September 13, 2014

Church gets new life as trampoline park in The Hague

Filed under: Religion,Sports by Branko Collin @ 1:56 pm

trampoline-park-mephis-cvbA trampoline centre in The Hague is the latest in a long list of businesses in the Netherlands to open in a former church building.

Planet Jump opened in the Martelaren van Gorcum church in The Hague earlier this month. Cheekily dubbed a ‘trampoline paradise’ by Den Haag Direct, they are open seven days a week. Have a look at the photos on their website.

Repurposing a ‘holy’ building may seem a little irreverent, but as we wrote earlier, it seems that people prefer repurposing over tearing down. These buildings have memories of baptisms, weddings and funerals attached to them, after all.

Also, in what other church could you achieve so many instant ascensions in an hour?

The name Martelaren van Gorcum means martyrs of Gorcum and refers to 19 catholic officials who were killed in 1572 by Dutch Protestant freedom fighters.

See also: The man who sells church interiors

(Photo of a trampoline park in Memphis by Memphis CVB, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

September 12, 2014

Entire stock of Sinterklaas toys sold in one day

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:53 am

There’s already Sinterklaas treats in the shops, we’ve spent the summer in controversy with ‘Zwarte Piet’ and now in Ede, Gelderland, there’s a run on toys featuring the soon to be phased out black festive helper.

Online webshop Lobbes.nl based in Ede has sold all its Fisher Price Sinterklaas sets in one day. We’re not talking millions of sets, but the run on the toys did not go unnoticed. Fisher Price has announced that it will stop producing its traditional sets following complaints related to the figure of Zwarte Piet deemed racist by the courts.

What I’m thinking is in the years to come when the Dutch will be getting used to the phasing out of Zwarte Piet, anyone who has Zwarte Piet toys or decorations will make some extra cash. For all we know, they’ll import stuff from China if they’re not already doing that. And one day, a bit like gollywogs they’ll be seen more ironically than as actual festive figures.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo by Aloxe, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

September 11, 2014

Translation error set back Dutch baseball a few decades

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:02 am

For almost half a century the Dutch were pitching baseballs incorrectly due to a translation error of the rules from American English into Dutch. Adults were pitching as soft as small boys and that was not to their advantage.

A Dutch book entitled ‘Sportlegendes’ (‘Sport legends’) has a chapter on baseball player Han Urbanus from Amsterdam who travelled to play with the New York Giants in 1952, the first European to do so, although he only trained with them.

The Americans watched Urbanus throw and didn’t understand what he was doing. The strictly interpreted Dutch rules Urbanus played by said that the pitcher ‘needs to keep contact with the rubber on the mound and may not lift their support leg until the ball is thrown’. Lifting a foot while pitching comes naturally, which normal in the US, but not in the Netherlands, and meant a ball speed loss of some 40 km/h.

Back then there was no real way of knowing this besides reading the rules or seeing it live and maybe catch some TV in the US and Canada. Urbanus had to learn how to throw all over again, although he said that after two weeks, he had it figured out. The Giants gave him some rolls of films to show his team back home how the game was played.

Tomorrow the Dutch will be playing in the 2014 European Baseball Championship held in the Czech Republic and are a big favourite to win. They were last tournament’s winner as well as having won the World Cup back in 2011.

(Link: nieuws.thepostonline.nl, Photo by John Martinez Pavliga, some rights reserved)

Tags:

September 10, 2014

Dutch ‘scarf guy’, latest social media trend

Filed under: Fashion,Gaming,IT by Orangemaster @ 2:38 pm

scarf

In a fashion/IT edition of ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (‘Find the Dutch person’), it wasn’t Apple’s new Apple Watch, iPhone 6 or even the band U2 that stole the show at its latest product launch in Califormia, but Dutch IT designer Tommy Krul’s tube scarf, earning him the nickname of ‘Scarf Guy’. Dutch-born Krul is founder and CTO of Super Evil Megacorp in San Francisco and was presenting the new game Vainglory, specially developed for the iPhone 6.

Apple’s on stage presenters are reputed for being casually dressed, and Krul was no exception. For reasons that only the Internet understands his purple ‘infinity’ scarf took on a life of its own on Twitter and Facebook during the presentation. Fake Twitter accounts such as @scarfbro and @purplescarfguy have started up and comparisons to other scarf-wearing celebs such as Gavin Rossdale and Lenny Kravitz (and I would add Benedict Cumberbatch, as himself and as Sherlock) have been made. People want to know if he’s single, but Krul hasn’t provided an answer. All he has said apparently is “I often wear scarves, it’s funny.”

(Link: www.rtlnieuws.nl, Photo of men’s scarf by smittenkittenorig, some rights reserved)

Tags:

September 9, 2014

British novel ‘The Miniaturist’ set in old Amsterdam

Filed under: History,Literature by Orangemaster @ 12:27 pm

Amsterdam in the Golden Age: the 17th century was a time when the city rapidly became an economic and cultural force to be reckoned with, and now apparently also the setting of British author Jessie Burton’s first novel entitled ‘The Miniaturist’. I haven’t read it and if anyone has, feel free to share your thoughts in the comments.

Set in 1686 Petronella ‘Nella’ Oortman, a Dutchwoman from the countryside marries rich Amsterdam merchant Johannes Brandt. Nella lives with her stern sister-in-law Marin and an intriguing dark-skinned manservant Otto. Nella almost never sees her busy husband who is either away or locked in his office at home and passes the time with a doll house gift from her husband that looks just like the house they live in. The doll house is slowly being filled with miniatures sent to Nella by an anonymous person who seems to know a lot about the people living in her house.

The doll house in question is on display at the Rijksmuseum, a small, nine-room house of porcelain, oak, marble and glass, which was the inspiration for Burton’s novel.

There’s more to tell, but then I think we’ll just have to read the novel to find out. I’m wondering how plausible the setting of 17th century Amsterdam is, I wonder about the female name ‘Marin’ and I know that if a Dutch person were to write a novel set in, oh, 18th century London, that it would also be culturally scrutinised by the media with good reason.

(Links: blog.chron.com, www.theguardian.com, Photo of the VOC HQ (East India Company) by Josh, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

Tags: ,

September 8, 2014

Bicycle mall in Nijmegen

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 5:27 pm

What do you get when you put several bicycle related companies in one spot? Bigger profits, financial news site Z24 argues.

Earlier this year the Fiets Centrum Nijmegen opened in the old Honig factory (soups, sauces, owned by Heinz), located just outside the city centre behind the central railway station. The shopping centre houses a racing bike store, a design bike store, a recumbent bike store, a bicycle themed gift shop, a bicycle rental, and a coffee house.

Hans van Vugt of Elan Ligfietsen (recumbents) told Z24: “I believe our turnover this year will be 15% to 20% higher than last year’s, and that is without any additional advertising and despite the fact that the demand for incumbents has stayed the same.” He believes the strength of the bicycle mall is that all kinds of related yet non-competing stores can be found in a single place.

Gerard Poels of italmostneverrains.nl attended the opening on 10 May 2014 and liked what he saw. “A feast for the bicycle lover”, he called it. He also noted though that the mall could do more to brand itself. “Currently the outside of the building only shows the logos of the individual companies. I believe that is rather unfortunate.”

See also: It almost never rains in the Netherlands

Tags: , , ,

September 7, 2014

Pink refuge islands will keep their colour, Wijchen says

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 2:05 pm

refuge-island-wijchen-branko-collin

Last week bright pink refuge islands started popping up on Havenweg in the town of Wijchen near Nijmegen.

According to Volkskrant, the civil servant responsible for ordering the paint used the wrong colour code (it should have been a dark red) and the painters never questioned the result, so now Wijchen has its own ‘world famous’ refuge islands.

Realising their mistake, the municipality wanted to have the pink islands painted over but citizens liked the effect, so the striking colour stays. Deputy Mayor Paul Loermans said about the mistakes: “To err is human. Apart from getting the colour wrong, the painters actually did a neat job.”

Omroep Gelderland suspected a marketing stunt because a bike race for women will be passing through Wijchen next week, but everybody involved denies the allegations vehemently. “A lucky mistake”, both the organizers of the race and the municipality told the broadcaster.

This shade of pink is sometimes called ‘zuurstokroze’ in Dutch, ‘candy cane pink’.

(Photo: reconstruction via Google Street View)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

September 6, 2014

Audi drivers are the biggest scofflaws

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 4:39 pm

audi-parking-ticket-london-lars-plougmannA study by an insurance company from Emmen in Drenthe states that nine in ten drivers gets ticketed occasionally for violating the rules of the road.

Audi drivers take the cake though. One in five of them gets fined more than ten times a year. Driving over the speed limit is a particularly favourite pastime for Audi drivers as each and every one of them gets caught speeding at least once a year. Especially heinous is their track record for red light jumping, something which almost half of the Audionistas has ever done.

Autoblog.nl’s Casper Heij has his doubts about the study. He questions the sample size together with the methodology (1,081 drivers against over 18 different brands of cars). He also wonders out loud about curious results such as Mercedes drivers being paragons of virtue (“I take it they failed to poll cab drivers”) and Peugeot drivers never getting fined for broken lights (“I own both a Peugeot and, not by coincidence, shares in an automotive lights factory”).

(Study: Netpolis; photo of an Audi R8 and a London traffic warden by Lars Plougmann, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , , , , ,

September 5, 2014

Student takes selfies at every Dutch train station

Filed under: General,Photography by Orangemaster @ 11:40 am

Travelling after you’ve graduated is definitely a classic, but travelling around the Netherlands by train is probably not what most Dutch graduates have in mind.

Teun here took a year off to make selfies at every train station in the country, which is 400 train stations and you can watch the video of the results. Yes, it’s clearly used by Dutch Rail as a promo for student discounts with the train, but it’s still pretty cool.

For anyone who has never been to the Netherlands, there’s a nice pan of Amsterdam Central station at 1:06, followed by the very modern and quite new Rotterdam Central Station.

For the movie buffs, try and spot Haarlem Central Station, one of the oldest in the country, which was featured in a scene of Ocean’s Twelve with George Clooney on the phone.

(Link: www.froot.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

September 4, 2014

Treadmill-powered bicycle gets some traction

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

lopifitv2_small

Although it’s apparently been around since late 2012, but has just hit the media recently probably due to a social media moment, the Dutch Lopifit is a bicycle powered by a treadmill.

Things like an amateur-looking website and not even a name for its YouTube video could go a long ways in explaining the lack of promo this product has clearly suffered. If you Google ‘treadmill bike’ you’ll find many others, so I wonder how original the Lopifit really is, but hey, we had never heard of it before.

(Photo: www.lopifit.nl)