May 8, 2012

The top 10 ugliest places in the country

Filed under: Architecture,General by Orangemaster @ 10:43 am

On 14 May, a Dutch television show will let viewers vote for the ugliest place (shopping mall, train station, etc.) in the Netherlands. The short list includes Zoetermeer’s Central Station, shopping mall passage way Brinkman in Haarlem and shopping mall Stokhorst in Enschede. They will be the top three in whatever order, while the 4th to 10th place have already been chosen.

Co-blogger Branko gets to see Zoetemeer Central Station often enough (is it that bad?), while I’ve had the pleasure of seeing 5th place winner Bos en Lommerplein in Amsterdam with a caved in parking lot that took months to fix and put people out of their homes. The entire place is also a wind tunnel.

Other ‘winners’ also seem to have been plagued with problems: the Scheringa museum (shown here) in 7th place was never finished, has had legal problems, and is up for sale.

(Link and photos: www.welingelichtekringen.nl, Photo of Scheringa museum by Karavaan, some rights reserved)

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May 6, 2012

Using boats for transport in the canals of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 11:18 am

Bright reports about an inner city shipping company that uses an actual ship in Amsterdam.

The electronic freighter of Mokum Mariteam, the magazine writes, “replaces five trucks, and is quieter and cleaner.” (The company’s estimate is more conservative: “a boat of 20 by 4.25 metres, [and a] nett volume […] of 85 cubic metres (four compact trucks)”.) The batteries can power the boat for an entire day.

The canals of Amsterdam were dug originally at least partly for transport, but that function seems to have fallen into disuse, until recently. Bright adds that German logistics company DHL (originally American) has been using a canal boat for delivering packages “for years”. (Since October 1997, Binnenvaart.nl adds.)

The text on the side of the City Supplier, ‘vracht door de gracht’, simply means ‘freight through the canal’. The word ‘Mokum’ in the company name refers to the Yiddish name for Amsterdam, Mokum (Alef), literally meaning ‘city A’.

(Photo: Mokum Mariteam)

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April 30, 2012

Queen’s Day 2012

Filed under: General,Literature,Music by Branko Collin @ 9:00 pm

Orangemaster and I celebrated Queen’s Day together today, as we so often do, and we even brought friend and blogger Jeroen Mirck along to share in the fun of hunting for literature and music on what surely must be the greatest garage sale in the world.

Just walking around our neighbourhood took us hours, but it paid off in books and singles and CDs.

Until yesterday every day of the year had been either cold or overcast, today Amsterdam was bathed in sunlight and warmth, which made up for the entire dreary month of April in my view.

Here’s a very short photo impression, more should show up on our Flickr account in a few hours.

Update: I have uploaded the Queen’s Day set to Flickr.

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April 28, 2012

A sample of the upcoming Queen’s Day celebrations

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 3:59 pm

Utrecht based computer science professor Wolfgang Hürst shot this video last year of the party boats in Amsterdam during Queen’s Day. It’s definitely my favourite video of that day. I think the images combine very well with the music (“Ashes of Time” by Fool’s Chaos).

I will be enjoying Queen’s Day (April 30) myself as always by dipping into the nation-wide garage sale, and hope to score some glass for my camera. Specifically, any wide-angle lenses for under ten euro will get my attention.

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April 27, 2012

Weed pass kicks in 1 May, for NL residents only

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

Some 19 coffee shops and several interest groups went to court to fight the government’s plan to introduce a ‘weed pass’ to prevent foreigners (actually, non-residents of the Netherlands) to buy marijuana at coffee shops and lost. The weed pass will come into force on 1 May in the southern provinces and eventually be rolled out throughout the country. The lawyers representing the coffee shops plan to appeal the decision, and even the Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard Van der Laan is opposed to the pass and wants to work out a compromise.

Besides the fact that coffee shops in big cities are major tourist attractions, they felt they were being forced to discriminate against certain clients, as a weed pass can only be obtained in the city where one resides. Collecting personal information about clients brings up a lot of privacy issues as well.

The original plan was to stop drug tourism in border regions like in Maastricht, but that doesn’t apply at all to cities like Amsterdam. Coffee shops will basically become private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

Discriminating between EU citizens on the basis of where they live is apparently illegal, making coffee shop owners responsible for drug enforcement sound like a burden, and who’s to stop me for going into a coffee shop and buying joints for somebody else? I don’t see the point of this, besides the government owning a database of people who smoke marijuana. I think drug dealers will make a small fortune selling bad quality weed to tourists and I don’t see how that looks like stopping criminality.

In the mean time, the people who can’t be bothered to get a pass down south will buy their drugs up north or start growing more of their own, which is perfectly OK as long as it’s limited to a few plants.

And for the record, smoking marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, but it is tolerated.

Here’s a famous Dutch song about ‘nederwiet’ (Dutch weed) by megastars Doe Maar:

(Links: www.coffeeshopnieuws.nl, www.nu.nl, Photo of Joint by Torben Bjørn Hansen, some rights reserved)

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April 24, 2012

Dutch to cast monster bell for London Olympics

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 6:52 am

A huge 23 tonne bell, to be the largest in Europe, will be cast by Eijsbouts in Asten, North Brabant for the Olympic Games in London this summer. The British media is miffed because the contract was supposed to be handled by the British company Whitechapel, but they subcontracted it to Eijsbouts yesterday. The reason given was “the bell was sent overseas because it [Whitechapel] lacked the facilities to cast it here.” To me this reads as ‘we couldn’t do the job, but we wanted to score the contract’ and sounds weird because another British company, Taylor’s, claims it could have done the job in the UK. And part of the London 2012 specifications was insisting that the bell is cast in this country.

So why did the Dutch get the order? Enter complaints about losing work in Britain and about foreigners making the Brits look bad. Then again, the organisers are the same brilliant people who wanted to have The Who’s deceased drummer Keith Moon play at the opening ceremonies. He died way back in 1978. I can only deduce that subcontracting was cheaper, cheap enough to ignore specifications.

We know the bell could have been made in the UK by Taylor’s, the largest bell foundry in the world, but Eijsbouts is making it, a company that also claims to be the largest bell foundry in the world.

(Links: nos.nl, www.mirror.co.uk, www.loughboroughecho.net)

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April 23, 2012

Popular youths drinking soda inspire peers

Filed under: General,Health by Branko Collin @ 12:56 pm

It seems that when young people see their popular friends drink soda instead of alcohol, they are likely to follow suit.

Hanneke Teunissen of the Radboud University in Nijmegen found that “adolescents were more influenced by popular than unpopular peers. Interestingly, the anti-alcohol norms of popular peers seemed most influential in that adolescents were less willing to drink when they were confronted with the anti-alcohol norms of popular peers. Additionally, the adolescents internalized these anti-alcohol norms, which means that they were still less willing to drink when the anti-alcohol norms of these peers were no longer presented to them.”

Earlier studies had already shown the reverse, namely that seeing friends drink alcohol inspires adolescents to also drink alcohol.

Teunissen’s findings will be published in the July issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

(Link: Eureka Alert. Photo by Jos Faber, some rights reserved.)

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April 21, 2012

Electric moped that emits advertisements instead of engine sounds

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 4:11 pm

A delivery moped for Domino’s Pizza is cruising the streets of Amsterdam with its traditional engine sound replaced by a man’s voice that goes “Mmmmm… Lekker, lekker … D-d-d-d-d-omino’s” (“Hmmmm … Yummy, yummy … D-d-d-d-d-omino’s”).

The ad campaign was conceived by Indie Amsterdam. I am not sure if actual delivery mopeds have been equipped with this sound, or if the video is plenty guerilla marketing by itself.

Although the idea is quite brilliant, I could do with less permeable advertising in my life. The plague of reverse graffiti is bad enough.

(Link: The Pop-Up City. Video: Amsterdam Ad Blog.)

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April 13, 2012

Ancient cannabis found during railway construction

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 3:29 pm

With an emphasis on most probably, archaeologists have found bits of what looks like Cannabis sativa in a grave from the stone age some 4200 years ago near Hattemerbroek where digging is going on to build the Hanseatic railway line. It would also be the first time that cannabis has been found in a grave in the Netherlands. They also found other medicinal plants, jewels, tools and drinking cups.

This part of the country has apparently never been really dug up, and so who knows what they’ll find next, as the railway will only be ready in December 2012. The Hanseatic line (Hanzelijn in Dutch) will connect the Randstad conurbation with the Northwest part of the country, namely the cities of Leeuwarden and Groningen (see map).

Currently, the only way to get up there by train is through Amersfoort (cut off on the map, the white square below Zwolle on the blue line more to the right) and then Zwolle, but it involves switching trains at Zwolle because they are no direct trains (intercity trains) like in the rest of the country. It takes a good three hours to get there and people from Leeuwarden and Groningen are a bit fed up of having to switch trains when then commute.

The good news is, wait, it’s bad news. The Hanseatic line will connect Lelystad to Zwolle avoiding Amersfoort , but it will unfortunately take the same amount of time for commuters. Train infrastructure company ProRail has said that commuters will still have to switch at Zwolle without explaining why that is, and so there’s a petition doing the rounds against it. I can imagine they feel like second-class citizens, knowing that if you live in Maastricht or Heerlen you can usually go to Amsterdam Central Station in one go.

(Links: www.waarmaarraar.nl, www.prorailpersberichten.nl, Photos Photo by Eric Caballero, some rights reserved, Photo of Intercitynet NL 2013 by Classical geographer, some rights reserved)

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April 10, 2012

Princess Máxima, ‘photogenic but phony’ say Belgians

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:14 pm

Belgian Princess Mathilde, wife of Prince Filip, was voted most professional European princess according to a poll conducted by the Belgian TV show Royalty, although her not very good Dutch constantly reminds the Flemish that she is supposed to represent all Belgians. The English Duchess Kate, wife of Prince William, was voted most glamorous, although her sister Pippa could arguably be more glamourous, but she’s not a princess — a technicality.

Our own Argentinian-Dutch Princess Máxima was voted the most photogenic of the European princesses, but Belgian viewers had a problem with her switching emotions on and off, depending on the occasion. I’m wondering, what else is she supposed to do? Mathilde has no range whatsoever last time I saw her on television. Máxima’s Dutch is way better than Mathilde’s Dutch will ever be, while also speaking Spanish, English and more. And she smiles more.

Both Mathilde and Kate became royalty in their own country, while Máxima went from working abroad away from her native Argentina to princess in a country she probably never even considered living in. It would be nice if she dressed a bit less stuffy and more her age, but what do I know.

(Link: Dutchnews.nl, photo from 2006 by the Netherlands Government Information Service, used with permission)

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