May 24, 2019

Man with Night Watch tattoo sees real artwork

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 3:25 pm

Stefan-Kasper

Fifty-one-year-old Dutchman Marko Bak from Nieuw-Lekkerland, South Holland, who has Rembrandt’s The Night Watch tattooed on his back, and his tattoo artist Richard van Meerkerk both finally saw the artwork at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam for the very first time.

Bak said that he wasn’t a museum kind of guy, and that the tattoo was done as a bit of a joke, but then grew into a real art project. When Bak met Van Meerkerk, he told him “If ever you have nothing to do you, you can tattoo The Night Wacht on my back.” And that’s what happened.

The tattoo is not an exact copy, as some of the faces were replaced by ones from Bak’s friends and family. I can imagine that it’s not every day that someone shows up with The Night Wacht (aka Militia Company of District II under the Command of Captain Frans Banninck Cocq) on their back, making this quirky news.

And here’s the Dutch item on video:

(Link: nos.nl, Photo: Stefan Kasper’s instagram)

Tags: , ,

May 21, 2019

New, international wall murals in Amsterdam East

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 2:12 pm

Artists Kaspar van Leek, 35, from Studio Giftig and Niels van Swaemen, 37, painted one of the 10 wall murals that can be found in Amsterdam East on the Platanenweg. Their mural, 10 metres by 15 metres, depicts a floating woman surrounded by doves [scroll down a bit]. “The dove is a symbol for freedom and also for Amsterdam,” says Van Leek, while floating here represents complete freedom.

Amsterdam Street Art (ASA) had a hand in organising most of it, a collective that has been around for 10 years, pleading for the acceptance of street art as an art form.

Flat residents were asked for their opinion, something ASA makes a point of, and the art was created at the same time as renovations happened, the ideal time for something new. The only things the residents did not want was sex and anything morbid. Dan Kitchener, an artist from English who painted the wall mural in the photo above, went for a geisha, which doesn’t really fit the theme, but they made an exception for Kitchener.

The neighbourhood has been spruced up and why not visit it if you can.

(Link and photo: ad.nl)

Tags: ,

May 20, 2019

Dutch students put in quarantine during exams

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 8:49 pm

Tags: , ,

May 17, 2019

Airbnb rents out illegally placed containers, doesn’t check

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:23 am

Airbnb, the rent-out-your-place chain that local politician for housing Laurens Ivens keep saying he’ll teach them a lesson, but constantly fails to do so (in Dutch) (and then goes on Twitter and blames foreigners), always makes the news in a bad way. For starters, people who rent through airbnb are supposed to rent for no more than 30 days, but Ivens has done nothing to make that concrete, and so places end up being rented for a total of 60 days and that now includes sea containers because nobody checks but the tourists being duped.

In Amsterdam, two illegally placed sea containers on the side of the road were casually put up for rent in the Spaarndammerstraat and Pauwenpad, downtown Amsterdam. The containers had some beds on the floor and that’s it. The ridiculous offer was pointed out by Dutch Twitter account Pretpark Amsterdam (Pretpark means amusement park), a group that campaigns against the negative effects of tourism in the city.

“Employees of the municipality of Amsterdam dragged the ‘hotel’ away on Sunday morning. After complaints from local residents, it turned out that the city district had not issued a permit for placing a container.”

According to Statistic Netherlands, the city of Amsterdam has 863.202 residents as of 1st January 2019, and will surpass its highest amount of residents in its history soon enough, if that’s not already the case. Sadly, this means that all kinds of people will try and trick tourists out of money and that Ivens will continue to be shocked about it, sympathise, and proceed to do nothing but talk and blame foreigners like the novice bigots that his socialist party is aspiring to be.

(Link: .tellerreport.com, Photo: containers that students actually live in, in Amsterdam North)

Tags: , , , ,

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)

Tags: ,

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)

Tags: , , ,

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)

Tags: , ,

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)

Tags: , , ,

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)

Tags: ,

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)

Tags: , ,