November 17, 2011
The Dutch verb ‘wildbreien’ (literally ‘wild knitting’, but really meaning ‘knitting graffiti’) was chosen as the neologism (new word) of 2011. Instead of something negative or lowbrow, knitting graffiti should makes us all feel warm and fuzzy inside. I know I did when I snapped pictures of it in Amsterdam’s Jordaan district. It is also referred to as ‘straatbreien’ (‘street knitting’) because it livens up the streets.
If only it could keep them warm.
(Link: inl.nl)
November 16, 2011
We’ve written a lot of croquette stories on this blog, made from meat leftovers, questionable vegetarian variants and about general croquette awareness.
A goose meat croquette sounds to me like a Dutch Christmas appetizer or even a fancy French one. However, the geese in question are some of 100.000 geese a year that are shot to stop planes at Schiphol getting geese in their engines.
Beach side café Beach Inn in IJmuiden, North Holland is serving goose meat croquettes made from the geese shot down at Schiphol airport. As I also saw recently on telly, a goose hunter for the airport said catching and releasing would mean hiring an army (they fly back to the airport anyways, a waste of time) and poisoning their eggs is just not done anymore and doesn’t really help.
The geese are usually destroyed or sometimes end up in cat food. Rob Hagenouw, an artist from Amsterdam, contacted some hunters, score some goose and worked hard at creating his own recipe. He says that with his croquettes, the flavours really come out.
Eating goose, or turkey for that matter, is not really a Christmas thing in the Netherlands for many reasons. First, many people do not have ovens due to a lack of living space. They have combination microwave and and oven devices that barely fit a decent sized pizza. Second, even if you do have an oven like I do, a goose or turkey won’t fit. Guineafowl or chicken is the best you can hope for. Another reason is that it’s just not a Dutch tradition to shove a big bird in the oven.
(Link: www.telegraaf.nl)
November 15, 2011
The Dutch emergency number is 112, but thanks to a political party that has more in common with animals than people who don’t look Dutch, they’ve set up the emergency number 114 144, opening today, to report animal-related accidents, abuse and neglect. Calling 114 144 will send specially trained cops over to that puppy farm that sells cute puppies illegally ‘imported’ from Albania and what have you.
If you read the information from 114 Red een dier (114 Save an animal), the site tells you to dial 144, which has to be a mistake is confusing to say the least.
Of course, it sounds like a great idea, just like training ‘animal cops’ to catch people who mistreat animals and hand down tougher sentences against people who abuse animals. It remains ironic that although the current government promised 3,000 additional regular cops on the streets to handle crime, it welched on that and managed to scrounge up 500 animal cops to appease their ‘silent’ coalition partner, the one that likes furry animals and dislikes humans of the non-Dutch persuasion.
Just remember, a few years ago the Dutch finally outlawed sex with animals, but before that was a top distributor of animal porn worldwide.
Some animals are more equal than others. Just like people.
UPDATE: According to newspaper De Volkskrant, the animal emergency number is 144, but it used to be 114. Nobody knows why and the government hasn’t provided an answer yet. What a mess.
MORE UPDATE: According to nu.nl news site, it was controversial member of Parliament Dion Graus, also of the not so non Dutch friendly political party who personally reserved the domain name ‘114redeendier.nl’. He was planning to push his animal friendly ideas through for a long time, and his day came. The irony of him having been accused of beating his ex wife and making threats against his ex stepfather (justice dropped it for lack of evidence), but wanting to defend animals makes him quite the colourful politician.
(Link: www.rnw.nl)
Tags: animal cops, police
November 14, 2011
This bridge crosses the moat to Fort de Roover in Halsteren, Noord-Brabant, which was part of a series of defences called the West Brabant Water Line.
Gizmodo writes, “it is made from sustainable Accoya wood treated with a non-toxic waterproof coating that protects it from decay, and since the moat is too shallow for boat traffic, there’s little risk of waves splashing up over the side.”
The bridge made the shortlist for the Building of the Year Award 2011 (which was ultimately won by the parking garage of the Windesheim College in Zwolle).
Water lines were defences that worked using inundation. Large tracts of lands were flooded, making them impassable to advancing armies. The West Brabant Water Line is the oldest of the country and was built in 1628. The main function of later water lines was to maintain the province of Holland as a national redoubt. The introduction of the tank in modern warfare put a stop to their use.
(Photo: ro-ad.org. See there for more photos, or follow the Gizmodo link.)
Tags: bridges, Noord-Brabant
November 13, 2011
Somebody called Lucas Schröder has rejected his nomination for the prestigious Conny van Rietschoten Trophy, nauticlink.nl reports.
Schröder does not want his achievements to be compared with those of Dekker: “Many will inevitably see Laura’s nomination for the Netherlands’ most important sailing award as a collective opinion of the sailing community. This makes me feel so uncomfortable that I request you no longer consider me a candidate for your trophy.” Dekker’s solo global circumnavigation attempt has stirred controversy both inside and outside the Dutch sailing community.
It is unclear to this blogger what Schröder’s achievements are supposed to be. Nauticlink mentions his participation in an endurance race called Mini Transat, in which sailors cross the Atlantic Ocean in 6.5 metre boats. Schröder recently achieved a tenth place in that race.
The foundation that awards the trophy writes on its website that it regrets Schröder’s decision, and abstains from further comment. Schröder, whom I had never heard of before, managed to get a lot of free press with his action.
Laura Dekker in the meantime is busy crossing her third ocean in a row, the Indian Ocean. She is keeping mum about the route she is taking, as she doesn’t want to put ideas into the heads of Somalian pirates—which to me strongly suggests she is going for the Suez route.
Update 14-11: it turns out Laura is taking the South-African route after all. She has just arrived in Durban.
See also: Teenager attempts sailing solo around the world record.
(Photo of Laura Dekker by Wikimedia Commons user Savyasachi, some rights reserved)
Tags: Laura Dekker, sailing
November 12, 2011
Webwereld reported last Wednesday that 72 % of all optical fibre connections in the Netherlands are currently not being used.
In September 844,000 households in the Netherlands were connected to fibre by Reggefiber, 38 % up from last year. Only 240,000 households were actually customers using the network.
Telecom analyst David Yoshikawa told Webwereld that Reggefiber probably needed to step it up a notch if it wanted to remain able to pay its bills. He also offered a number of explanations for the low ‘activation’ rate:
A comparison: I can get 60 megabit downstream internet over fibre at XS4all for 65 euro per month, including telephony and television. UPC offers the same speed over cable for just 52 euro. For fibre to be worthwhile, it needs to offer both higher speeds and applications that people could use that higher speed for. Already having the fastest internet connections of Europe is not going help acceptance of a marginally faster connection type.
As an aside: at least digging up the roads is well regulated here. Anybody who wants to lay cables and pipes can, but they need to coordinate with other stakeholders using a government run web app called KLIC, so that roads remain as unmolested as possible.
From the KLIC website:
Excavators must notify Kadaster-KLIC before starting excavation work. Instructions for submitting a notification are presented below in the section ‘Submitting a Notification of Excavation Work’.
Your notification will be passed on to the network operators who have underground cables or pipelines in the area where you intend to excavate. These operators will send the relevant information about their cables or pipelines to Kadaster electronically, which then compiles the information and emails you a link to download the relevant information for your excavation site.
You must consult this information when undertaking excavation work to avoid damaging cables and pipelines. The maps must be available at the excavation site.
See also: Gigabit internet connection to the houseboat.
(Photo by Mephisto, some rights reserved, based on a photo by Daniel Mayara)
Tags: broad, fiber optics, roads
November 11, 2011
Rock and roll guitarist Andy Tielman, the figurehead of the Indo-Rock scene and frontman of the Tielman Brothers band has died in Indonesia at age 75.
Before immigrating to the Netherlands, the Tielman played for the Dutch military in Indonesia in the early 1950s. They quickly became famous, having been invited to play the World Expo in Brussels in 1958, just one year after landing in the Netherlands.
Later in their career, they also toured much of Germany. “At that time, bands could only play on weekends for little or no money at all, but in Germany they could get a contract for a month or at least a couple of weeks and make scandalous much money.”
Tielman fans also call him an innovator. He took a six string electric guitar, added four extra strings and tuned them in a way nobody had done before, in search of the big sound he wanted, which became the band’s tight signature sound. The bass players also had two different sounds that complimented each other through the use of different strings and specific amplifier setting, making the Tielman sound very wide on stage.
However, it’s the way Tielman brothers played their instruments live that people wanted to see and here is a video of them rockin’ out.
(Link: nos.nl)
Tags: Any Tielmans, guitars, Indo-Rock
November 10, 2011
The municipality of Noordoostpolder in the province of Flevoland run by the Christian Union (‘centrist’ Christians) and SGP (fundamentalist Christians) is seriously considering issuing their own currency, the Schokker. The name comes from a type of Dutch ship that comes from Schokland, a village in the Noordoostpolder.
An April Fools’ Day joke it isn’t: “our own currency in the municipality would strengthen the local economy, as residents would spend more locally. Of course, you could still pay in euro.”
It wouldn’t be the first time zealous Christians closed themselves off from the real world to cause more problems for themselves and others, so we’ll keep you posted.
(Link: datditkaninnederland.nl)
Tags: Christians, currency, Flevoland
November 9, 2011
First, Beuningen boasted about its free quickie marriage between 8:45 and 9 am, now the city of Arnhem down the road is whinging about ‘rich’ people abusing their freebie wedding time slot. Ironically, newspaper De Telegraaf doesn’t write ‘rich’ (self-censorship, anyone?), but ‘highly educated’, as some sort of clever euphemism for people with actual jobs versus the state subsidised couch sitting set.
In Arnhem the waiting list for a free ‘I do’ is more than six months. Offering free weddings was to let the ‘less fortunate’ marry with or without a ceremony, common fare around the country, but come on, if you’re offering it for free in a country that thrives on free stuff, you have to expect your altruistic ideas to fail.
The Monday morning speedy wedding is popular with the ‘richer’ folks, although it’s very dressed down. To marry at another time costs 99 euro and the full monty service with separate room and guests costs 399. Just expecting people with more money to spend more is cute, but not realistic, crisis and all.
There’s really no story here except that some journalist apparently cannot wrap their brain around the fact that people with actual money have choices. They should either bone up on the finance section or move to a communist country.
(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo by Anthony Kelly, some rights reserved)
November 8, 2011
Starting on 25 November 2011, Amsterdam’s Jewish Historical Museum will feature the exhibition ‘Mijn naam is Cohen’ (‘My name is Cohen’), a series of portraits made by Amsterdam photographer Daniel Cohen with texts by unrelated Editor-in-Chief of magazine Vrij Nederland, Mischa Cohen.
They got together and found 25 people with the same last name, but of different generations, backgrounds, gender, views, Jewish and non-Jewish. Former mayor and politician Job Cohen is mentioned as is journalist Jisca Cohen thanks in part to whom I got to meet Daniel Cohen (unrelated to each other) and found out about his project first hand. I also know he plays a good game of football.
The quick and dirty version is that Amsterdam (aka Mokum, its Jewish name still very much in use by everyone) had lots of Jews and today for Holocaust reasons has very few.
(The picture of Anne Frank, the most ‘popular’ Jewish figure of Amsterdam who was German and not Dutch.)
(Link: www.jhm.nl)
Tags: Amsterdam, Anne Frank, Cohen, Jews
