Sinterklaas will arrive in the Netherlands on Saturday. In the weeks between his arrival and his departure on December 5th, he will fill shoes that have been left out by children, with goodies. He will also package up any naughty children in a sack and take them back to Spain with him when he goes.

However, the arrival of Sinterklaas is never a smooth one. There is always some tragedy that happens putting everyone on the edge of their seats. As bad luck goes, Sinterklaas clearly has broken a lot of mirrors. The annual suspenseful journey even has its own tv show in the form of the Sinterklaasjournaal – a daily (from three days before his arrival until December 4th) news segment for children (and adults!) to follow what is happening with Sinterklaas and get pulled into the storyline.

Yesterday was the first edition of the Sinterklaasjournaal and it looks like Sinterklaas is already in a spot of trouble. Here were some of the highlights from the first Sinterklaasjournaal for 2011.

The show started off with the news reader trying to make contact with the steamboat but this was unsuccessful as the connection was not good and all we saw was a dodgy screen.

While the technical team worked on their connection, we were connected with a very weird mayor who announced that Sinterklaas was not going to land in Dordrecht as originally planned but in her town of Averecht instead, even though Sinterklaas doesn’t know about this and the town of Averecht has no children.

The news reader tried again to make contact with the steamboat. This time we did see an image but it was only an empty wheelhouse (cue suspenseful music). Clearly there must be a problem.

A quick reminder was given that the book of Sinterklaas (the one that contains all the names of the children and details on if they have been good or bad) is getting a bit old, so Sinterklaas is making a new one. It seems that Sinterklaas has been spending some time on the internet so to ensure you didn’t get left out of the book by mistake you are encouraged to check your name online.

The journaal closed with a spooky aerial shot of the steamboat. The boat which typically has smiling, waving Zwarte Pieten onboard was all dark and empty looking. Just where is Sinterklaas and all his Zwarte Pieten?

If you would like to keep up with the Sinterklaasjournaal, you can do so at 17:40 on Nederland 1 or you can watch the episodes on the website.