May 15, 2019

Amsterdam Central Station builds huge underwater bike stall

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 8:36 pm

According to Mark Wagenbuur, the Cycling Ambassador for the Dutch Cycling Embassy at Bicycle Dutch, Amsterdam is building an underground, underwater parking facility for 7,000 bicycles at Amsterdam Central Station.

Folks online were wondering if there was a way to follow the construction by way of a webcam, and lo and behold there is! The project is call De Entree (‘The Entrance’) and it’s really big and disruptive if you need to get around Central Station, but that’s life.

And according to Wikipedia, Amsterdam Central Station is the largest railway station of Amsterdam and is used by 162,000 passengers a day, making it the second busiest railway station in the country after Utrecht Central Station, which deals with 176,000 passengers a day. Amsterdam Central Station is the most visited national monument of the Netherlands and boast a royal waiting room you can finally see partially from the outside.

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

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May 10, 2019

Amsterdam marketing appropriates another castle

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 4:53 pm

Back in 2013, Muiderslot (Muiden Castle) was rebranded to Amsterdam Castle Muiderslot, which is 16 kilometres from Amsterdam Central Station, closer if you leave from the East of Amsterdam, and most people here thought it was ridiculous.

And now, in the spirit of peeing on something and claiming it is part of your territory, Het Loo Palace near Apeldoorn, Gelderland, 88 kilometres from Amsterdam, is being branded as the ‘Versailles of Amsterdam’.

Just what Amsterdam needs, to be compared to Paris. Even Versailles is in the city of Versailles, not Paris. It’s been ages and I’m still miffed that one of the classic songs about Amsterdam, ‘Geef mij maar Amsterdam’ talks more about Paris than Amsterdam, but that’s because many people Dutch or otherwise don’t know all the lyrics.

Het Loo is nowhere near Amsterdam and it’s beautiful enough not to need any Amsterdam stamp of approval. As well, calling everything Amsterdam is incorrect and incredibly arrogant, a Dutch cardinal sin if there ever was one. We’ve already had to deal with the world-famous Keukenhof being referred to Amsterdam Flowers, Zandvoort as Amsterdam Beach and a whole bunch of other idiotic rebranding ideas, all of it in English as well.

It’s bad enough Holland is used as a synonym for the Netherlands, why is this even necessary? Make it stop.

(Link: waarmaarraar.nl , Photo by Wikipedia, some rights reserved)

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May 9, 2019

Dutch footballer calls in sick to watch football, gets fired

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 5:29 pm

Dutch football striker Jordie van der Laan of Telstar has been sacked for calling in sick to watch Amsterdam Ajax play against Tottenham Spurs on 30 April instead of, well, playing football. Apparently, his dismissal was by ‘mutual agreement’, which is the sports equivalent of the film industry’s ‘creative differences’ when directors and studio claim to have parted company.

Van der Laan had hoped that his employer would not check up on him, but during the game in which Tottenham lost 0-1, he showed up no less than three times on screen at the game. According to Van der Laan, Telstar’s WhatsApp group blew up and they laughed their asses off.

The team’s management was not amused and fired him immediately. This was Van der Laan’s first year in professional football and was injured quite a lot. Despite his actions, the former Telstar striker is being headhunted by many clubs, and has an interest in playing abroad. “If Tottenham needs a striker, I’m available”, he said, “as long as I get time off to watch Ajax play.”

Someone needs to explain to this guy what ‘having your cake and eating it too’ actually means.

(Link: volkskrant.nl, Photo of flag by Wikimedia user Carolus Ludovicus, some rights reserved)

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May 6, 2019

Jewellery from 1973 back to rightful owner

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:29 pm

Noa Wanders, a 12-year-old boy from Julianadorp, North Holland, was magnet fishing and made a great find that made an older woman’s day: valuables from her deceased parents.

The boy found a rusty box containing two engraved gold wedding rings along with a photo and a name, H. van der Wal. The boy looked up a relative, Selma van der Wal, 63, from Breezand, North Holland and asked if she knew a H. van der Wal. “He’s my father!” she answered. The boy also asked what her parents’ wedding date was, which could be found on the rings. Selma asked her sister and gave the right date to the boy who eventually returned the rings and photo to her.

Back in 1973 when Van der Wal was about 17 years old and no longer living at home, a intruder broke into her family’s home and stole the box containing the rings and some documents. Selma’s mother died very young and it was such a surprise to have something that belongs to her after all these years. Van der Wal thanked the Wenders family profusely and rewarded the boy well according to Facebook.

(Link: nhnieuws.nl/, Photo of unrelated costume jewellery by GlitzUK, some rights reserved)

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May 4, 2019

Big trompe l’oeil eye-catcher in Utrecht

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:20 pm

Last month Dutch street artists Jan Is De Man and Deef Feed completed a large trompe l’oeil mural on the side of a residential building in Utrecht on the corner of Mimosastraat and Amsterdamsestraatweg. It depicts a big shelf of books on a three-story flat building, packed with a selection of their favourite books from their own collections. There’s one about Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, Le Petit Prince and other Dutch and English books.

If you look closely, you can also see a few made-up titles featuring their own names.

(Link and photo: thisiscolossal.com)

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May 2, 2019

Rotterdam bills festival after confetti throwing attempt

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 1:49 pm

During King’s Day at the Kingsland Festival in Rotterdam, people attempted to break a confetti throwing record, but failed. What also failed was the attempt at cleaning up the mess, since the organisers are being billed with extra clean-up costs.

Festival organisers had until 30 April (3 days) to clean up their mess, but there was still a lot of confetti to be found in the grass and the woods.

The city of Rotterdam is now cleaning the rest of the confetti up and will be sending the bill to the organisation. The city was completely OK with the record attempt as long as the confetti was picked up. It will take cleaners two more days to fully clean the area, to the tune of a few extra thousand euro.

Two local political parties were sceptical of the confetti attempt and now it turns out they were right. The city is also considering fining the organisation as well.

Everyone should feel like a King on King’s Day, but some people have ended up looking more like fools.

(Link: rijnmond.nl)

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May 1, 2019

Dutch designed play area at Singapore airport

Filed under: Architecture,Aviation by Orangemaster @ 9:18 pm

At Jewel Changi International Airport in Singapore at Terminal 1, Canopy Park, you’ll find a play area for all ages, with four very big slides, designed by Dutch engineers and street furniture designers Carve from Amsterdam. The official opening is on 10 June, and everyone will be able to see how the first children and parents will enjoy the play area.

Carve’s Discovery slides look very much like jewellery you can play on. “The rubber patterns on the floor are designed in such a way that they create spiral-shaped dynamic reflections on the surface of the slides, which will surely end up all over instagram.” They are installed at the highest point of the airport and provide a spectacular view. There are four slides: a family wide slide, a free fall slide and two spiral-shaped tunnel slides.

For anyone in The Netherlands and not in Singapore, you can climb onto Carve installations in Amsterdam’s Oosterpark, the Zuiderzee Museum in Enkhuizen, the Ark Park pavilion in Utrecht, the Strijp S grounds in Eindhoven and the red fence square in The Hague.

(Links: bright.nl, Photo: businesstraveller)

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April 28, 2019

Rainiest King’s Day since 1955 goes by without incident

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 5:15 pm

Yesterday King’s Day was the wettest in over 60 years.

With 8.9 millimeters of precipitation, only 1955 was rainier (9.6 millimetres), Parool reports.

Perhaps as a result King’s Day was otherwise uneventful, the papers say. Last year’s ‘disaster’, when beer ran out in the country’s capital, Amsterdam, was averted this year by readying more kegs.

The royal family visited Amersfoort, which joined in the uneventful trend by giving an undistinguished presentation, NRC writes. The organiser of the city’s festivities, Yordi Grutters, told the paper: “we are an average city with an average population.”

The paper adds that this was crown-princess Amalia’s day. For the first time ever, she gave interviews without her sisters to national broadcasters RTL and SBS. “It feels sometimes unreal that this is my life,” the princess said. I wonder how she knows.

Since the king’s inauguration in 2013, we haven’t had a King’s Day that wasn’t either cold or wet.

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April 24, 2019

Utrecht’s Dom church attic open to the public

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first,History,Religion by Orangemaster @ 11:24 pm

On 5 May, the attic of the Dom Church (“Domkerk”, in Dutch) in Utrecht will be open to the public for the very first time. And as of that date, people can enjoy one-hour tours every Sunday starting at 14:30. RTV Utrecht went and took a peek:

The Dom Church is about 32 metres high, up to the highest part of the choir vault. Half way up there’s a gallery where nobody has ever been before until now. Utrecht’s well-known symbol was once the Netherlands’ largest church, but the nave collapsed in a storm in 1674 and has never been rebuilt, leaving the tower isolated from the east end.

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April 23, 2019

The Happy Hour, 24 Oranges goes on the air

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:28 pm

About two years ago, we promised we would put out a video, and we really tried to do something, but besides great conversation, we didn’t get around to doing it the way we would have wanted to and we shelved it until something better came along, and it did.

After much hemming and hawing about how to go to the next level after 11 years of blogging, me and my co-blogger Branko want to invite you to tune into The Happy Hour, every Wednesday from 17:00 to 19:00 Amsterdam time on broadcastamsterdam.nl.

Think of it as a extension of 24oranges, but then aimed more at Amsterdam, with lots of Dutch music in English (and other languages), great guests, banter, puns, and lots of fun. We enjoy talking about hot topics such as housing, politics, food, drinks, cycling and articles we’ve written about.

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