The Royal Mail of Britain has presented a collection of stamps online that are due to be issued next year, marking the 75th anniversary of D-Day, depicting the Normandy landings of the Allied troops. Problem is, the stamps actually show Americans troops in what is now modern-day Indonesia (Dutch New Guinea), 13,679 kilometres away from Normandy.
People on social media were quick to point out that the image appears on the American National WWII Museum website and is attributed to the US Coast Guard, showing troops carrying stretchers from a landing craft at Sarmi, Dutch New Guinea on 17 May 1944. As well, the D-Day landings took place on 6 June that year, when British, US and Canadian forces landed on the beaches of northern France.
Not only was the wrong image called ’embarrassing’ online, but it’s probably one of the last times that anyone old enough to have been involved in the war will see these stamps, making it extra embarrassing, according to Paul Woodadge, 49, a D-Day historian. As well, a Twitter account for World War Two tours of Jersey tweeted the Royal Mail to point out that the featured ship, LCI-30, did not participate in the Normandy landings.
In the meantime, Royal Mail has apologised and will correct their error. Here’s a case where if social media or the Internet wasn’t around, the mistake would have been even greater, as people would only have noticed the mistake after the stamps were printed.
YouTube crew Bongenoten (‘Allies’) enjoy filming social experiments to see how people deal with extreme behaviour.
In the video below, YouTuber Benjamin Beernink decided to walk around parts of Utrecht with a yarmulke (aka kippah), the head cap Jewish men wear. Beernink happens to be Jewish, but does not usually wear a yarmulke. I can say that it is not something we see very often in the Netherlands.
The crew walked around different neighbourhoods (downtown, Ondiep and Kanaleneiland) in Utrecht. Some reactions were really intense, Beernink having been called ‘kankerjood’ (roughly, ‘Fucking Jew’, but then ‘kanker, which means ‘cancer’ is used as an adjectival swear word) in Kanaleneiland, which doesn’t have the best reputation. He was also laughed at inside a shop by staff and called a ‘faggot’ as well.
The reason Bondgenoten made the video was due to a poll presented by Dutch television show EenVandaag claiming that research shows that a large part of Jews don’t dare show they are Jewish and hide their faith.
Brothers Wim and Nico van Schaijk have found over 100 Roman coins near the Noord-Brabant town of Berlicum. They are silver and bronze coins dating from the first and second century AD, according to the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency after studying the coins for quite some time.
Using a metal detector a year ago near the Aa river, the brothers found four silver denarri and 103 mainly bronze sestertii and asses Experts from Leiden University said the coins were minted between the reign of Emperor Vespasian in 69 AD and that of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD.
Researchers believe that the ancient Romans may have thrown coins into the water before crossing the river, as a sort of sacrifice for a safe crossing – or perhaps as thanks after a safe crossing. Roman pottery was also found where the coins were discovered.
Some years ago, my family was visiting from Québec and one of the places they insisted on visiting was the Kinderdijk, a Dutch UNESCO heritage listed place that attracts people from all around the world. At the time, we found it touristy, but not too busy or crowded. However, today if we believe the media, it’s now a lot busier to the point where the people who live there are ‘totally done with it’.
Mass tourism is getting a lot of press in Europe because it messes up local people’s living environment. In the Netherlands, places like Amsterdam and Volendam have issues with tourists, and the very small Kinderdijk is now on the list of places that are vocal about the problems it faces, as tourists don’t seem to realise people actually live there.
Only 60 people live there, and they have to deal with some 600,000 tourists a year, according to the Volkskrant newspaper. Tourists visit the windmills and learn about water drainage, and when they leave, they are given a picture of the windmills that says ‘Thanks for visiting’, which if you turn the card over says ‘600,000 visitors a year. Sixty residents. #overtourism’.
The stories range from residents being told to move out of the way, so that people can take a better picture (I’ve had that happen to me in Volendam while I was on a sailboat that was docked, and the tone of the man who told me to move didn’t make me move) to waking up to tourists eating at their picnic table and being yelled at by a photographer because the windmill wasn’t turning.
In 2010 the plan was to cap tourism at 400,000 according to a regional business plan, but now it’s 600,000 visitors and plans to grow to 850,000, which means the Kinderdijk could lose its current character.
While Dutch children celebrate Sint-Maarten, knocking door to door at night, carrying hand-made lanterns and singing songs for sweets (sounds familiar?), a Canadian like me sees 11 November as Remembrance Day, the day we commemorate the millions of fallen during the First World War.
The Dutch were neutral during the First World War. When brought up in casual conversation, most people politely shrug and move the conversation to the Second World War, as if the first didn’t concern them, when it fact, they know very little about it. As well, the War of 1914-1918 wasn’t called the first until the second came because having a first meant a second was coming.
Available online for free under the Creative Commons license, why not read a Dutch take on the First World War, this one entitled “The Art of Staying Neutral: The Netherlands in the First World War, 1914-1918” by Maartje M. Abbenhuis. Abbenhuis explains that even though the Netherlands’ neutrality was maintained, they still feared an invasion, they still sent men to the front, they still had to watch the destruction in Belgium and France, they had to deal with rations and become a fertile breeding ground for spies, including figures like their very own Mata Hari.
Today, it’s been 100 years since the First World War. Sorry kids, I won’t be home to give you sweets, I’ll be reading.
Off the Dutch island of Texel, a diving team has discovered the wreck of a two-masted ship, the SS Nordlyset (not shown here), a cargo ship that sank during a storm – as ships usually do – while transporting a load of grain from Riga to Antwerp.
Back in the day, many rescue workers from Den Helder, North Holland were killed during a rescue operation for the ship’s crew, as out of the 23 people who ended up in the water, nine drowned, while the others made it to shore.
The shipping company under which the Nordlyset sailed apparently still exists. According to the divers, the company is enthusiastic about the discovery.
‘Nordlyset’ means Northern Light (singular) In Norwegian, and if you know anything more about this cargo ship or my interpretation of Norwegian, let us know.
Today, the first ever gender neutral passport has been issued to the 57-year-old Leonne Zeegers of Breda, Noord-Brabant. Instead of having a ‘v’ (‘vrouw’ = woman) or ‘m’ (‘man’, same as in English) in their passport, they have an ‘x’, making them the first Dutch person to have such a passport.
The issuing of this passport comes after a court decision earlier this year in Roermond, Limburg, claiming that gender was a question of gender identity and not of sex characteristics. When Leonne was born, the doctors were not able to determine with any certainty if they were a boy or a girl, and as such was an intergender person back when the term was not used as it is today. Back in the day, the parents had to pick a gender, so they went with male ‘because it was easier’. Later in life, Leonne realised they didn’t feel like a man, and switched their gender to female, but that didn’t help because they really felt like neither, a choice that didn’t exist back then.
Hopefully the move will also encourage many other Dutch instances to scrap registering gender for no actual reason than force of habit. According to Dutch interest groups, some 4 percent of the Dutch feel like Leonne does.
Dutch-Chinese filmmaker Julie Ng is currently working on a film about the Dutch-Chinese community entitled ‘Wij zijn meer dan babi pangang’ (‘We’re more than babi pangang’). Since the number of Chinese-Indonesian restaurants where the dish is served are disappearing, some 1097 left as documented recently by Marc van Wonderen in his picture book, Ng believes it’s time to protect babi pangang as part of her identity and the collective Dutch one as well by getting it on the cultural heritage list.
Babi pangang is the name of a quintessential Chinese-Indonesian restaurant dish with Dutch, Chinese-Indonesian and Malay roots, consisting of pork in a tomato-based sweet-and-sour sauce, also served in Flanders and made popular in the late 1960-1970s.
Babi pangang is a made-up dish much in the same way that Madras sauce is a British invention and chop suey is an American-Chinese one. However, in the Netherlands when it comes to food, eating Chinese usually implies Chinese-Indonesian since it is the only Chinese food many people here actually know unless they live in big cities or have travelled far enough to know the difference.
According to Wikipedia, Rembo & Rembo was an absurdist Dutch TV show for kids written by Theo Wesselo and Maxim Hartman that aired from 1987 to 1995. In casual conversation with Dutch folks, bits of sketches from Rembo & Rembo are often quoted or alluded to. I was lucky enough to attend a Rembo & Rembo themed-party once with one of the two guys, I don’t remember which one, and was probably the only non-Dutch person there. People were dressed up like the characters in their sketches, including about six carpenters, which is why I’d like to share this beloved Rembo & Rembo sketch with you and my English translation below the video.
Recently I had to get a carpenter (‘timmerman’, ‘timmervouw’ if it’s a woman) and this sketch was the first thing that popped into my head. Funny enough, the ‘timmerman’ was called Tim.
Here’s what old school Dutch humour looks and sounds like.
Carpenter: Yes, hello!
Man: I’m here for the advert about becoming a carpenter…
Carpenter: No, no, no, I’m not here today, tomorrow I’ll be in. OK? Tomorrow.
Man: Oh… Bye!
Carpenter: Bye!
Carpenter: Yes, hello!
Man: I’m here for the advert about becoming a carpenter…
Carpenter: Sorry, I got it wrong, I’m not here today either. Tomorrow I’ll be here for sure, tomorrow for sure.
Man: Oh…
Carpenter: Bye!
Man: Hello, I was here yesterday already for the advert about becoming a carpenter…
Carpenter: Hey, that’s great, fantastic! Come in! You can start right away!
Carpenter: Come over here and I’ll show you how to hammer. This is a hammer, this is a nail. Head up, point down, a piece of wood: Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! It’s in.
Man: Yes.
Carpenter: Yes? One more time: Hammer, nail, head up, point down, a piece of wood: Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting!Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! It’s in. Yes? Do you understand or should I do it again?
Man: If you could show me once more…
Carpenter: OK, what is this?
Man: A nail.
Carpenter: This is a hammer!
Man: Ah yes, the hammer of course.
Carpenter: And what’s this again?
Man: That’s the hammer then.
Carpenter: This is the nail, yes?
Man: Yes.
Carpenter: Head up, point down, a piece of wood: Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! Ting! It’s in, yes?
Man: Yes.
Carpenter: Try it yourself, OK?
Man: OK.
Carpenter: I’m not going anywhere, I’ll be back.
Man: Head up, nail, point down, hammer, a piece of wood: Ting, ting… Hey! This one has the head facing down!
Carpenter: Hey, hey, hey, hey! What are you doing, man? Why are you throwing out the nail?
Man: It’s no good, the head is facing down and the point is facing up!
Carpenter: You’ll also find these types of nails as well, but you’re not supposed to throw them out!
Man: Oh no?
Carpenter: No! You need to save them for ceilings!
Man: Sorry.
Carpenter: No worries. If you’re here at 7 am tomorrow, you can start right away.
Man: OK. And how much can I earn?
Carpenter: 2,50 [guilders, 1,34 euro] an hour, but it will be more later.
Man: OK, then I’ll come later.
Carpenter: OK.
The funny parts: The ting ting ting is a classic. The carpenter keeps looking left and right when he opens the door possibly because he hires people and underpays them or is just plain dodgy. The nails for ceilings is also a classic.
Dutch weather, which is usually measured in De Bilt, Utrecht by the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) tells us we’re officially experiencing a national heatwave. Yesterday, temperatures hit 30 degrees at 11:20, the third consecutive day of ‘tropical’ weather, which here means above 30 degrees. And it’s only considered a heatwave if there are five consecutive days of 25 degrees or higher, with three days of 30 degrees or higher.
Heat records were broken at 15 of the country’s 33 weather stations in the Netherlands yesterday. Arcen in Limburg was the hottest, with a maximum of 38.2 degrees. Terschelling’s record was broken with the biggest difference, 1.6 degrees higher than the previous record.
Temperatures in De Bilt have been 25 degrees or higher since July 15, which makes it 13 days running if you count today. The record is 18 days, from July 29 to August 15 in 1975 and many people believe it might be broken.
There’s no airco at 24HQ, just the occasional breeze from an open window and excellent music.
