After some experimenting I managed to create an English language Daily paper based on Tweets: The Absolutely The Hague Daily. The Daily is aggregated on the basis of a small list of Tweeps who are connected to The Hague and who in general tweet in English.
It is a less flashy but better reading in English Daily than the Dutch version I reported about here..
Let me know what you think.
STET – Stichting The English Theatre – promotes and produces professional English-language theatre for the international community in The Hague and surrounding areas.
STET is the brainchild of Elske van Holk who worked for the Southwark Playhouse, a famous studio theatre on the London Fringe. She was a part of its production team for six years where she learned the ropes and trade of theatre production. She started STET in June 2006 upon her return to The Netherlands, having identified the need for a good high quality English-language theatre in The Hague.
The English Theater has been involved in over 20 productions in the past three years. The locations where the productions are often performed add a special charm to the performances.
Ashley Ramsden’s A Christmas Carol was performed in one of the oldest and best-preserved almshouses in The Hague “Het Hofje van Wouw” (1634). The open-air performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Mowgli Stories (aka Jungle Book) by the British theatre company Illyria, sometimes accompanied by champagne picnics, at the Oranjerie of Duivenvoorde Castle from late August have now become a tradition for many.
STET’s oncoming production, The Guildhall Graduates 2010 – Young Talents from London, takes place on 29 September to 3 October at the Branoul Literair Theater in the Maliestraat, The Hague. Three young graduates from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama will perform their graduation solo pieces. Collaborating with Drew Balch (viola), the monologues are written and directed by the actors themselves as part of their final examination requirements.
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is one of Europe’s leading conservatories. It boasts of Daniel Craig, Joseph Fiennes and Ewan McGregor among others as its alumni.
More information and online bookings can be found on their website www.theenglishtheatre.nl
Duivenvoorde Castle dates from the 13th century and is one of the oldest in South Holland.
Originating in the 13th century, Duivenvoorde Castle (Kasteel Duivenvoorde) in The Hague suburb of Voorschoten is one of the oldest castles in Zuid Holland. For the first five centuries of its history one family, the Van Duivenvoordes, who gave the castle its name, owned the castle. Opened to the public in 1960, the castle’s magnificent rooms are furnished with Delft earthenware, Chinese and European porcelain and portraits of the noble Van Duivenvoorde family.
This year the castle celebrates 50 years of being opened to public with a number of special events including a series of lectures, a photo, drawing and painting competition and exhibition based on the theme Timeless Trendy which focuses on the way the castle’s interior and modern art collection.
Duivenvoorde Castle is also available for special events and is a popular place for weddings, parties and in the summer months, concerts. Every October candlelight tours are offered, allowing you to experience the splendor of this beautiful castle by candlelight.
For more information on Duivenvoorde Castle, its opening hours and 50th year celebration visit the website.
The Hague a good place to live
I love the international character of my city. Originally from Australia I have lived in The Hague since 1989. The plan was to stay for a couple of years but now more than 20 years later I am still here.
Growing up in The Hague I used to hang out a lot in the city centre. I even met my Tunisian husband in a café down town. Now we have two daughters and live in Escamp, the south west part of city.
I work in the Archipel neighbourhood at the WBII, an international network for entrepreneurial women. The WBII focuses on small business entrepreneurs creating a network for like minded people. We organise business-focused events and connect the international members to the local businesses creating unique networking opportunities.
Last year I even started my own business Orange Buzz offering web solutions for both businesses and individuals to improve their online presence. I enjoy sharing my online know-how and helping others get the most out of the internet. Being a self confessed web-junkie my business is an extension of what I was already doing. With over 5 years blogging experience, koffiekitten.com is my main blog, I now have multiple blogs. This year I joined forces with HappyHotelier setting up this blog to promote my home city.
Somewhat of a gypsy I have lived in different parts across the city and love each part for very different reasons. There is a lot to see and do but even now I still discover new places and things to do. While one day I might move abroad I plan to stay here until then and I really do miss The Hague when I go abroad, or even to other cities in The Netherlands, feeling instantly at home once we cross over the city limits.
If you say “Hopje” or “Hopjes” in plural, a Dutchman will associate it with The Hague immediately. Foreigners may associate it with a typical Dutch candy.
As the Dutch words “Haags” or “Haagsch” and “Haagse” or “Haagsche” mean “something or someone from The Hague”, a Haagsch Hopje is a coffy candy from the Hague.
Wikipedia has an English Language and a Dutch language lemma on Hopje. Former links with The Hague Daily Photo Blog, a blog sadly discontinued by its author Lezard, but still worth while a visit. I took the second photo from it.
Hopje’s History is also Typically Haags
It is named after baron Hendrik Hop who used to live in The Hague. His doctor advised him not to drink coffee, but he craved coffee like many of us. According to some sources it happened entirely by accident as Hop left a mixture of coffee and sugar simmer too long on his stove so that a heavily caramelized substance was left in the cup. He asked baker Theodorus van Haaren, who lived on the ground floor, to create coffee lumps that he could dissolve in water as a coffee alike drink. After some experimenting, van Haaren created a sweet made of coffee, caramel, cream and butter.
Where else than in The Hague could a Baron cause the invention of a candy?
Noteworthy is the hopje became so popular as a candy that there were many brands, each claiming being the producer of the original hopje. Rademaker’s is one of the brands that still survive, but Haagsche Hopjes are being made in Breda nowadays.
The Hague used to have a Museum dedicated to its Hopje, but that has been closed since 1998.
Our own Maurits inspired me to create The Hague Daily by Absolutely The Hague! as an experiment on paper.li. It is a good read on an Ipad!
It’s an experiment. The content is scraped from tweets of The Hague Tweeps. The disadvantage is most Tweeps there twitter in Dutch and not in English.
paper.li offers a widget, but that doesn’t work here, because the blog is not self hosted (yet).
More/better ideas?
Yes in jotting this down the answer is very simple: Just base The Hague Daily on a list of English Language Tweeps….
I’ll continue and try to fine tune this experiment.
Every year the TodaysArt Festival transforms the city centre of The Hague into an inspiring stronghold of creativity and audiovisual experiences. In just six years TodaysArt developed into one of the foremost art festivals in Europe.
Its growing success is showed by the expansion of its annual line-up of events and worldwide co-operations. TodaysArt has provided an annual setting for artistic and creative encounters with cultural phenomena that are the upshot of social change. Concerts, exhibitions, performances and interventions carry these inquiries beyond the confines of conventional festival spaces and cultural venues and take them out into the public sphere and throughout the cityscape.
In this process of pervading public spaces and staging festival activities in interesting and appropriate physical settings, TodaysArt has consistently displayed extraordinary imaginativeness. From the train station to the clubs, from churches to the City Hall, unusual locations have repeatedly served as sites of performances and interventions, and have, in turn, been reinterpreted by them.
TodaysArt has, since its inception, been focused on amplifying the new and mapping out barely existent forms of – and transdisciplinary relations between – art, music and technology. Despite battles with finance, ambition and scale, 2010 promises to be another exceptional year: TodaysArt will, in the style its notorious for, plug in to the social possibilities of art, sound and technology in The Hague’s urban and public spaces and further to national and international contexts. This edition will bring together widely varied perspectives; a clamour of different voices that address the issues of how we shape our future and what we want our city to be, and that ask fundamental questions about the context of our urban experience: Who has claims on an authentic and creative cultural life in the city? What is a truly creative city?
TodaysArt will take place on Friday September 24 and Saturday September 25, 2010.
More information: TodaysArt 2010
Especially now that Anton Corbijn has agreed to give an overview of his work in a Q&A on October 12, while his second feature film “The American” With Mr “Nespresso” Clooney drew many well visited opening screens in the USA, this 6th edition of the 2010 Shoot Me Film Festival in The Hague will be a promising one.
BTW did you know that Anton lives in The Hague from time to time?
And did you know he designed the Logo of The Hague Marketing? Here you see him together with Frits Huffnagels and another stand up comedian on a cold First of November evening at the occasion of the unveiling of that logo (I won’t show it in this post though).
Also posted on Hofstijl in Dutch (there you can see the logo if you want:-)
Gerrit is Oranje boven.
Today at Prinsjesdag I acquainted Gerrit because I asked him if I could take his picture. He didn’t understand my Dutch so switching to English, assuming him to be British, Irish or American I asked him where he was from. Barcelona was his answer, and the rest of our chat followed in Catalan.
Meet Gerrit, a pretty cool Barcelona youngster with that Dutch name. Why?
I asked: ‘ Puc preguntar per què té un nom holandès?’
Aha. His father being a Dutchman also explains his strawberry blond hair and the lovely freckles. Or is that racist, as was my former more celtic remark?
I explained ‘Oranje boven’ to him [taronja d’alt] and he was very amused and turned visibly proud.
Great chap, nice conversation.
We live in international times and I love it.
photo: Maurits Burgers – CC-BY-SA
Sunday afternoon some new members of the Guards of Prince’s Day were sworn in at The Binnenhof. Roel put some of his magnificient photos together in this video.
Absolutely The Hague! 