De Nederlandse vertaling staat onder de Engelse tekst en de foto’s.
I decided to buy a shuffleboard this year. Playing shuffleboard/sjoelen will help us (a little) during the total lockdown we face in the Netherlands. This blog explains the game and the joy of playing it with more generations.
Shuffleboard/sjoelen
In these last days of the year, lots of people gather with their (not too extended) family, as I do with mine.
Before the holidays started, I thought of what we could do since we’re in a total lockdown in the Netherlands. Everything you normally would be able to visit or attend is closed down, like going to a museum, visit the movies or go out for a walk or bike ride, and drink a cup of coffee in a pub or restaurant.
My mother (86), is staying over from Christmas until New Year’s Day, and since she’s not too mobile anymore we needed to find something to do my whole family of three generations would enjoy.
I decided to invest in buying a shuffleboard this year.
I thought: ‘There will be no reason better than the one we have this year; the worldwide pandemic provides the right reason to buy us a shuffleboard, and play ‘sjoelen’ this year’.
Shuffleboard: the game
Shuffleboard – sjoelen- is a typical and old Dutch game for people starting eight years until old age.
In Dutch it’s called ‘sjoelen’, to be pronounced like shoe-lən.
You also can join real shuffleboard matches, but most people enjoy it as a recreative game to involve with friends or family.
To play, you need a shuffleboard and thirty wooden shuffle discs. The shuffleboard is a wooden board, like a shelf, measuring 2 meters by 40 centimetres.
It has small side shelves, and at the top, there are four boxes with small openings in which you need so slide the discs.
The sliding of the discs is the actual sjoelen.
Sjoelen is quite common in the Netherlands, as well as in Belgium. In Germany it’s called Jakkolo, and in Czech it’s called šulbak, like the Dutch word sjoelbak. In France, it’s called Billiard Hollandaise.
Counting
