December 6, 2017

Apprentice art dealer scores Dutch masterpiece

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:10 pm

Springer-screenshot

Christmas came early (or Sinterklaas got the right gift) for apprentice art dealer Kas Buunk from Ede, Gelderland. At a recent auction in Rotterdam, Buunk asked his father, art dealer Frank Buunk, to bid on a small painting that they scored for a total of 1100 euro.

Once home, the men took the painting out of its frame to confirm their suspicions: it was a masterpiece by Dutch 19th century landscape painting Cornelis Springer worth at least an estimated 25,000 euro.

The Buunks have not yet decided what to do with the painting, but if a museum is interested, they’d be willing to negotiate.

(Link and screenshot: rijnmond.nl)

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December 5, 2017

Road sign riddle in Zaltbommel

Filed under: Animals,Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 6:28 pm

Signs-from-Zaltbommel

These signs spotted in Zaltbommel, Noord-Brabant look like more of a riddle than actual road signs, but the worse part is, they say exactly what the municipality needed to say: no horseback riders.

Why not a sign with a horseback rider and a red stripe around it sort of business like with other types of road signs? Because the sign that expresses no horseback riders isn’t an official sign any more by law, although one was actually put one on the shoulder ‘to make things clear’. By law, horseback riders are now considered agriculture vehicles even if the vehicles in question don’t require horses.

The top sign in this image is ‘road closed to horseback riders, cattle, motor vehicles and motorbikes that cannot go faster than 25 kph and microcars, as well as cyclists, scooters and handicapped vehicles’. The bottom sign says ‘except’ (the ‘U’ in the word ‘uitzondering’ (‘exception’) in Dutch should be lower case) and then the same pictograms, but excluding the horseback riders.

(Link and image: omroepgelderland.nl)

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December 4, 2017

Radio pranks singer with streaker, artists outraged

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 10:40 am

On November 17 during a live radio show where young singer Maan de Steenwinkel was performing, the show’s male DJs thought it would be amusing to have a male streaker run through the studio. What happened is that 20-year-old The Voice of Holland winner Maan was on the radio singing live, panicked, and burst out in tears for all to see and hear.

Although the incident happened a few weeks ago, it was published extensively on social media yesterday. And even in November, Dutch singer Tim Knol had already tweeted his outrage right after the incident, saying “Shit radio. UNBELIEVABLE BUNGLERS. That’s not how you treat artists. Nobody should go to that shit station anymore to promote their music. Sod off.” Dutch columnist Sheila Sitalsing answered more eloquently, but in the same vein: “And to sell her music, she’s dependent on this type of station with creepy men who think that creepy men’s fantasies are amusing. Urg”. A Dutch business radio station manager said that if the DJs worked at his station, he would have fired them.

But yeah, that’s all nice to hear after the fact, but someone somewhere thought it was hilarious to trash an artist’s performance for the sake of a laugh. The Dutch radio station in question is indeed an outdated white Dutch male frat boy outfit who also thought it was fine to promote the Olympics this way a few years back.

(Links: nos.nl, parool.nl, nu.nl)

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December 2, 2017

Colourful puzzle hotel unveiled in Eindhoven

Filed under: Design by Orangemaster @ 10:24 pm

mvrdv-2017

In October 2017 during Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven, design firm MVRDV unveiled (W)ego, a “concept for accommodation that can adapt to the different needs of any future inhabitants – whether they be families, students or refugees.”

It looks like the game Tetris hung out with Lego and created colourful rooms for students. Co-founder of MVRDV Winy Maas, who was one of Dutch Design Week’s three ambassadors, said “Through gaming and other tools, (W)ego explores participatory design processes to model the competing desires and egos of each resident in the fairest possible way.”

(W)ego is basically a hotel where guests have to deal with the dream spaces of other occupants. It was exhibited downtown Eindhoven last October back when the weather in the Netherlands was still nice.

(Link and photo: urdesignmag.com)

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November 29, 2017

Rotterdam café to make Ajax toilet seats

Filed under: Design,Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:48 am

Ajax-seat

For Rotterdam Feyernoord football fans, there were Feyernoord stickers to ‘rebrand’ all those Ajax brand fire extinguishers in 2015 reminding them of the rival Amsterdam Ajax football club. Now, the owner of Sijf in Rotterdam has gone one step further: he plans to make toilet seats out of Ajax arena seats for his Feyernoord-leaning patrons.

The initial plan was to buy the written off arena seats and make terrace furniture out of it, but that didn’t pan out. However, to make the toilet seats, owner Herman Hell still needs someone to design them.

(Link and photo: nos.nl)

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November 28, 2017

Nigella Lawson upset about Dutch book translation

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:23 am

Famous English gourmet Nigella Lawson has criticised the Dutch title of her cookbook ‘How to Be a Domestic Goddess: Baking and the Art of Comfort Cooking’, which in Dutch is ‘Hoe word ik een goddelijke huisvrouw?’ (Roughly, ‘How can I become a divine housewife?’. The irksome intruder is ‘housewife’ because there’s no ‘housewife’ at all in English. Although there is a reference to women with the word ‘goddess’, implying that women would be the target market, the Dutch title clearly goes one backwards step too far for Lawson.

“I’m not a housewife at all. I don’t have anything against housewives, but I’m a business woman with a career”, said Lawson to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf. Hey Nigella, the Netherlands still has the highest rate of European women who work part-time with and without children (!), where roughly 60% of them cannot financially support themselves and rely on their partner (usually a man willing to pay for them) or the government to take care of them.

Let’s unpack the mistranslation then: my Facebook friends’ best guesses are that it would sell better to women that way, that it was a man came up with this title and that Dutch women, having come very late and part-time to the labour market (1970s) as compared to their European counterparts, basically deserve to be talked to down to like this and will still buy the book receive the book as a gift because, hey, it’s Nigella Lawson.

(Links: nu.nl, scp.nl – PDF)

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November 27, 2017

Woman gets unwanted hysterectomy due to bad communication

Filed under: Health,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

A 35-year-old Polish woman was given a hysterectomy back in 2013 due to a grave error by a gynaecologist at a hospital in Limburg caused by a lack of proper communication between patient and gynaecologist. The woman’s partner acted as an interpreter and had agreed to an operation to fix a low hanging uterus, but somehow that turned into a hysterectomy.

The gynaecologist claimed in court that he did not understand at the time why the woman had agreed to a hysterectomy, but then he had not asked the woman what kind of operation she had agreed to in the first place. As well, the gynaecologist had not made it explicitly clear that she would no longer be able to have children after the operation. To make matters worse, the woman already had two children from a previous partner and this might have been seen as ‘but she already has children’. In fact, she wanted children with her new partner. The gynaecologist also didn’t ask if she was taking any kind of birth control.

This grave error will see the woman being given 33,700 euro in damages, get psychological help, while the gynaecologist has been given a warning for his subpar communication skills.

(Link: limburger.nl)

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November 24, 2017

First Belgian-Dutch series to hit Netflix

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 11:36 am

The first Belgian-Dutch co-production ‘Undercover’, a 10-part series, is set to hit Netflix in 2019, and it stars Anna Drijver (Dutch), Frank Lammers (Dutch), Elise Schaap (Dutch) and Tom Waes (Belgian), produced by Jan Theys (Belgian), with writer and showrunner Nico Moolenaar (Dutch) and directed by Eshref Reybrouck (Belgian) and Frank Devos (Belgian).

For those of you who have watched the Netflix series ‘Narcos’, an American series about the cocaine trade in Colombia, consider this its European ecstasy cousin, but then set in the Netherlands and Belgium. Not a week goes by in the Netherlands and possibly Belgium without a news item about drums of chemicals used to make ecstasy (aka MDMA) found dumped in woods in the province of Noord-Brabant, so someone might as well make a series about it.

“I found it incredible to learn that the Netherlands and Belgium are such a huge part of the global drug trafficking network”, said producer Jan Theys. As for cocaine, the Netherlands remains the ‘Colombia of Western Europe’ and used to be the best and biggest cocaine producing country in the world until WWII.

(Link: broadwayworld.com, Photo: DEA)

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November 22, 2017

Hoofddorp host to international men’s roller derby event

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 8:53 pm
Team Netherlands vs. Team Italy

Team Netherlands vs. Team Italy

Last weekend, Hoofddorp played host to ‘Road to Barcelona’, a six-team men’s roller derby event leading up to the Men’s Roller Derby World Cup to be held in April 2018 in Barcelona, Spain. Road to Barcelona events are currently being held in Europe, with this one organised by Team Netherlands – Men’s Roller Derby, their first time hosting such an event – and it was a blast. These pictures were taken by my co-blogger Branko, and I was the Head Announcer for the tournament.

Although the first ever men’s roller derby event ‘Battle of the Beasts’ took place in the Netherlands for the first time in in Valkenswaard, Noord-Brabant in 2013, happened twice after that and is scheduled for a fourth edition in January 2018, Road to Barcelona was specifically set up in preparation for the Men’s Roller Derby World Cup and featured Team Spain, Team Italy, Team Ireland, Team Belgium, Team Scotland and Team Netherlands. As well, a women’s exhibition game between Team Netherlands and Team Universe (a mishmash of European players) took place, with the Dutch women’s team preparing for the Roller Derby World Cup in February in Manchester, United Kingdom.

Why do we add the word ‘Men’s’ to the Roller Derby World Cup? Why isn’t it a men’s event in the first place? Because roller derby is originally a women’s sport, so it’s the men that get the mention ‘Men’s’ in their title, not the women. Even though this was the fourth ever men’s event on Dutch soil, it was the first one held near Amsterdam and attracted not only players, but officials, volunteers and spectators from all over Europe. Many of the players were playing for the first time and many people came to the Netherlands for this first time just to be there.

Team Spain vs. Team Belgium

Team Spain vs. Team Belgium

(Photos by Branko Collin)

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November 21, 2017

Dutch Golden Age humour still relevant today

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 10:28 am

Potter

An exhibition at the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem, North Holland entitled ‘The Art of Laughter: Humour in the Golden Age’ is presenting “the first ever overview of humour in seventeenth-century painting” until March 2018.

Trying to present a lighthearted view of the Golden Age means showing “naughty children, stupid peasants, foolish dandies and befuddled drunks, quack doctors, pimps, procuresses, lazy maids and lusty ladies”.

And women being ‘grabbed by the pussy’.

In a painting by Paulus Potter, who specialised in animals within landscapes painted from a low vantage point, his ‘Resting rider before an inn’ has a woman brushing the rider’s face with her hand and in return he grabs her private parts all in good fun.

In the name of mischief, farce and love and lust, the Frans Hals Museum features works by Rembrandt, Frans Hals, Jan Steen, Judith Leyster, Adriaen Brouwer, Gerard van Honthorst, Jan Miense Molenaer and Nicolaes Maes.

The Museum explains that the writer Lodovico Guicciardini, who was living in the Low Countries at that time, said that the Dutch were ‘very convivial, and above all jocular, amusing and comical with words, but sometimes too much.’

(Links: vice.com, franshalsmuseum.nl, Photo: nos.nl)

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