January 9, 2011
Dutch Winter from Kasper Bak on Vimeo.
A couple of months ago Kasper Bak acquired a Canon EOS 550D photo camera, which apparently possesses some great video features. He used its slo-mo setting to shoot this short film about people skating in Lemmer, Friesland. It’s been doing the rounds on them there Internets.
January 8, 2011
Since 2001 tax forms have had a checkbox that allowed two people living together to declare a ‘fiscal partnership’, a relationship just for tax purposes. It appears (I never looked it up before), that if you and somebody else declare a fiscal partnership you get certain tax breaks, such as mortgage interest deductions for the highest earner.
This year the law has changed. It is no longer enough to declare to the tax people that you and Bob are partners, you and Bob need to have some legal status to confirm this. A wedding certificate is good, as is a registered partnership (civil union) or a notarized ‘cohabitation agreement’. The latter is used for non-intimate relationships (think father-son) and sometimes for uncommon intimate relationships (think polyamorous). What also works is owning a house together or having children together. Couples who never got around to making it ‘official’ now have a decision to take.
Interestingly, married couples who are estranged may wish to explore the possibility of a divorce under the new tax regime, Elsevier reports. You see, this new fiscal partnership is obligatory. It is harder to get into, but you cannot opt out either. One reason for such a divorce could be if each partner owns a house, so that they both can get their own mortgage interest deductions.
Another way to become fiscal partners is to have a partner recognised by one’s pension fund.
The people that may be inconvenienced the most by this measure is those who refuse to divorce for religious reasons, even if they no longer live together—a situation called ‘separated from table and bed’ in Dutch, and legally recognized as such, just no longer by the tax people.
(Photo by Eunice Chang, some rights reserved)
Tags: civil unions, contract law, families, gay marriage, income tax, marriage, politics, taxes
December 30, 2010
The village of Esbeek, Noord-Brabant had a local cafe, Schuttershof, the only meeting place in the village that was to be sold and possibly turned into something new and shiny the locals didn’t want. The owner had to move on, but not because the cafe was too quiet, quite the contrary. Schuttershof attracts groups and clubs like the volleyball club, archery club, local fanfare, theatre people, and more. And during carnival, it is usually as full as can possibly be.
To save their cafe and buy the entire property, the association of the cafe needed 1.2 million euro and a plan to get it. They issued shares, ranging from 200 to 5,000 euro, which were bought up by some 300 inhabitants. The association managed to raise 300,000 euro and the bank came up with the rest. Money is one thing, but some 87 volunteers also helped rebuild the 101-year-old cafe, which reopened on 28 December.
To quote the Esbeek site that has all the party pics of the opening and more, “For years we had a cafe with a nice story, but now we have a beautiful cafe with a fantastic story.” The cafe complex can now host weddings and big parties. The new bar was made by two local men who have been building carnival floats for decades and even the mayor came to paint for an evening. Next to cafe Schuttershof there is now a ‘town meeting hall’ where the elderly can hang out.
Just reading this story makes me want to go down there and check out it come carnival time (6-8 March 2011).
(Link: ad.nl, trouw, Photo of a totally unrelated stream in Kirchberg, Austria to keep the image of the story alive)
Tags: Carnival, Esbeek, Noord-Brabant
December 29, 2010
I noticed a few neat things this year while working on 24oranges and I want to share them you:
– Our most used Flickr photos are by Peter de Wit, aka FaceMePLS. He has great everyday Dutch stuff that we just can’t seem to get enough of.
– Our most popular Flickr photos are Red thumbtack and Red thumbtack 2, followed by Old books. The message seems to be that simple, everyday objects are what people really like. Co-blogger Branko has taken most of the pictures, he has a fancy DSLR camera while I go through life with a small pocket thingy.
– Our most popular tag is ‘Amsterdam’ because that is where we live, followed by ‘Rotterdam’ and a tie for third place: ‘Groningen’, ‘football’ and ‘law’.
– We’ve added some categories this year (or late last year): ‘photography’, ‘bicycles’ and ‘sustainability’, three topics that come up often.
– We started a Facebook group that has news other than on the blog, with a few exceptions. A big thank you to the 140 members for joining!
– We had our best month yet in November 2010 with 23,562 unique visitors. A big thanks to Global Post and many other sites for linking to us.
Our resolutions include more of our own pictures, a new header (we need sun and oranges at the same time), more videos, (join our 24OrangesTV channel) and one day hopefully more co-bloggers.
Thanks to everyone who submitted and forwarded stories, and took the time to comment on our postings, you make us want to keep going. Cheers!
December 28, 2010
It is that time of the year again, the looking-back-at-the-past-12-months-and-saying-what-you-thought-about-it-all time.
I don’t know if it was something in our drinks or the company in which those drinks were drank, but we went out a lot to collect our own news. My favourite of these stories has to be the one about
If only because I had no idea…
In the Lost & Found section, there was the remarkable news about the discovery of
You may also want to relive:
Tags: 24oranges
December 25, 2010
* Several provinces have instated hunting bans for a variety of animals because of the cold weather. Zeeland, Drenthe, Noord Holland and Limburg have ordered a general hunting ban, while others have limited their bans to a selection of animals. The Party for the Animals (PvdD) has called for a nationwide ban, Trouw reports.
* Car navigation software voiced by porn actress Kim Holland was the most popular of the Navigatiestemmen.nl stable in 2010, Blik op Persbericht reports. Her voice was also the most popular in 2009. The winner of 2008, Clown Bassie, came second this year. Unrelated: recently Holland’s demand that Internet provider Ziggo release the personal data of a customer suspected of infringing her copyrights was rejected on appeal.
* The most wanted job title on Monsterboard.nl in 2010 was secretary, just like last year. Visitors searched 500,000 times for the title. Manager and controller were other popular job titles, Blik op Nieuws writes.
* Almost 1 billion worth of guilder coins and bills are still hiding underneath mattresses and in other places, Z24 reports. Half of that money is in coins, and can no longer be exchanged for euro. Paper money can be exchanged at the central bank (DNB) until 2031. The amount of unclaimed banknotes seems to be the same as last year’s.
Tags: actors, banknotes, Bassie and Adriaan, car navigation systems, clowns, coins, copyright, hunting, jobs, managers, money, porn, provinces, secretaries, software, top ten lists, winter
December 24, 2010
Here it is again, the tree I found in the trash a few years ago that adorns the office. The 24oranges crew has enough food and drinks to fill a bunker, and so pics will surely follow.
There are rumours that the Elfstedentocht (‘Eleven Cities Tour’), the outdoor Frisian skating marathon will possibly be on this year, the last one of which took place in 1997. Not only will we write about if it happens, but we plan on attending and taking pictures.
Read more about the Elfstedentocht on 24oranges:
Elfstedentocht stronger brand than Olympic Games
Tags: Christmas, Christmas tree, Elfstedentocht
December 22, 2010
The owners of a few pubs in Weert, Limburg have decided to give free beer, wine and even kir (how classy) on the house to girls, so that boys stay away from those illegal beer-serving non-pubs called ‘zuipketens‘, modern-day Dutch speakeasies that have apparently increased in popularity since the smoking ban. By stay away I do mean come to their pubs instead because they have tipsy girls in them.
Free drinks are sure to get a few more girls into the pub, but at a cost and not on the long run. And then there’s the morally questionable idea of getting girls to drink more, knowing they get drunk more quickly, and all that jazz. The drinking age in the Netherlands is 16, an age when kids are not legally responsbile adults, which is also a major problem in smaller communities where there’s not much to do but drink — like in Weert, Limburg.
Back in 2008 we wrote about beer confiscation in Urk, a very religious town in Flevoland whose youth is drinking their youth away because there’s nothing to do there.
(Link: telegraaf.nl, Photo: me at Oktoberfest. If the Telegraaf can use a German picture for a Dutch article, so can we.)
December 15, 2010
The Dutch word of the year, according to Dutch dictionary Van Dale (a Dutch-Belgian joint publication), is ‘gedoogregering’, a government (‘-regering’) (albeit it a minority government this time) with silent support (‘gedoog-‘ means ‘tolerated’). The silent support comes from one of the three political parties who agrees to everything the other two parties want in exchange for deals made beforehand in an ‘gedoogakkoord’, or a ‘silent party agreement’. The Dutch have not had a minority government since WWII and is also dealing with a right-wing party that is anything but silent.
The runner-up word of the year is something the English-speaking world may know from Jamaican dancehall music and was described on Dutch telly very politely as ‘an erotic dance’: ‘daggeren’ (‘daggering’). It’s basically pretending to have jack-rabbit like sex on the dance floor (dry humping), usually to the beat of the music. Lucky for us, some white trash reality show apparently features this often.
The number one Dutch word in Belgium also has to do with sex: ‘tentsletje’ (‘tent slut’), a girl that sleeps with lots of different guys (goes from tent to tent) at those big summer festivals.
(Link: woordvanhetjaar.vandale.nl)
Tags: dictionary, Dutch government, Van Dale
December 8, 2010
A 31-year-old man escaped from Vught prison on Tuesday by just walking out the door with a group of visitors, according to newspaper De Telegraaf. “The man, who was serving time for a violent crime, was spotted later on security cameras mingling with visitors and leaving through the front door.” It took guards hours to figure out how the man went missing. They realised it by watching video footage of him leaving.
Incompetence, you say? At the beginning of this year, one of the Netherlands’ eight most wanted criminals turned out to be in jail in Belgium since 2008.
(Links: dutchnews, zibb.nl, Photo by Ken Mayer, some rights reserved)
