January 11, 2016

Amsterdam gets its own carnival name

Filed under: Dutch first,Event by Orangemaster @ 1:47 pm
carnaval

We’ve written quite a bit over the years about carnival music (here and here), but this year a carnival party crew has kicked up a notch, giving Amsterdam a carnival name.

And that name is ‘Gròòtgragtegat’, roughly ‘big hole with canals’, a name given by Alaaf & Kicking, a party organisation made up of people from Noord-Brabant living in Amsterdam who will be holding a carnival party on January 22. They actually held a vote for the name, as other contenders were ‘Amsteldonk’ and ‘Poalkesdurp’.

Pronouncing ‘Gròòtgragtegat’, with the typical hard gutteral ‘g’ sound of Amsterdam residents is tough even for Dutch people and great practice for anybody else. Here’s a whopping list of Dutch cities that get carnival names according to Wikipedia. Amsterdam isn’t on it – yet.

(Links: www.bndestem.nl, at5.nl)

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January 8, 2016

Gender axed from online forms in Amsterdam

Filed under: Dutch first,Online by Orangemaster @ 12:52 pm

Filling in your gender on online forms for the city of Amsterdam has recently become a thing of the past, unless it is legally required. “All residents of Amsterdam should feel at home in the way in which the city communicates with them”, and addressing people with ‘Dear Sir or Madam’ just doesn’t work in today’s world. Amsterdam also claims to be the first Dutch city to have ditched gender in its communication.

In Dutch, authorities often write letters with ‘Dear Sir/Madam [last name]’, which already says they don’t care who or what you are, while some will argue that they are just trying to cover their bases. I often translate online forms into English, having to explain to Dutch clients that Mr and Mrs doesn’t work: there’s also Ms, Miss and if the world progresses the way it is, Mx could also be the next one at least in English. The concept of addressing women based on their marital status is archaic and obsolete.

As well, entering your gender only to get letters with ‘Dear Sir/Madam [last name], means it was unnecessary in the first place. Any time I’ve received letters addressed to me as ‘Sir’ I’ve chucked them out and anyone online who dares send me business letters with ‘Dear Sirs’ gets ignored. If you call me up from a bank and ask to speak to the man of the house or my husband, I will find you and hunt you down.

(Link: www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl, Photo of the VOC HQ (East India Company) by Josh, distributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2)

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December 21, 2015

Julius Caesar massacred two tribes on Dutch soil

Filed under: Dutch first,History by Orangemaster @ 11:30 am

Valkhof

Based on a combination of historical, archaeological and geochemical data, the Allard Pierson Museum of the VU University Amsterdam has announced that they have uncovered evidence that Julius Caesar actually fought a battle on Dutch soil. Confirmed by skeletal remains, swords and spearheads that were found in Kessel, Noord-Brabant, Caesar and his men wiped out two entire local tribes, which was normal back then and wrote about it in Book IV of his De Bello Gallico. According to archaeologists, Caesar fought the battle in 55 A.D.

Around 47 A.D, the border of the Roman Empire ran through the Netherlands where Germanic and Celtic tribes lived. Several Dutch villages and cities along the Rhine descend from the Roman time, revealed by regular archeological excavations. The most important Roman settlement was Noviomagus, or as it is know today, Nijmegen. The Valkhof shown here is one of the many Roman ruins still standing there.

(Links: european-heritage.org, phys.org, Photo of the Moon over the Valkhof by Eelco, some rights reserved)

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December 17, 2015

Colourful wasp makes first Dutch appearance

Filed under: Animals,Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 10:18 am

Wasp1

A new type of gold wasp, the rainbow wasp, was spotted for the first time this summer in the woods of Limburg. It took a while to identify it, but with the help of an Estonian expert, the colourful critter was found to be a Chrysis equestris, part of a family of wasps called ‘cuckoo wasps’.

Besides their beautiful colours, these incandescent wasps are ‘kleptoparasitic’, laying eggs in others insects’ nests, hence the cuckoo reference. The baby wasps then eat the eggs or larva in the nest, a bit like crashing a banquet.

The Netherlands has 57 types of wasps flying around.

(Links: www.naturetoday.com, www.nltimes.nl, Photo: sploid.gizmodo.com)

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October 17, 2015

Dutch students break European rocketry record

Filed under: Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 7:00 am

DARE

On 16 October in the afternoon, the Delft Aerospace Rocket Engineering (DARE) student society of the Delft University of Technology broke a European record in amateur rocketry. The students successfully launched a rocket into space that attempted to reach the Kármán line at 100 kilometers in altitude.

The first attempt made by the students on Thursday was thwarted by problems with a motor valve, which is why after fixing it, they made another attempt the next day. The seven-meter-long Stratos II+ rocket uses a mix of sorbitol and paraffin for fuel. It reached a speed of 100 km/h in 0.85 seconds, with a top speed of 3000 km/h.

In a few years, the DARE team wants to go into space, and to be able to do that they need to reach the Kármán line. The sky’s the limit now.

(Links: www.ad.nl, dare.tudelft.nl)

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October 9, 2015

Young Dutchman makes professional hockey debut

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Orangemaster @ 9:21 am

If a Dutchman grows up in a hockey country and has hockey father Hannie Sprong encouraging him, he’ll play hockey instead of football (soccer). Born in Amsterdam, this is Daniel Sprong’s story, an 18-year-old with star quality who has been living in Quebec, Canada since he was seven and played his first NHL game with the Pittsburgh Penguins on 8 October 2015 against the Dallas Stars, in a game that saw the Penguins lose 3-0.

The Dutch media is not into hockey otherwise, but since Sprong is still a Dutchman with no dual citizenship (he’s apparently still waiting on his Canadian one), he qualifies for our ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (‘Find the Dutch person’) tag. Sprong has also said that he does not want to play with the Dutch national hockey team in the hopes of playing for the Canadian one, which means he probably enjoys winning.

The first Dutch Canadian to play NHL hockey was Ed Kea, born in Weesp, who played among others with the Calgary Flames in the early 1970s. His career came to an abrupt end when he hit his head on the ice (no helmets back then), a severe injury that left him physically and mentally disabled. As well, because his injury happened when he was in a minor league at that point in his career, he was not financially covered and his family struggled to make ends meet. Sadly, Kea died accidentally in his family’s swimming pool at age 51.

In 2013 we told you about Mike Dalhuisen’s debut with the New York Islanders, a guy who likes to fight on the ice.

(Links: www.parool.nl, stlouisblueslegends.blogspot.nl, en.wikipedia.org, Photo of hockey sticks by kicksave2930, some rights reserved)

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October 8, 2015

Virtual reality movie theatre to premiere in Amsterdam

Filed under: Dutch first,Event,Film by Orangemaster @ 7:10 pm

For anyone who hates 3D movies, look away now: a new virtual reality pop-up movie theatre will open in Amsterdam on October 31, organised by Samhoud media. The idea is to watch short 30-minute films, with many showings to choose from through the evening.

You’d be watching video through a Gear VR headset from Samsung and Oculus, an experience that will run you 10 euro. For 30 euro you can live large and enjoy a loveseat and VIP experience. Oh, and there will be popcorn. Owner Jip Samhoud said that it’s the first time in the Netherlands that they are going to apply such large-scale virtual reality, and it could very well be the first time in Europe.

The films are a surprise: no idea if they are Halloween related.

(Link: www.nltimes.nl, photo of film cans by tallfoot, some rights reserved)

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September 20, 2015

Sleeping in a life-size sand castle hotel

Filed under: Architecture,Design,Dutch first by Orangemaster @ 9:27 am

Zandhotel

Inspired by European ice hotels, two pop-up hotels (‘zandhotels’) made out of very 1000 tons of compact sand have opened in Oss, Noord-Brabant and Sneek, Friesland, which are already fully booked for this year. However, you can visit the one in Oss until 28 September and the one in Sneek until 4 October during nearby sand sculpture festivals.

The hotel’s basic structure is made of thin walls, covered inside and out with reinforced sand for sturdiness, while basics such as the shower, bathroom and bed are made out of normal materials.

Some media are calling it a world first, we’ll stay in our sandbox and call it a Dutch first.

(Links and photo: www.lalibre.be, wtkr.com)

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September 9, 2015

Palestinian and Israeli restaurateurs make chick peace

Filed under: Dutch first,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 8:35 pm

chick-peas-personal-creationsIn July a vegetarian Palestinian restaurant opened its doors on the Weimarstraat in the Hague called Love & Peas.

The pun refers to the fact that the two men running the place hail from opposite sides in a war. The manager, Muawi Shehadeh, is Palestinian and the chef, Yuval Gal, is Israeli.

“When we met three years ago we immediately started cracking politically incorrect jokes about our backgrounds”, Gal told AD, “and that created a bond.”

The paper notes that this isn’t the first joint Palestinian-Israeli restaurant in Europe — London has its Ottolenghi chain.

Ynet quotes the Israeli ambassador to the Netherlands, Haim Divon: “My wife Linda discovered the place on a social network site. The idea of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation got around and became the talk of the day here because everyone likes this new venture. […] It’s truly hard to believe we’re sitting in a restaurant in The Hague. The hummus is really tasty.”

(Photo by Personal Creations, some rights reserved)

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August 3, 2015

New type of orchid discovered on an island

Filed under: Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 5:20 pm

Orchids.jpg

Last June a new type of orchid was discovered in the Netherlands on the island of Schiermonnikoog by orchid expert Hans Dekker who spotted it just in time to add it to his book on orchids in the Northern Netherlands published recently.

The orchid in question is the Dactylorhiza purpurella that usually grows in European coastal regions in the United Kingdom and Scandinavia. It’s surprising to the experts why nobody saw this orchid before, maybe it simply hadn’t been noticed according to some.

(Link: natuurbericht.nl, Photo: Hans Dekker)

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