A Guide for Buying Eggs in Netherlands

I went to Maikel's place for dinner last evening. I first called him from the office, and he told me all the details on how to get to his place by bike so that I would not get lost on the way. Thanks a lot Google Maps! Amsterdam map was open in both of our browsers; and it was very convenient then to follow his directions on phone.

How to get there
I rode through Oosterstraat, going straight ahead; passed through Nobelweg till I hit Kruislaan. Then, I took a fietspad (cycle path) by keeping the highway always on my right. After a while, I saw Diemen Zuid station and passed under the rail tracks. I had already taken notes of all details; so It was not that difficult to get to Clara Zetkinstraat and finally to Kruitberg through Kraaiennestpad. Kraaiennest means crow nest by the way, and the metro station nearby is also called so.

Dinner
He is really a good cook! He cooked a very delicious vegetarian pizza,and a dessert whose recipe I will ask (mix of yoghurt, lime, milk ).

Chickens without beaks !!
He had a box of eggs on his kitchen bench. He gave me the details of the lables on the inner side of the box cover:


Here, there are a group of numbers on the eggs we buy. Each number starts with either of 0, 1, 2, 3. The first column of the explanations in the picture points to the meaning of these numbers; and this column is the most important part to pay attention when buying eggs.

Maikel said that he always buys the ones labeled with zero (organic/ biologisch) or 1 (chicken freely allowed to eat outside in grasses/ vrije uitleop). I asked if 3-kooi meant cow. "No" he said, "it is cage. The eggs labeled with 3 are from chicken always kept in cages."

"I never buy eggs with labels of 2 or 3 since the beaks of those chickens are cut off" he said. I was in a big surprise! "Since they are kept together, otherwise they make harms to each other with their beaks when they have fights" he explained.

How awful! Never heard this before. Now I regret that I did not pay attention to those labels before. My campaign is: never 2- or 3- labels to discourage harms to chicken beaks!

Tutorial: Why should a Dutch retire at 70?

There was already a discussion going on in dutch media if the retirement age had to be increased to 67 from 65. Today's DutchNews quotes the related minister saying that it should be 70.

Then I remembered one stroll-discussion I had with Tjeerd on the woods (weiland) across WKZ.
Well, I had never elaborated on the retirement age discussions before. The points Tjeerd made made quite sense to me; it was a tutorial-like chat :)

So the basic answers to the question is:

• Dutch people live longer in recent years (the case in all developed countries). This requires more retirement salary/support for government budget. This, in turn, affects the working dutch population since they have to support more retired people. It is getting more interesting if we think that the birth rate is getting lower in the country. So, relatively less and less working people will support more and more retired people. (I wondered if "less people" is grammatically correct: it looks so according to UsingEnglish website.)


• One solution would be to encourage birth rate increase. However, this is not that logical considering the population density of the country. (It is the densest european country I guess; much denser than Turkey)


• So, one solution is to increase the age for retirement. In other words, those are why the government is so eager to increase retirement age..

Did I remember correctly Tjeerd? :D

How to call your mom and dad if you live in Holland..

Mohammad had told me and Donatella on the JN Reunion day that he had heard that danish teenagers would call their parents with their first names. Donatella had said that that was not the case in Italy.

I had the opportunity to ask about this to Suzanne and Daniel just few minutes ago.

First I asked Suzanne how she called her parents-in-law. "Just with their first name", she said. I was surprised. She added that although many people use "ma" and "pa", it is getting more common to use their first names.

Then she said that even there are people (some of her friends) who call their own parents with their first names. Daniel and Suzanne, however, do not have this habit..

Over the chat in front of their office, I learned that this sunday Suzanne will be away from Fiona for the first time overnight. So, she was a bit anxious. By the way, finally, I dared to take Fiona to my arms yesterday for the first time.

In the meanwhile, I verified that Daniel's 85-year old grandma could use laptop to send e-mails. I said "even my mother cannot do it". To my surprise, Suzanne's mom cannot do it either :).

PASEN & ASCENSION & PENTACOST

Today is the last of a series of holidays started with Easter (I guess).
First, we celebrated Easter (Pasen in Dutch, Paskalya in Turkish) for four days in March 21-24. It actually starts on thursday, but thursday is not official holiday. So:
White Thursday: the last supper of Prophet Jesus.
Good Friday: crucifixion of prophet Jesus
Silent Saturday: He lays on his tomb
Easter Sunday: This is the third day of crucifixion and he rises from dead.
Easter Monday: I do not know why is this celebrated/made holiday, and it looks that uncle Wiki also does not have any idea..

Then, the next day after Queen's Day, May 1, it was again holiday because of "Ascension day". First I thought that this was becasue of ascending to throne for the queen, but Maikel told me that it was the ascension of prophet Jesus to heaven 40 days after his resurrection..

And, this sonday and monday has been yet another holiday: Pentacost (Pinksteren in Dutch). Wikipedia says that this is the day when the holy spirit came back to his apostles and followers 10 days after his ascension.

How do the Amsterdammers enjoy nice weather?

From my observations in last three holiday days, if you are an Amsterdammer and notice that the weather is nice outside:
1- Grab a cloth, grab your partner & kids etc. if any.
2- Hurry to one of the parks neearby. Among most popular ones are Oosterpark and Vondelpark.
3- Put the cloth on grasses,
4- take off most of your clothes & kids' clothes etc ..
5- Lie on the cloth against sun.
An alternative is; to jump into a boat of yours or friends' (i guess), with the 4th remark above being valid..