Category: The Hague

Does your City has it’s own Briefs? (Dutch Design 58)

First a little language exercise: I needed a proper title for the post and tried Google Translate to get a proper English translation for the Dutch word “onderbroek” (litterally “underpants”). I got the following results with Google: 1) panties, 2) underpants, 3) briefs, 4) knickers, 5) pants and 6) drawers….Off course I could check out the Urban dictionary for each of these words, but instead tried a Google Images search for them. Then it became clear soon: Briefs it should be…

The Hague has his own comics subculture in the form of a series of comic strip books around “Haagsche Harry” You see him in the first photo here above. He uses the local dialect to comment on what is happening in and around The Hague. Since The Hague is the center of Dutch Government, he doesn’t refrain from commenting Dutch politicians and even sometimes with mild humor comments on the Dutch Royal Family.

Recently 9 students at the The Hague ROC business school adopted the idea to introduce Green Yellow Briefs. Green and Yellow are the colors of the City of The Hague. Actually the briefs are white because of the costs involved to create them in Green and Yellow would be a bit too high. However they do have a Haagsche Harry badge in green and yellow applied to the front and “Ut Groen Geile Broekkie” – or Green Yellow Briefs – written over the back.

Ut groen geile broekie

Yesterday the briefs were officially introduced by the initiators, Marnix Rueb who created Haagsche Harry and the self proclaimed Night Mayor of The Hague, nicknamed Haagsche Bom.

Sources (mainly in Dutch):

  1. Haagsche Harry‘s home page (Like he says in The Hage dialect: “Haumpeits”).
  2. Hofstijl article.
  3. Green Yellow Briefs home page.
  4. Haags Allerlei article.

Absolutely The Hague! is Taking Off!


Recently I’ve hosted a brainstorm meetup for Absolutely The Hague! that I started together with others to put my home city The Hague more on the map. Sometimes we abbreviate the name between ourselves as ATH. We started it at WordPress.com, but will soon move it to a self hosted WordPress site.

As the host I wasn’t able to take photos of this “historic event”. Therefore I use here a photo of the stork, featured in the hall of my Haagsche Suites that “Stork Frans” came photographing in the meantime for his collection of over 800 Stork photos. Frans is now in the process of finalizing a photo book of the Stork and The Hague which also will contain a “Stork Walk” in The Hague with map and photos.

While I was writing this post Henry Soenarko beat me with a great post about the meetup at Absolutely The Hague Meets Hofstijl, which he syndicated here. Thanks again Henry!

Nevertheless I’ll complete this post to introduce various people to you. We were with 10 The Hague Passionati together:

I believe it worked well, but leave judgments to others:-)

Some Facts and figures about Absolutely The Hague thusfar:

Quote of the Day (18) – Dirty Old Men…

Dirty Old Man Need Love Too

Dirty Old Man Need Love Too!

The group with whom I toured The Hague where I found the sign suggested the house where we found it might have been used by certain ladies of certain pleasures…. I don’t know. What is clear from the photo is that the typical Dutch habit of polishing such plaques at the front has obsoleted the paint over the years…

New project: Absolutely The Hague!

I started a new site, Absolutely The Hague! together with Lisa Rouissi (@Koffiekitten) and hopefully many other contributors.

The reason is – and off course I’m biased – The Hague is an excellent city to work in, to live in and an excellent city to visit. I just want to tell this to the world out there in the English language.

Moreover The Hague has a huge SEO problem. It is known by at least four different names:

  1. It’s original name is ‘s-Gravenhage,
  2. It’s common name is Den Haag
  3. The English speaking world knows it as The Hague and
  4. The French know it as La Haye

so it ain’t easy to find on Google. I want to try to change that with the help of a couple of locals and expats who live and work in The Hague and love it like I do. Finally there are many good sites about The Hague, but they are in Dutch only….

Dutch General Election day 2010


Today we Dutch may vote to elect 150 representatives in Dutch Parliament (the Second Chamber). We don’t have an easy task as there are many parties. You can say the smaller the country the more political parties it has. The photo shows the leaders of the 8 political parties that in one or another combination will reign after they have formed a coalition. Nothing is certain yet and traditionally the formation of a government typically takes between 60 and 90 days.


According to the polls the liberal party of Mark Rutte will become the largest party in Parliament. Most likely he will be the next Prime Minister of The Netherlands. This photo I took from him two years ago just after he had disembarked from a new Lifeboat of The Hague (Scheveningen to be more precise) when he had volunteered to undergo a 360 rollover test in the lifeboat.


He will certainly need the lifesaving vest and the experience he underwent there to help getting The Netherlands floating again:-)