Lazy Sundays (Or: Just the way I like it)

Niki

Jan 29

Today is turning out to be a lovely, lazy Sunday. Marco and I slept in a bit before enjoying a nice breakfast (peanut butter toast and buttered toast for me, banana spelt pancakes for Marco). Later on we'll go visit a friend for his birthday, but for now we're just taking it easy.

Here are some random things going on in The Netherlands:

The Netherlands is getting rid of its deer farms after new breeding ban from dutchreview.nl. This also has an effect on The Hague's deer farm by Central Station/Malieveld, although the farms will only disappear from 2024 after the last deer passes away. But it makes sense in today's world – why keep an animal in captivity, even if you have done so for hundreds of years.

Above is a deer by Koekamp near Central Station/Malieveld (August 2020).

Going Dutch? The language test won't be harder this year after all from dutchnews.nl. About a year after you come to the Netherlands you need to take a language test to allow you to stay in the country. When I came over the language level was A2 on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (English Wikipedia). A2 is still fairly basic; you can understand simple situations but you can't independently get through most Dutch conversations. The Dutch government wanted to increase the requirement to B1 but they weren't able to do so for 2023. After moving here I took the equivalent of the B1 test and it was okay. I continued on with B2 classes and stopped halfway through the C1 classes.

Note: it's also interesting to click on the article above because you can see a photo of a corona sign asking people to stay 1.5 meters apart. But in the sign it says "1.5 meters kan je mama's life saven", which is a horrible, horrible mix of English and Dutch. Someone also took offense to the use of English, crossing out life saven and writing leven redden, what it should be. Just like Spanish (where non-Spanish speakers like to add an -o to everything), people who don't speak Dutch or remember the verb will sometimes use the English word and just add -en.

French fries become more expensive due to price increase of Dutch potatoes from nltimes.nl. Oh uh. There are many factors here: the dry summer last year, increased demand, the war in Ukraine (due to rising energy costs), etc. etc. But considering this country loves its potatoes, that's not good.

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