After two and half years of posting about anything from old French adverts to naked pictures of Carla Bruni and tons of stuff in between, Dutchman Romke Soldaat of English-language blog Frogsmoke has decided to call it a day. Having lived abroad for “a quarter of his existence”, Romke blogged about some of the best, funny, sad and scandalous things going on in France, with his laidback sense of humour.
According to his last post, Romke plans to retire in the middle of a French forest with the nearest neighbour at a kilometre down the road. He says he could come back, but he’s not making any promises.
24oranges wishes him and his entourage good luck in the future!
Angela Merkel’s 50 billion euro plan for propping up the German economy might very well benefit the Netherlands, 
No Elfstedentocht for now. National weather institute KNMI predicts that Monday a period of thaw will set in, with wind coming from the South and from the South West. That also means that the country will not have had an official cold wave, which in the Netherlands is defined as at least five consecutive days of frost of which three dip below -10 degrees.
In 1990 Piet Hein Eek made his first cupboard from reclaimed scrapwood and the rest, as they say, is history. Soon you couldn’t step into a somewhat upmarket furniture store without stumbling into one or two scrapwood items. The only problem with these, and one that’s persisted ever since, is despite that they’re made out of garbage they’re so damned expensive.
Soup and sausage manufacturer Unox are busy producing 25,000 litres of pea soup and 80,000 smoked sausages in time for a possible Elfstedentocht, 
The municipality of Haren in Groningen is considering outlawing the use of metal detectors, 
