiting for emails, waiting to hear what so and so says before contacting the other so and so and calling people only to be told “call back tomorrow” – apparently this is a very Dutch way of dealing with phonecalls. So, in between we have been visiting the shops, the cafes and the restaurants, the laundromat and reading English books in the bookshop.
Some Dutch Food we have tried:Koffie (Coffee) - the coffee is very rich and nice and served in a small cup with koffiemelk on the side. Koffiemelk is basically unsweetened condensed milk and goes well with the coffee. You always get a little biscuit (koekje) on the side – it’s lovely.
Appelgak (Dutch apple cake) – If three times constitutes a habit, it is now our habit to share an appelgak or an apple pastry at F. Plasman De Banketbakker with a cup of koffie in the afternoon. It’s a frenzy in there at 3pm – they have the most beautiful looking cakes, pastries and chocolates.
Dropjes (liquorice lollies) – apparently can be salty or sweet. The ones we tried tasted like a choo choo bar covered in vegemite. We tried two each then binned the rest of the bag.
Bitterballen (crumbed deepfried “meat balls”) – we had them at a pub with drinks – they are a pre dinner snack. You dip them in a mustard mayonnaise with a toothpick. The filling was more like a seasoned mashed potato in my opinion but Sean was tasting roast chicken stuffing. Who knows what it really was.
Hagelslag (chocolate sprinkles) – enjoyed on buttered bread for breakfast – quite delicious. It’s not just for children.
Other Happenings and Goings-on in the Hague:
The hotel guy who we don’t know his name but perhaps he would be a Michael if he was Australian so that’s what Sean and I have been calling him (but more likely he is a Johannes, Hendrick, Frans or Jaap); broke his silence to day when Sean asked him about the koffiemelk prior to breakfast. Up until this morning the communication was mostly single syllables and we thought it was just the Dutch way not to say too much. Little did we know he was bursting to have a natter. We were sitting at our breakfast table and Sean was facing him but I had to crane my neck to turn to look at Michael to hear the story of the various versions of koffiemelk available, real estate prices in the area, lamentations about subdivisions of historic Dutch houses into apartments for expats, the building work going on in the shop next door by unlicensed builders, his mothers heart bypass surgery, the difficulties with getting the heating “just so”, the advantage of double glazing, the individual architectural characteristics of the streets buildings numbers 33 to 45, the need to separate work and home life and the minutiae of daily like as a hotelier. An hour later (Sean timed it on his iphone) Michael’s phone rang and he left the dining room(a bloody relief!) and I was able to massage the cramp out of my neck so that I could start on my cold coffee and breakfast. We quite like Michael though and we think he thinks we are a “nice couple”. He said he knows we are trying to find a “a nice little place” to live because he spoke to Ariadne (the lady from the UN who booked the hotel for us). He gets lots of employees from the UN staying with him prior to securing an apartment so he knows the drill.
Yesterday afternoon Michael knocked on our door with the cordless phone, a telephone call from Sean’s new boss Bob – did we have anything on right now, no, then Bob’s sending round Edmunds and the driver to pick us up. Waiting on the street outside the hotel a dark blue van with blacked out windows stopped, the side door flung open and we were marshalled in to the back bench seat. From there we slid around the back (no seat belts) while the van took us on a speedy driving tour of the Hague. Edmunds turned out to be a large and laid back Latvian who has a similar role to Sean’s position. When Sean asked about his job, Edmunds said “sometimes you will have to write a letter...or something...maybe...we’ll see”. Sean’s job sounds cool. Edmunds didn’t seem a very Latvian name to me but his surname does end in “ski”. His accent was great. The drivers name was Leo and he was Dutch and very cheerful. Actually both guys were pleasant and funny and we all got an opportunity to crack a joke. I think mine was the best – I asked why there was a hotel called “BadHotel” and who would want to stay there if it was “bad”. After everybody pulled themselves back onto their seats from falling over with hysterical laughter, Edmunds explained that ”bad” means “bath” in Dutch and German, as in hotel by the sea or something.
The actual building Sean will be working from is not the main building but is secretly located in a secret spot that I can’t tell you right on the beach at Scheveningen. Leo drove us to all the important buildings like the ICTY main building, ICTY admin building, the International Court of Justice the majestic 5 star hotel at Scheveningen where the one of the VIP witnesses stayed (I won’t tell you it was the Russian foreign minister), the Australian, Serbian, American and French embassies, the Queens residence (not open to the public , under high security) and several other important UN buildings. We also did a drive by of Edmund’s apartment and Bob’s place. Many of the official buildings are really regal and grand and you really get a sense of the international importance of the place when you see the UN flag waving.
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