Does anybody know whether the plural of beurs is beurzen or beursen?

When you search on Google for both words you'll find many companies that didn't seem to care and are using them both on the same webpage..

Most of the shops we have been working with the last weeks have a website of some kind but today's shop has a really nice one: Kaatje.com. They even have an English version.

Kaatje aan de Rein is a small gift shop, with a lot of different things. Books, candles, Christmas decorations, small stuff -- and games of course. We did our games demonstration in the garden of the shop! They had a very beautiful tent in the garden, and decorated it cosy inside. And (very important for us :)) there was a big gas-heater as well.


I've explained the Kolonisten card-game and Medina for the first time. There were guests basically all the time, but it was never too busy. Unfortunately we didn't bring Ettie's camera.


It was one of the nicest demo's we've done in a long time (together with the Haarlem one 2 weeks ago). We even got a present from the shop when we left. We also took some of the new decoration material of 999 Games, perhaps we can cheer up our hallway a bit; they're really nice.


Here's the commercial the shop had on their website for today, I liked it:

We went to see Minority Report yesterday. It's a nice movie - liked it a lot.

In a few minutes we'll be leaving for a demo in Den Haag.

There's a nice website on Kolonisten that I visit regularly. There's also a Forum, something like a chat-box where people talk about Kolonisten van Catan. I'm interested in discussions on the rules of the game, so it's worth visiting often.

Today I looked at the most recent messages when I saw this one: "Guus Bosman geeft een Feestje" ("Guus Bosman gives a Party"). People were congratulating me on my birthday (!). Turned out I filled in my birthday wrongly: 10-11-1978 in Dutch means the 10th of November (as it really is), 10-11-1978 in the American system... is today.

See here to see all the congratulations.

The 'toy of the year 2002' has been announced today. One of the candidates was Medina, a game of 999 Games. The price went to a toy-car. It's an election for general toys, not only for boardgames.

In the past Isis & Osiris and Carcassonne have been candidates too. Kolonisten van Catan and Elfenland were even choosen Speelgoed van het Jaar.

Another game award is the Spellenprijs (where Medina is a candidate as well) and which was won by Machiavelli in 2001. The winner of this year's Spellenprijs will be announced on the Spellenspektakel in Eindhoven. I'm curious if Medina will be the winner. I haven't played it yet but many people like it. Perhaps this Saturday in Den Haag I'll have a chance to play it.

Carcassonne (again), Eufraat & Tigris, El Grande, 6 Nimmt and Tadsch Mahal have all be choosen in the past by German game players and jury to be Spiel des Jahres (or to receive the Deutsche SpielePreis).

The Spellenstapel has a lot of information on different game awards.

Today the National Student Union announced that they want to organize a student-strike the 12th of November. After some thoughts I decided not to participate :)

There is even an official website about the strike.

All Dutch and most foreign visitors will know that Sunday HRH Prince Claus passed away.



Vereniging De Hollandsche Molen has put its 12 windmills into mourning position, to pay respect to their former patron.

'Our' windmill, De Adriaan is owned by the Haarlem municipality and has not been put in mourning position (yet). The picture below shows the windmill in the temporary resting position. The mourning position is one of the 4 official signs that a miller can give with the position of the sails of the mill.


On the same subject, here's an interesting legal discussion on whether or not there will be a national mourning day on HRH Prince Claus' funeral (and the follow-up). The conclusion: there won't be, in fact an official mourning day doesn't exists in the Netherlands.




De Adriaan earlier today in temporary resting position.

E-mail I received from a very good friend today:

"Joepi!!!

We hebben hem gekregen! Bug Bear! Neergeschoten door Good Old McAfee! We'll drink on that!"

(Yes!!! We got it! Bug Bear! Shot down by Good Old McAfee! We'll drink on that!)

Oma and Paula just left.

They were here for the first time and brought us some really nice presents: plants!

Today a window of our house got fixed.

The window has been crooked since we moved here, but somebody came and fixed it really well. He's the owner of the house, and told us something on the history of it, quite interesting.

The house is from 1700-something. It burned down about 15 years ago, due to an old lady who left her pan boiling too long. The building has had many functions, among which... a pub!