Pulpo a la Gallego. Ewww!

The Hague, The Netherlands

Last night's dinner had eight legs and a beak. More like some sort of monster. First time ever cooking octopus for us. Here are the tips and recipes we used.

It turned out okay, despite not having pimenton and not blanching/brining. It was a bit chewy, I would say. The dish is probably best for a large, open-minded crowd, considering it serves, eight, get it. Haardy haar! 


Allow plenty of time to simmer/blanch/brine and try it for yourself.

A Very Dutch Branding Issue

The Hague, The Netherlands

Serbia Says Jailed Mladic Will Face War Crimes Trial

After 15 years, Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb... was captured. He will be sent to The Hague for trial...

If I had read this headline a few years ago, The Hague would not have been a place that I should like to visit, let alone live. Doesn't that sound like he was sent to jail (e.g., He was sent to Riker's Island)? (BTW - Rijkers, also named for a Dutchman) Even the BBC, the anchor said "That was John Stone AT The Hague" (Wha?! Dear Dept. of Queen's English, how can you be AT a city?) Bottom line, the Dutch have some branding issues. 

Allow me to propose some branding guidelines for anyone in the House of Orange looking to rebrand their wijk/feifdom/bosch/county/dorp/city/state/country/land:

1. Saint or San - OK; The, 't, 's - Not OK - Location names should start with New, South, Saint (San), or Old, but never "The". Oude Delfshaven, approved. 's Hertogenbosch, foul! Dam or dijk (dike) are good too because they are usually suffixes.  Plus who doesn't love to say "DAAAM!" or "DIKE!"
2. Pick a name with fair vowel to consonant ratio -  The Dutch language is difficult for gringos and non-gringos. What with its funny throat clearing noises, alternating vowel rich words (e.g. zeeëend) and consonant rich words (e.g. slechtstschrijvend) add two more degrees of difficulty. Heck, it's a challenge for us to pronounce the Dutch word "please" (alstublieft.) Paris is a great name. Milan is a great name. Paris is probably the same spelling in every Latin based language. People name cookies after Milan. Also, people name their children "Paris" for Pete's sake! (BbA does not in any way condone naming children Paris)
3. Paris => Parisian; The Hague => Haguer? Haguian? Haagse - For your rebranded town, choose a name where country-men or women will have some relation to the place (from Paris, a.k.a. Parisian. From New York, New Yorker) For the record, people who are from The Hague are Haagse. If you are from The Netherlands, you are ______ (Answer below). If you guessed Hollandaise, you are in good company with people who like rich sauces and French food. Also bad: United States. Hence, "Americans", to the justifiably chagrined 700 Million plus Latinos and some righteously indignant Canadians.
4. You say Binnenhof,  I say Buitenhof, They Say Hofijver, We all say Parliament - One of The Hague's most famous landmarks is its parliament complex. It has a pond in front and is the location of the original Count's Hedge ('s Gravenhage). The Binnenhof, what I incorrectly call the picturesque building, literally means inner courtyard, not the building as I refer to it. Hofijver is the moat in front of it. Buitenhof, the courtyard across the street. It is best to call the whole place parliament. Another bad name, The White House, see 1. above. Pick something comprehensive, that describes the whole location.

   

   The actual Binnenhof, (photo by lyzadanger)
5. Minimize the g's and therefore the growling - If I tell people I live in Amsterdam, they immediately picture where I live: windmills, canals, red lights, and non-stop dance parties. If I say 's Gravenhage, they say "Bless you!" I have a hard time with the letter "g" in the Dutch language. In most cases, it has a throat-clearing, growling sound that immediately betrays you as a non-Dutch native when attempted. When you rebrand your city, try to keep these to a minimum. An exception, Gouda, synonymous with tasty Dutch dairy products, is fun to say in English. As in "Have a Goud-a day!" Caution, in Dutch it is pronounced more like "HCCKKH-ouwt-ehh". If you say "Good-a" no one will know what you are talking about.
6. Pick a name that sounds the same in multiple languages - French for the Netherlands "Les Pays-Bas", Spanish for the Netherlands "Países Bajos" or "Holanda".  All of which connote "low lands" in their respective language. This compounds people not knowing where you are from if you say "The Netherlands." because it sounds nothing like your native language. Hence, I sometimes say Amsterdam, even as we are about 60 km from there. Better to choose a name like Caracas or Kodiak. No translation necessary.

Here are some trivia questions to further illustrate Dutch branding issues: 

I. Which one of these name is the original name for The Hague?

1. t' Hetogenbosch
2. Des Graven Hage
3. Haag
4. Heerhugowaard

II. True or False If you are from The Netherlands you are Dutch

III. True or False If you are from The Netherlands you are from Holland

IV. True of False If you speak Dutch, you also speak Flemish and vice versa

V. What territory used to be part of Holland?

1. Flanders
2. Wallonia
3. Zeeland
4. Zealand

So the next time you drain a part of the north sea or create you own city, why not choose something that is easy for Dutchmen and non-Dutchmen to wrap their mind around? My suggestion Flavoland (as in Flavor Flav o'land).




Answers: 
I: 2., II: True, III: True and False Holland is an easter, low-lying, sub-area of The Netherlands. Amseterdam and The Hague are in Holland. After all, people in The Netherlands living outside Holland do not like people saying they are from Holland., IV: True, Dutch and Flemish derive from the same root language, V. Flanders is the Dutch/Flemish speaking part of the dysfunctional country of Belgium.

Eurovision - Where American Idol, The Olympics, and Geopolitics Collide

The Hague, The Netherlands

If you had asked me one week ago: What is Eurovision? I would have guessed that it is the name of a television network in France that produces a steady stream of the French equivalent of Telenovelas. I would have been totally wrong. It is, in fact, a musical performance contest where 43 countries compete for 25 slots in a 3 hour performance broadcast live this past Saturday night from Dusseldorf, Germany. It has been going on for 56 years. All 43 participating countries get to vote for the winner out of that group of 25. (You might be asking: "43? Are there really that many countries in Europe?" Well, yes, there are more than that, if you throw in Israel, Russia, Vatican city, and San Marino (just kidding about Vatican City, they did not participate this year).

In case you missed it, the song contest is an entertaining evening of music, costumes, dance, and light displays. The performers are closer to N'Sync and Ke$ha than anything else, but PG-rated. There were some very good acts and some oddities. We enjoyed Bosnia Herzegovina's kitschy cold-war-folk-rock-performance, Estonia's discordant pop-song, hard rocking Georgia, and a festive Spanish performance. In a rare Eurovision moment, Lena, the comely winner from Germany last year defended her title in an enjoyable performance. We were laughing at the French's opera singing heat throb and Greece's spoken word + off key Gregorian chant/opera + ionic columns in the background (side note: honestly ionic columns! Greece should invest some of the bailout money on R&D in coming up with a new type of column). None of the bands we thought were going to do well, except for BH, placed high in the voting.

Eurovision is truly unAmerican in the sense that it runs for 3 hours on public television, without commercials, and the voting of each country is revealed live at the end, country by country. It is truly American in the sense that almost the entire show is in English, which makes it very easy to watch. Votes are 50% popular, 50% by a committee from each country. There must be a lot of criticism about the voting because the hosts defended it a few times by saying "It's how we have always done it." Also,voting is like the U.S. Senate, that is to say strange, because Andorra and San Marino has the same voting strength Germany and France. Countries tended to vote for their neighbors and conspiracies abound.  I went to bed as the votes of 43(!) countries were tallied.

Azerbaijan, The Eastern part of "Eastern Europe"

In the morning of the following day, I learned that Aizerbaijan took the title, in a surprise to rest of Europe. Bordering Iran and normally known for its "strong women's volleyball", "adept chess players", and above average "performances on Russian quiz shows", Azerbaijan's attractive duet had memorable white costumes. In fact, that's all I can remember of their performance. As the winner, Azerbaijan has the honor of hosting next year. Given the estimated cost of 30 million euros to put on such an event, Greece, Ireland, and some of the other countries were probably relieved that they did not win.

There is a lot of geopolitical analysis, naval-gazing, and tea leaf reading that goes into the contest. Just do a search  on Google and you'll see headlines like "Ireland pins bailout hopes on Eurovision" or "The Netherlands did not make the finals for the third year in a row, Parliament investigates", etc. All the self-examination is probably the most strange and least enjoyable bit of the extravaganza.

Bottom line, Eurovision probably does do more to help countries cooperate than foster, counter-productive, nationalistic sentiments. Like the Olympics, it probably does little net good or, at worst, little harm to have the contest for a region that has had countless wars over the past thousand years. I'll certainly be paying more attention next year to see how Azerbaijan puts on the show and looking forward to the zany costumes and back drops!

Tip: 6 Ways to Circumvent NYTimes' Paywall, For Now

The Hague, The Netherlands

Today is the last day of April, and if you're anything like me, you are saying "Thank Goodness!" because you hit your twenty article limit on nytimes.com on April 2nd and you are forced to adjust for the remaining 3.5 weeks. In the second full month of their new implementation, I have run out of article quota very quickly. While you try to sell me on why I should buy a subscription (or not read the NYTimes) instead of viewing their advertisements, I will tell you about all of the different ways you can still view the nytimes articles without having a subscription.

Their pay wall is predicated upon being able to store cookies in your browser and giving access to articles from search engines like Google. That means you can use the following techniques to still view articles:

• Go Incognito - Specifically for Google's Chrome browser, if you right click on the link for the article you would like to read, Click on the "Open link in incognito window" you will be able to read the full article.
• Use a RSS Feed Reader - Set up something like Google Reader and start adding NYTimes RSS feeds. For example, if you copy the "Bucks" blog URL and paste it in the appropriate place in your feed reader, you can launch the articles from there. In general, this is a good way to keep track of sections you like to follow regularly in the paper.
• Use Different Browsers - Firefox, Internet Explorer 9, Opera, Safari, etc. they are all good now. Since they all of have separate cookie jars, you can build up your quota on each one.
• Go to Articles via Search Engines - I use the NYTimes for a lot for high quality recipes. They are usually well tested and have good stories that accompany them. If I am looking for a kale recipe I type "site:nytimes.com kale" in the search box. This will search only nytimes.com for articles with "kale." Clicking on these links will allow you to view the article even if you have maxed out your limit. Google News will also provide links that will take you there.
• Go Mobile - This is similar to using different browsers but I find that I read a lot of articles my phone
• Disable Cookies - Most browsers have a setting where you can disable all cookies. You probably won't be able to login if you have registered with a site and this might interfere with other sites where you do want to store cookies so do this in one of your browsers and use it for browsing the news.

Even with these work-arounds, I find myself going to the Times less and less and other lamestream news sources more. Other news outlets are probably loving the Times' decision. I doubt that the Times is going to be able to stick with its current model. I don't like it but I think the WSJ model of selectively locking articles is much better. We'll see how it plays out.

Travel: Behind the Scenes with Rick Steves on Italian Dining

Italian Restaurant Food vs. American Restaurant Food

The Hague, The Netherlands




Those of you who have traveled with me know that I travel like a 57 year old woman: 3 star hotels, early dinners, and Rick Steves' travel books. Mix in our trip to Rome and I was very interested when I saw this recent article in the Seattle Times where RS talks about his experience with Italian restaurateurs and their take on American food.

Not surprisingly and somewhat deservedly, there is a lot of criticism of portion sizes and huge dollops of overly sweet bbq sauces and salad dressings. I find this criticism mostlly unfounded and I won't bother going into the undercooked pasta dinner we had in Italy at Rick's say-so (trust me, not al dente). Interestingly, he gives a glimpse of how he reviews restaurants. That is something I always wonder given travel writers must have short deadlines and limited time in each neighborhood or city.

Let me know your favorite travel guide writers/publishers or the best place to get travel tips.

Travel: Panorama Mesdag in The Hague, The Netherlands

The Hague, The Netherlands

The Panorama itself is tucked behind the Hilton Hotel in The Hague

There is a cool piece in the Wall Street Journal about the Panorama Mesdag in The Hague, The Netherlands. Maggie blogged about it back when we did our Amazing Museum race. It is well worth a stop. 

Admission was included with our Dutch Museumkaart and I think we even had one of the little promotional cards for a free coffee. Look for that at the VVV when you pick up your free Hague map and then head over to the panorama. It is in between the Centrum and the Peace Palace. 

If that is not enough. There are a number of other works by Hague School artists and a great set of post cards to collect in a tidy little gift shop. 

Yet another thing to do when you visit The Hague!

Tip: Using Regex to Find and Replace Two or More Spaces in Text

To find and, perhaps, replace text with two or more spaces use the following regex:

/s/s+

You could use this in Notepad++ or Excel along with just about any programming language.

Regex (Regular Expressions) are one of those techie things that are everywhere (e.g. Excel) but you never use unless you're are a serious nerd (and I mean serious). In order to remain cool, I have avoided their use. However, recently I have been scrubbing large text files and I decided it might be faster if I caved and used a regex.

Regex is a syntax or language for manipulating text or strings. For example, you might remember Microsoft DOS commands like "dir *.*" that would list all files with any filename or three letter extension. Regex is similar (not exactly the same) to shell commands like that.

In my quest to become a nerd, I found that the support documents are not for novices. Send me some comments if you know of some good sandboxes for building regex.