November 6, 2013

Modern art exhibit in historical Amsterdam canal houses

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 10:44 pm

Amsterdam’s famous canal ring turned 400 this year and as part of the celebrations an art exhibit is being held in 15 historical canal houses.

The houses include the mayor’s residence just past the Golden Bend. The artists were selected by curator Siebe Tettero because they had some connection with Amsterdam. They include current darlings of the Dutch art scene Joep van Lieshout and Viviane Sassen.

The exhibit—called Chambres des Canaux—started this week and will run until 17 November except on Mondays. You can buy a ticket for 14 euro at the tourists offices which will give you access to all the venues.

Getting access to the former homes of rich traders sounds like a pretty unique in itself. Should you not be able to make it before 17 November, there is always the Museum Willet-Holthuysen on the Herengracht, which is the home of 19th century art collector Abraham Willet and which has been preserved in the style of its last residents.

(Link: I Amsterdam. Illustration: Gerrit Adriaensz Berckheyde, public domain)

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October 29, 2013

Dutch museums own some 139 contentious artworks

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 1:57 pm

According to years of research carried out by the Netherlands Museums Association on the origins of artworks, some 139 pieces of art acquired by Dutch museums between 1933 and 1945 (during the Nazi regime) are suspected of being stolen, confiscated or were sold to them by force. Some 41 museums have such artworks in their collections, many of which were owned by Jews.

The research, started in 2009, had as a goal of establishing what the extent was of the possession of contentious paintings after the end of WWII. Some 162 Dutch museums collaborated with researchers in order to help return artworks to their rightful owners and/or their heirs. A special website will go live at 4 pm has now gone live on Tuesday, 29 October (CET) for everyone to peruse and maybe even help.

The museum with the most ‘stolen’ artworks is the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag (The Hague Municipal Museum), followed by Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Museum and Stedelijk Museum.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, www.museumvereniging.nl, (Illustration: Charing Cross Bridge by Claude Monet. Source: politie.nl)

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October 10, 2013

How To Be Orange, a book about going Dutch all the way

Filed under: Bicycles,Literature by Orangemaster @ 10:02 am

Greg Shapiro, an American-Dutch comedian and actor, has just published his new book How To Be Orange, which I had the chance of perusing one morning before we both went on the air on Amsterdam’s English Breakfast radio. I laughed everywhere I opened it as an immigrant with 14 years on my Dutch clock because I could relate to it and it is well written. Some of you locals may recognise the book’s illustrations by Floor de Goede.

Many of the better known guide-like books written about the Dutch are just a collection of superficial observations written by English-speaking expats who don’t speak Dutch and think the entire expat community thinks like they do (colonialism, anyone?). These books were written 10-15 years ago, use Amsterdam as a metonym for the Netherlands, and are quite offensive at times, giving me the impression that the Dutch are an obstacle to living and working here because actually adapting and learning Dutch is unfortunately seen as a downgrade for many expats.

But Greg has come up with something that the Dutch and the rest of us can really laugh about probably because Greg has seen both sides, the immigrant having to take Dutch lessons with illiterate adults (not an insult, but a fact) and goes Dutch, bike, cheese and all like a boss. In my books he lives up to his nickname, the American Netherlander.

Here’s an older video shot downtown Amsterdam with Greg sporting his best British accent:

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September 13, 2013

Amsterdam makes list of worst cities for pickpocketing

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:08 am

When I saw this list, I tried first to guess which cities would be on it. Barcelona for sure, having been there and having heard how bad it was, and then I assumed some South American city, but had not guessed Buenos Aires specifically.

What I didn’t expect was Amsterdam. I mean, there are so many other bigger European cities, but then a dense city centre probably does make for easy pickings. The article mentions drunk tourists being an easy target and I can picture that.

On a side note, I lost my wallet last Sunday for the first time in like 12 years after a very long weekend, albeit in a good part of town, and only noticed it the next day. Someone picked it up and brought it to the nearest police station and called me, so all good.

(Link: www.escapehere.com. Illustration: fragment of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Conjurer)

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September 3, 2013

Moving in Amsterdam, an animated trip

Filed under: Film by Orangemaster @ 4:28 am

“Harry and his huge, oblivious son run a moving company together. When they help a girl move apartments, their dull, tiny lives are disrupted.”

‘Gracht’ (‘Canal’) was made for the Utrecht School of Arts in Hilversum as a graduation project by four students. The process took six months, and the four guys not only graduated but were also honoured with a ‘staff pick’ on Vimeo.

I like the mover’s watch and the somewhat trendy yet anachronistic use of the compact cassette with Dutch gabber music.

Gracht from Gracht2013 on Vimeo.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com)

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August 27, 2013

Essay: who cares about Unesco?

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 7:00 am

When I wrote Unesco pulls trigger on Amsterdam in 2010 I was unaware that a day later urbanist Michiel van Iersel would tackle the same subject a day later in NRC.

At the time Unesco had added Amsterdam’s historic city centre to its famous World Heritage List. Critics feared that Amsterdam would fare the same way as Bruges, a city in Belgium that has a lot mediaeval architecture still intact, but that also has the reputation to be staid and boring. They were afraid that the municipal government would turn the city into a museum in which nothing could be changed.

In an essay called Who cares about Unesco? Van Iersel counters these criticisms by saying that “in fairness it should be pointed out that the Belgian town was well on its way to being a museum exhibit before it was included on the list in the year 2000”. He adds that a Unesco listing is unlikely to act as a Trojan horse because if anything, Unesco’s rules are vague and ambiguous.

So, should Amsterdam embrace its Unesco listing? Van Iersel doesn’t seem to care either way. He feels the great number of sites on the World Heritage List has made it the Starbucks of distinctions. He proposes that Amsterdam should “pretend that UNESCO does not exist.” It doesn’t seem to matter much if you’re on it, because everybody else is, too. In fact, when Unesco dropped Dresden from its list for building a bridge, the joke was on Unesco: “in opting for innovation Dresden gave up its place on the list, while UNESCO lost one of its sites and also the support of some of its partisans.”

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August 21, 2013

Experts deem Second Coen Tunnel dangerous and even deadly

Filed under: Architecture,Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm

The Coen (pronounced ‘coon’) Tunnel which runs under the North Sea Canal in Amsterdam built in 1966 is currently being fully renovated, a project that should run until 2014. The Second Coen Tunnel (that’s its name) was built from 2009-2013 and has me worried as a passenger when I go through it. I thought it was just me that felt claustrophobic in that tunnel as compared to the first one (shown here), but apparently traffic psychologists aren’t fans of the very narrow tunnel either, calling it names like “crash tunnel” and “death tunnel”.

Since its opening in mid May, there have been 55 accidents in the Second Coen Tunnel (65 according to other sources), which is either way much more than the average of four accidents a week in the first Coen Tunnel. The experts say they are too many red lights (red lights are used to indicate the right-hand side of the road, while white is for the left-hand side), which look like brake lights, no possible place to stop like in the first tunnel and it is very narrow.

First Coen Tunnel (gets full screen near 0:25), with some hip hop music:

Second Coen Tunnel, straight up, no music:

(Link: www.kennislink.nl, Photo of Coen Tunnel by Erik Tjallinks, some rights reserved)

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July 19, 2013

No wonder Dutch students live in containers

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:10 pm

It’s not too much of a surprise that student rooms in Amsterdam are the most expensive in the Netherlands at 100 euro a week, but maybe a little surprising that Dutch student housing is the second most expensive in Europe after the UK at 139 euro a week. Belgian and German neighbours are lucky, paying respectively 66 euro and 57 euro a week.

The typical ‘I’m looking for a room ad’ shows that people are willing to pay just as much and even more than people renting an entire flat to get a room. I also know a lot of Dutch adults who still have roommates, but then the amount of British television shows where adults share flats taught me as a non-European that it’s perfectly normal in Europe.

A few weeks ago I was part of a Canadian documentary about Amsterdam North’s NDSM dock area and both cameramen were stunned by the container village (see pic) that students have to live in, first thinking it was some sort of elaborate artwork. When I told them it was student housing, we talked about the differences between Amsterdam and Montréal were the entire crew and myself are from.

Amsterdam style:

– I actually know rich Dutch parents who bought a second house so that their daughter could have a room and share the house with friends.
– There used to be parties in Amsterdam where students could win a room in a house, not rent-free of course.
– Some adults stay in their student room years after graduation because there are very tough laws about throwing people out of their homes.

Montréal style:

– Student housing provided by universities is overpriced and usually full of foreigners who don’t know better. They usually wise up really quickly and get a normal flat.
– Renting a flat is easy, so there is no need for students to live in student housing. They live in flats just like normal people.
– The idea of renting a room in a house is weird. People rent a flat or share a flat, but don’t usually go looking for a room with the assumption that renting a flat is very difficult like it is in Amsterdam.

(Link: www.iamexpat.nl, Photo of Multi-storey container housing by Rory Hyde, some rights reserved)

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July 16, 2013

Dutch tourist tax is the top moneymaker for municipalities

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 12:00 pm

This year Dutch municipalities expect to rake in 162 million euro in tourist tax, 62 million more than in 2010. In 2011, 174 of the 418 municipalities hiked up its tax and in some places, the tax at hotels simply doubled.

Of all the municipal taxes, it is the tourist tax that goes up the most each year. And this year 76 percent of municipalities are collecting this cash cow of a tax, as compared to 72 percent last year. Tourist tax on the Wadden Sea islands is quite high with Texel at 26 percent and Vlieland at 42 percent.

The winner is Amsterdam, cashing in on 37 million euro in 2013, and the year isn’t over. A dubious honourable mention goes out to Rotterdam, which got rid of the tourist tax in 2005, but brought it back in 2010.

Paying tourist tax in your own country as a Dutch person does not seem to make much sense, but you could easily argue it. However, it is unclear when and where you pay tourist tax, as every municipality has either a fixed rate or a percentage, looking like a typical Dutch bureaucratic free-for-all that nobody can keep straight.

(Link: www.nieuws.nl, www.etoa.org)

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July 3, 2013

Record number of bikes removed in 2012

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 6:12 pm

Bicycle parking is a serious matter in most major Dutch cities, as bikes parked near busy places like train stations have to be placed in designated areas or else run the risk of getting a fine, just like a car. To avoid ugly clutter, the city of Amsterdam removed a record number of bikes in 2012, some 65,000 ‘wrongly parked’ bikes and bike carcasses. I can sympathise with removing the carcasses, but removing ‘wrongly parked’ bikes implies that there’s not enough bike parking available, something the media writes about all the time.

Unlike cars, which are quickly demonised, bikes are supposed to be good, and dissuading anyone to take their bike instead of public transport would be blasphemous. In 2011, 54,000 bikes were removed and in 2010, 34,000. Since there’s an increase in the use and ownership of bikes, the big cities need more racks, but municipalities are basically ignoring the problem and causing a new one: expensive and tedious bureaucracy for anyone who wants to get their bike back.

In a recent post about recycling bicycle parts, cities remove (steal) bikes under the guise of keeping bicycle parking manageable and keeping the streets clean. The bikes are stored at a depot where rightful owners can retrieve their bikes after paying a ‘fine’. A lot of people don’t bother picking up their bikes and just get another one, putting more bikes out there.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl)

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