Snack break!
An impressive post-lunch surge from Serbia has put them in a strong lead, with Canada as only main rival left at the moment. It's TISC however, so one would be ill-advised to count out Ireland, Malta, France or even India just yet!
It's time for a bit of a snack break and we're going with two varieties - we wouldn't recommend mixing them, but either way, you're good. First off is one of the most Dutch snacks or semi-snacks one can find: haring, the Dutch word for herring. There is only one correct way to eat this fish and it is raw, possibly with some pieces of raw onion, and straight out of the hand: tilt your head backwards, lift the haring up above your mouth and bite off a nice, juicy piece. The flavour is a little strong, but very good, and it'll be easy to get yourself a haring wherever you go. Especially look for 'Hollandse Nieuwe', the name for the newly caught fish in the right season, when their fat percentage is just that bit higher - usually you can get them in May or June.
The only correct way of eating haring, although this poor lady does seem to have forgotten her onions
Since the end of the year is closing in, we really don't have much of a choice and we will need to indulge everyone in the delight that's called oliebollen - literally translated to 'oil balls', which sounds a whole lot less tasty than it really is. These balls are made with dough and either come with or without raisins. If there is a Dutch tradition related to food, it is the selling and eating of oliebollen in the second half of December and especially the last week of the year. No New Year's Eve celebration is complete without a good set of either freshly baked or reheated (oven, not microwave) oliebollen, generally eaten with a generous amount of sugar on top of them.
A stack of oliebollen at the ready, some people are fine eating them cold, but they really are best eaten hot
For our musical intermezzo, we travel to the late nineties - and 2000 - and we meet the Vengaboys, apparently one of the biggest Dutch exports as far as music goes. The dance group was incredibly popular for two or three years and then mostly faded away. We'll avoid some of the more superficial songs like "Parada de tettas", I'm sure our Portuguese-speaking users will know the meaning, and "Boom, boom, boom, boom, I want you in my room", and go to a still fairly superficial, but at least just festive song: "We're going to Ibiza!". The video clip has a small parody on Bill Clinton, by the way: one can see hints towards his affair when the plane in the video travels past the White House.