Imagine that.. They just asked me if I was over 16 in the supermarket (I was buying a bottle wine)!

FINALLY, a supermarket that understands how to do business!

Dirk van den Broek is the first supermarket in The Netherlands to accept credit card… Now let’s hope that the rest follows, including that tourist-unfriendly NS (dutch railways)!

One of the most disgusting things in danish ‘cuisine’.. Fiskefrikadeller, aka fiskedeller. YUCK!

The project I worked on for the last 4 months went out of their ‘silent’ period today (which meant no press coverage). You can read the first big post here.

Also.. in the comments: “Zyb also has some rockstar help over at hello group/web/brand”. Go us!!

Today I went to the Zoological Museum to visit my friend from danish lessons, Alexey. He’s a researcher and curator there, specialized in bugs ‘n beetles. The sign on the left was actually hanging on the door to the big archive where about 3 million species are stored in closets with wooden boxes.

The museum also has a big collection of the so-called type specimens used by Linnaeus and specifically his student Fabricius to write the Systema Naturae. These specimens were labeled in the 18th century and were written with feather and ink. They still use them for research these days!

Amazing that something redundant like Skype can go offline for 2 days!

A dutch website claims it was a DOS attack, Skype denies that.

ok ok.. there are good things in Rotterdam too..

• People are very kind
• The have a cute and friendly accent
• I had a lovely dinner at Hotel New York
• They have some amazing architecture here:
  
  

• The Dutch railways (NS) is extremely tourist unfriendly by not supporting creditcards. On monday I missed my train because the machines were taking neither my Dankort (which should be a normal Maestro compatible card, no?) nor my Dankort/VISA… I had to go to the old fashioned ticket office to buy a ticket only to find out that they didn’t accept cards there too… SOOO.. I first needed to get cash (!) and THEN go to the ticket office and pay 50 cents EXTRA because I was wasn’t paying by card.. I mean.. WTF?!
• I don’t like Rotterdam at all. There’s nothing to do during the week. All the fun here is apparently in the weekends..
• My hotel (NH Atlanta) is really nice. Big room. Wooden floor. And they thought of all small details. You can even order various types of pillows to your own wishes. And it has a nice big tub!
• People in Rotterdam seem to be ugly in general. Yesterday I was in The Hague/Scheveningen and that was quite the difference (not to speak about Copenhagen )
• I had a delicious dinner yesterday with my buddies Marek and Petrik from IIP at Spijs in Scheveningen. I can seriously recommend this to everyone! It’s not cheap though (not horribly expensive either). Take the surprise menu and let the waiters recommend the wine for each course!
• Why are training course facilities always on non-inspiring industrial settings outside of cities?
• I also have a cold, with a bad cough, and no Hot Toddies available
• Did I mention Rotterdam is boring? I should’ve brought my Danish homework..

Danish crisps

Originally uploaded by Rico Tijsen

Ok.. I know the Brits are crazy with the flavours of their crisps.. but the Danes are getting pretty good at it too! Last week I had Asparagus-Black Pepper, and now it’s Parsnip-Garlic-Onion!

Parsnip, I tell you!