Thanks Gis. Very good. Sinterklaas rules!
Catch Dutch television this saturday, everyone. He will be arriving in Holland. You could also visit Harderwijk, if you like.
LOL thats the short version,,,here is the long version of what roughly happened today + some extra info!
(No Playmo photo’s today. Lack of time and to much work would have gone into making these out of Playmo. We also don’t have the necessary number of “Zwarte Pieten”)
So today was the big day!! Sinterklaas finally set foot on Dutch soil. We didn’t go to the official place where the television was nor did we go to one of the local ones. You have to understand that there is only one “official” Sinterklaas. This is the one that is shown on television, however there are many “Hulp Sinterklasen” (Helper St Nicks) because everyone understands that the real one can’t be everywhere at the same time.
There was a big live broadcast from the Sinterklaas News. In which a couple of mysteries that had arisen since the start were solved. The moving bag (a bag which normally contains presents or candy) held a baby Zwarte Piet, and de “Pepernoten” (see below) that were accidentally cast overboard by one of the Zwarte Pieten were replaced.
The steamboat “Pakjesboot 12” (Presentboat 12) had over a lot Zwarte Pieten on board as well as of course Sinterklaas.
One of the boats that had already landed had Sinterklaas’ white horse “Amerigo” on board so he was already waiting on the docks.
There are many generic Zwarte Pieten, but there is also a whole host of special ones. Like the “Head Piet”, “Song Piet”, “Forget Piet” some of these are actually played by famous Dutch actors.
There are lots of sweets associated with Sinterklaas, however two are more or less mandatory. The first one are “pepernoten” (also known as “kruidnoten”) these little cookies are actually handed out by the Zwarte Pieten to all the little kids. In the past they were also thrown to the children, but I guess “health and safety” has made this practice a lot less common.
The other typical candy is “Chocolate Letters” and yes it is exactly what you think. You can buy, in all different kinds of chocolate, the letters of the Alphabet. So kids usually get the first letter of their name in chocolate at some point. Or if they are really lucky the first letter of both their first and last name.
That’s it for today. More tomorrow :-) (time permitting)
