This post is to share some of our experiences with watching television. Needless to say, many of the tv stations are broadcast in Dutch. This remains a language that we still don't quite understand.
During the Olympics we had a choice to watch either Dutch or British broadcasts. We chose the British broadcasts for obvious reasons. Because these were British broadcasts, everything focused on the British athletes and competitions where the Brits were valid contenders. We missed many of the US competitions and all of the US journalism that goes along with the games; including hearing all of the incredible, individual athlete stories. We missed the women's soccer finals because Holland and Britain were battling it out for the gold in men's field hockey. We did, however, get to see the women's beach volleyball finals.... which was awesome!
On a regular basis we do receive CNN International, plus a few other US channels. Unfortunately we do not get any of the three major networks... ABC, CBS or NBC. Because our options are so limited, it seems that we are frequently finding ourselves watching crime investigation shows and surfing the Internet!
The other day I tried plugging in our DVD / VHS player that we had shipped over from the US. I was told by someone in a 'technical store' that I could simply put the plug into our adapter and plug this into the wall. I did what I was told and the result was a quick 'boom' with smoke that began to bellow out of every crevice in the device. I had to quickly take the unit outside into our garden so that it wouldn't activate our smoke detector. So much for our DVD / VHS player!
Yes, there are movie theatres here but we have not yet gone to see a show. We are told that the movies here are in English with Dutch subtitles. Carrie is itching to go see a movie and so we will probably do this sometime soon. Let's hope that whatever we see is, in fact, shown in English... otherwise it will be a long evening!
By the way, you would think that we could simply watch US television shows online. Nope.... the three major networks do not allow this, nor do many other channels.