Category: The Hague

Human Holes in Security

Sometimes, when public transport connections are worse than the direct distance between our hotel and the place the guest has to be, I offer them transport in our own limo.

So done this morning. The guest had to be at a very highly secured Dutch Government building. There was a line up of cars in front of the gate. Two security guards were standing at the gate. Every car driver had to show his security badge for a reader in order to open the gate. I had to stop outside the gate and my guests had to go out and let their credentials be verified inside the gate house. Apparently the security reader was not functioning very well. When I was waiting I saw the security guards use their own badge to open the gate for several car drivers in order to keep the line up as small as possible.

I just thought: “I could have been inside already with a copy of a security badge and this kind guard’s cooperation”

#TweetUpTheHague: Why attend and how to boost TweetUp success

It’s an omission that I didn’t post earlier about a TweetUp, especially since I attended my first Tweetup, #TweetUpTheHague no 1 already back in August 2009.

What is a TweetUp?
I like this definition of Paul McFredies of WordSpy:

A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service

I’ts as simple as that. No more no less.

My reasons to attend #TweetUpTheHague

  1. Even dogs do it 🙂 as you can see from the photo of Oppi, the dog of Eppo.
  2. On a more serious note: To satisfy my always present insatiable curiosity: who is behind that blog or Twitteraccount (like this post Twelve Travel Tweeps Twittering satisfies this curiosity).
  3. It is informal, small and casual. Networking is on top of the agenda. My first #TweetUpTheHague was very well organized by @koffiekitten and @SuzyOge It’s success can be measured by the fact that almost all attending this one are eager to meet again now for the second version. They even were so thoughtful as to provide TweetUp name tags.
  4. Like bloggers who blog frequently, tweeps who twitter frequently are outgoing people and fun to meet in person.
  5. At #TweetUpTheHague, a local venue with as only common denominator The Hague being the city where you live or work, you can meet a cross section of your fellow citizens. No matter what their status or occupation is. So you meet new interesting people. For me it is an easy way of connecting with people outside my hospitality niche and away from my computer.
  6. After the venue there is a common ground, because you know each other a bit better. It will make your future communications with those you’ve met more effective. You can help them more effectively if they have questions and they can help you more effectively if you have questions.
    With some of the people I met at the first #TweetUpTheHague I went to Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala here in The Hague, the WP Meetup in Rotterdam and the First WordcampNL in Utrecht.
  7. Why communicate in English? The reason is that many tweeps in The Hague are foreigners who speak Dutch with various degrees of perfection. So it is an opportunity for locals to meet fellow non local citizens and vice versa. But we also do talk Dutch at the event and sometimes Double Dutch:-)
  8. Also it offers an opportunity for non-tweeps to meet tweeps and learn what it is about.


Some success factors to boost a Tweetup

  1. Create a platform in the form of a forum and/or blog as anchor for the venue. For #TweetUpThe Hague number 2 there is now a blog at WordPress, aptly named #TweetupTheHague and a LinkedIn Event. But you can also do that on a Facebook page, a ning community or you can use twtvite or a similar tool.
  2. Proper nametags. How trivial they seem. For me as a photographer of events good name tags enable me to tag my photos more correctly and spread the word more effectively
  3. A good location to meet informally. The next #TweetUpTheHague is in the bar of a local hotel Carlton Ambassador that sponsors the snacks. Personally I don’t believe it is necessary to have WiFi access available as it only distracts people from really meeting each other. But if there is WiFi, you can rub it in to those not attending that they’re missing a good event.
  4. Don’t forget the after venue services: Document it, collect business cards, collect photos and videos about it and publish about it (what we all forgot in our enthusiasm after number 1, although the local paper mentioned it), and continue to maintain the contacts you like after the event.
  5. Success!

Hope to see you Friday for #TweetUpTheHague number 2.

Blogger Hopping – Meeting Gary Arndt

Blogger Hopping – Meeting Gary Arndt

I’m a passionate about people and always want to know more about people who interest me. Whenever possible, I try to connect in real life with the travel bloggers who I have met online already. So when I learned that Gary Arndt, the celebrity travel blogger of Everything Everywhere was passing through The Netherlands I jumped on the occasion and asked him to come along for a chat when time would permit. I had featured Gary already in my 10 Questions For” series in November of 2008 so from time to time we have online contact ever since.

The first photo proudly shows the result of this meeting: Gary in the garden of our little gem Haagsche Suites on July 3, 2009. The same garden that forms the logo of this blog. Off course asking attention for Haagsche Suites is one of the aims of this blog.

BTW Blogger Hopping is a term invented by Benji Lanyado.

Unfortunately we experienced a couple of Fails.

First Fail

At the time Gary was relying on his Ipod with WiFi connection to have contact with the outside world. Mostly through twitter. Much cheaper than the regular Iphone he has acquired since. So the meeting point was supposed to be a train station in The Hague. The problem being there are two important train stations in the Hague. Although I had tweeted to him that I was to pick him up at Den Haag HS – HS stands for Hollands Spoor from the time there were two separate railway companies serving The Hague – or Den Haag in Dutch- around 12.30, he apparently missed that tweet and didn’t show up. I waited about two hours hoping he would have an opportunity to connect via Twitter and I was checking my Blackberry every 5 minutes. After I had returned home he came trough on twitter as he had found some Internet café in the city. I collected him in the city. Clearly he had been waiting at the other station…Den Haag Centraal Station…all in all we lost 3 hours.

Second Fail
Clearly the second Fail is the fact that there is no free WiFi in the trains and neither in the train stations of the Netherlands. However, recently Dutch Government has announced that they will set aside funds to enable trains to have free WiFi in the Dutch trains.

Third, fourth and fifth Fail

  • Two days before I had picked up my new camera, a Canon Eos 5D II that I had ordered to enable me to make a killer back up photoshoot of the great wedding of the daughter of dear friends in that weekend. Mighty proud I was to show it off to Gary. Off course I wanted to use it when Gary and I roamed The Hague. The day before I had already shot some photos on a flash card that came with the camera. Very unfortunately it appeared later that day that that flash card (white label) was not functioning correctly. Despite several trials and errors almost all photos of that second and third July went down the drain. Luckily I noticed it before the wedding
  • Gary stayed overnight and obviously he Liked that part of his stay. Unfortunately I had to pull away for a formal dinner party that evening and had almost no time to chat with Gary as I would have liked. The next day I made up with a little Den Haag high lights tour
  • Only recently some of the photos came up again, because I had written the recovered photos into an obscure map somewhere on my computer that I lost remembrance of during the busy summer months. Hence this post appears only now.

Sixth Fail: big annoying Thalys Fail

Gary was on his way to London and wanted to make the trip with Eurostar. The first leg of that trip goes with Thalys, a train between Amsterdam and Paris. He had to change train in Brussels South station. As of yesterday the Thalys does take a new route that skips The Hague entirely. Gary had somehow managed to book an Internet ticket through a European site of Eurostar. When I brought him to the station the ticket office there refused to change his voucher for a ticket, claiming they couldn’t do that because it was an (“Invalid?”) European ticket. How stupid and how embarrassed I felt about this. I talked with the train’s supervisor and pushed Gary into an earlier train that the one he was scheduled to take, because that was delayed and waiting for that could mean Gary missing the EuroStar from Brussels to London. Later I heard from Gary that he finally got his ticket in Brussels….

Later, In September I had a similar annoying experience with the Thalys. We had a group booking from Rotterdam, but I was not allowed to buy a separate leg from The Hague to Rotterdam, notwithstanding the fact that the Thalys then still stopped in the Hague. WiFi in the Thalys is horrible expensive and finally when the group entyered the Thalys in Rotterdam it appeared their booking system was totally belly up as our whole wagon had its seats double booked. It was for the calmness of the supervisor who patiently gave everybody a seat in another wagon that there was no row at all.

Well luckily we were not so unfortunate as the partridge taken by a Thalys of the photo in Paris:-)

Post Alia
These fails put a shadow over this meeting, but after all Gary and I will always have a good story to share and the longer ago the series of fails happen the more likely you are to have fun over it with and a good laugh…forgetting the aggravations.

This is a Dutch Mars Ad which says in Dutch – directly to Gary now-: nevertheless – “Twas fun, next time again?”

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on December 7, 2016

In Action at the 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala

Happy Hotelier in Action at 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards

The guy, Roelof de Vries of 360 Foto, who took the amazing dizzying 360 Degree shots from which I took this cutting was standing next to me when I was taking photos of the 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards Gala.
Probably I was standing in his way while wondering about him using his tripod, until I saw the result over at the Dutch Bloggies site.

I had a special interest to go and see the Awards, because it was only 5 minutes away from where I live and work in The Hague. It was sponsored by The Hague. But most importantly my significant other blog Chair blog had made it into the final 5 from which the jury choose the winning blog in the category Art, Culture and Entertainment blogs of the Dutch Bloggies. I must admit this nerd was a bit excited albeit skeptical.

Here is the complete Awards List at Dutch Bloggies. I do hope they complete the short lists of all categories.

The Winner NRCNext.NL of the over all award choose this photo as their award portrait.

NRCNEXT NL Wins 2009 Dutch Bloggies over all Award

And my direct competitor and winner in the category Art, Culture and Entertainment blogs, Mick! choose several among which:
Mick!

I’ve given priority to uploading my photo stream and have now to run to do some hotel duties before I can flesh out my observations.

In the meantime do head overt to my Flickr set 2009 Dutch Bloggies Awards in The Hague and please do help me people tag those Dutch Blogging Nerds.

More to follow!

Hot Michelin Star and Hotel Newbe: Niven Kunz

Niven-Kunz-_MG_2269

The new 2010 Michelin Guide has been published and this is Niven Kunz of Restaurant Niven in Rijswijk, a suburb of The Hague. Probably he is the youngest Dutch chef awarded with a Michelin Star, or does he only look very young? Anyway, he’s now also a hotelier with 2 rooms. Congratulations Niven with your star and welcome as fellow hotelier.

I took this bit dreamy portrait photo last week when he was showing off at the 2010 Food festival in The Hague which was very well organized.

You can congratulate him on Twitter as Niven Kunz