June 27, 2013

Amsterdam gets pop-up restaurant for single diners

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:57 pm

Perfect for singles and anyone who wants to dine alone without getting looks from the staff when they take away the extra set of utensils from the table, Dutch social-design agency Marina van Goor and branding agency Vandejong have launched pop-up restaurant ‘Eenmaal’ (in Dutch meaning both ‘one meal’ and ‘once’), the first one-person restaurant in the world (so they claim), located in Amsterdam West.

I do expect anybody who will want to try out the place with a friend or date will get frowned upon if they try and move the table and chairs together. The point of the designers is, “to demonstrate that eating in solitude can be a good thing”. The restaurant will only be open to the public for two days on Friday 28 June and Saturday 29 June, and you can reserve using the link below.

No one has any idea about the food or prices, as it’s mostly about the concept.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo by FotoosVanRobin, some rights reserved)

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May 29, 2013

Trash bags in Amsterdam get their own Facebook page

Filed under: General,Online by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

Following the trend of protesting or trying to shed light on issues by setting up a Facebook page, a resident of Amsterdam’s De Pijp district who lives on the Van der Helstplein (Van der Helst square) has had enough of the heaps of trash accumulating there and has set up a Facebook page called Van der Helst-belt.

The square is full of restaurants and cafes, which would explain the preponderance of trash, but not why it isn’t picked up often enough or on time. The other problem is that people tend to put out their trash every day, which goes against the rules of that area.

Trash is a complicated business in Dutch cities. In Nijmegen for example, unless it has changed recently, residents pay extra money to use city-approved trash bags, which you buy at the regular store, so basically you pay for what you throw out. In places like Amsterdam, you pay a flat fee per year depending on the make-up of your household. In my co-blogger ultraposh neighbourhood it’s a Wednesday-Saturday affair, while in my lesser yet decent part of town, I can go across the street anytime and put it in one of the three underground bins.

(Link: www.rtvnh.nl)

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May 13, 2013

Bike path under Rijksmuseum Amsterdam to open tomorrow

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 9:33 am

On a dreary Saturday I snapped this picture of the entrance to the recently opened Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

This is also a photo of the only bike path in the world that bicycles are not (yet) allowed on, which is why there are barriers and security guards.

When in 2003 renovations started the architects came up with a plan to move the museum entrance from the side to the tunnel underneath the museum. This would bring museum visitors in closer proximity to the cyclists who fully expected to still be able to use their age old bike path. The footpath (not shown here) is several meters wide, but as anybody who lives in Amsterdam knows, tourists will not look where they walk.

Museum director Wim Pijbes has traditionally been against the bike path, Eindhovens Dagblad reports, and probably would shed no tears if people stopped noticing that there was one.

Although the Netherlands does have a concept of right of way (recht van overpad), people here make much less of deal about it than in, say, the United Kingdom where the Rambler’s Association actively works to keep public paths over private property open. The Rijksmuseum is, as the name implies, publicly owned.

The new Rijksmuseum opened on 13 April of this year. The bike path will be opened tomorrow evening, although the city reserves the right to close it ‘at busy times’ until it has had the time to put in extra security measures.

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May 9, 2013

Amsterdam, the city that knows no boundaries

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:46 am

There’s a new trend that has been brewing in Amsterdam when it comes to branding the city to tourists, and that’s making tourist attractions that are not actually in Amsterdam part of the city when it is convenient to do so (*cash register sounds*).

The cities of IJmuiden, Bloemendaal and Zandvoort on the coast are now just ‘Amsterdam Beach’, although they are closer to the bigger city of Haarlem, which is sometimes casually annexed to what is now being referred to as ‘The Greater Amsterdam Area’ by city marketing people. Schiphol Airport has been called Amsterdam Airport for ages although it is not in Amsterdam and the ‘Bulb Region’ again closer to Haarlem is the ‘Amsterdam Flower Strip’. Oddly enough, the most ‘bulbous’ region of the country is actually north of there, but that’s just inconvenient.

The lovely castle of Muiderslot 15 kilometres from Amsterdam is being sold to tourists as ‘Amsterdam Castle Muiderslot’. The number of foreign visitors doubled in 2012 from 10,000 to 20,000 (*cash register sounds*).

Although Amsterdam is the capital of the Netherlands, it’s never really marketed as such, probably because the Dutch refer to Amsterdam as that big city over there and not as ‘the nation’s capital’. However, this absorbing of non Amsterdam attractions makes many an Amsterdam resident uncomfortable. What gives Amsterdam the right to poach tourist attractions? Money? I mean Schiphol, OK, it’s tough to pronounce, but the beaches 20 kilometres away? That’s overstretching boundaries.

According to Amsterdam FM radio, Amsterdam presents itself abroad as being a city that is much bigger than its actual municipal boundaries. If the locals of other cities don’t mind the poaching and enjoy the money like Muiderslot does, then fine, Amsterdam just got that much bigger (*cash register sounds*).

While us mortals in Amsterdam still have to use normal city limits, we are all the dupe of some city marketing we can’t believe in ourselves because we know it’s not Amsterdam. Why are the 1.5 million tourists that come to Amsterdam every year being treated like morons? It almost looks to me as if we are ashamed of quaint villages like Zaandam with its famous windmills and its having housed Russian Tsar Peter the Great for a week. And will this branding go so far as to make the city of Utrecht 30 min away by train a suburb of Amsterdam? Don’t laugh, that’s where this megalomaniac trend is headed.

To quote any good Dutch person talking to tourists and expats: Amsterdam isn’t the Netherlands. Hell, Amsterdam is not even itself anymore.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, Photo of Muiderslot Castle by Coanri/Rita, some rights reserved)

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May 7, 2013

Amsterdam tops list of best biking cities in the world 2013

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:00 am

Although they say it took them more time than they had expected, Copenhagenize’s 2013 Index of bicycle-friendly cities is out, and Amsterdam is the orange on top.

“We ranked 80 cities in 2011 and increased that to 150 this time round. Although this time round we had the help of over 400 individuals on every continent – our eyes and ears on the ground – to assist with the ranking. Lots of changes in the Top 20 what with the addition of 80 new cities. ”

Some interesting bits about the list:
– Utrecht came in 3rd and Eindhoven 6th.
– My home town of Montréal came in 11th (tied with Munich and Nagoya), as the only North American city.
– France and Germany each have three cities in the top 20.

All in all, most top biking cities are European ones. I mentioned in passing on French Belgian radio last week how dangerous it was to cycle in Brussels, so I am glad to see Antwerp in the list.

From what I have seen and read, in the United States and in many parts of Canada, fitting in cyclists so late in the game is more of a nuisance and a diluted green affair than actually making cycling a valid and accepted mode of transport like it is here. It could make more sense in the long run to concentrate on electric cars in countries where the distances are greater than trying to get people to cycle two months out of the year when the weather is nice. Winter has to be a major factor worldwide for using a car over a bike. Copenhagen and Malmö have serious winters and are pretty far up the list, but they have relatively small city centres and apparently very good cycling infrastructure. I know for a fact that it took a lot of lobbying to get my home town of Montréal to build bike paths at the end of the 1980s.

(Link: www.copenhagenize.com, Photo by Flickr user comedynose, some rights reserved)

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April 11, 2013

Cooking with weed becomes fashionable and mainstream

Filed under: Fashion,Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 3:16 pm

Well-known snack bar Manneken Pis on the Damrak, the first main street any tourist sees when they exit Amsterdam Central Station to walk towards the Palace, has started offering fries with a marijuana sauce as of today. Weed is usually quite pungent in food, which is why people put it in creamy or buttery substances, as it is not the easiest thing to cook with or digest for that matter. Yes, it can provide a very decent, slow buzz, thanks for asking.

Also in weed-related cooking, Dutch clothing company FreshCotton got the Arnold Amsterdam agency to produce a drug-based cookbook to promote the new range of Stüssy Amsterdam tees. “The cookbook, which references Amsterdam’s tolerance towards narcotics, demonstrates how to create dishes (very short video) using high-end ingredients and drugs – like marijuana and magic mushrooms – that can be legally obtained in the Netherlands.” It also contains some men’s fashion.

(Link: www.amsterdamfm.nl, www.campaignlive.co.uk)

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March 28, 2013

Amsterdam also gets trendy barber shop

Filed under: Fashion by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

With very manly advertising about taming the beast, Amsterdam now has its own equivalent of Schorem, a man’s hairdresser that Rotterdam has.

Barber shaves & trims lets guys have a nice, old fashioned razor shave or a beard trim as well as a coffee, beer or even whisky while they get pampered.

(Link: www.amsterdamadblog.com, Photo of Barber pole by *Sally M*, some rights reserved)

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March 27, 2013

Top chef snubs Michelin to make normal food

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

It’s not the first time a restaurant decides to send back a Michelin star, but this time a two-starred restaurant has decided to do it.

Top chef Ron Blaauw has decided to toss aside his two Michelin stars from his eponymous Amsterdam establishment on the Sophialaan and offer simpler dishes at normal prices. “Sixteen appetizers, four kinds of bread, a water menu, etc., there just no need for all that anymore.”

The restaurant will be renamed Ron’s Gastrobar with maximum prices of 15 euro for main courses. If that’s not trendsetting, I don’t know what is. Oh and nom nom nom.

(Link: www.at5, Photo by FotoosVanRobin, some rights reserved)

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March 26, 2013

Dutch still own most bikes per capita in the world

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 10:11 am

With a population of some 16.6 million inhabitants, the Netherlands still topping the list of most bicycles owned is not very surprising. However, when it comes to calculating the actual amount of cyclists, this quirky list has some issues, as not everyone who owns a bike is necessary a cyclist and other leaps of logic.

I also noticed that the picture used to represent Amsterdam was not right, and now I see it is Delft (to the right of the train station is my guess), a major student city.

In the Netherlands 27% of all trips and 25% of trips to work are made by bike. About 1.3 million bicycles were sold in the Netherlands in 2009, at an average price of 713 euro each. Amsterdam, the capital and largest city of the Netherlands, is one of the most bicycle-friendly large cities in the world, with 400 km of bike lanes and nearly 40% of all commutes in Amsterdam are done on bike.

And no, we don’t do bike helmets and yes, please get over it. You didn’t point that out about Asian countries now do you? Reads like a major cultural bias to me. The Belgians who cycle a lot as well have to wear bright yellow vests to get around and if you’re ever cycled in Brussels or Antwerp, you’d be wise to do the same, especially considering the constant construction.

I had to laugh when a good friend from Canada suggested that cycling was a great way to meet new people and that I should do it to. I told her that would be like her driving a car to work to meet people. We had a good laugh.

(Link: top10hell.com)

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February 28, 2013

Chinese chef caged, beaten and exploited as a slave

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 4:35 pm

A 52-year-old female Chinese restaurant owner and four other suspects are being prosecuted on human trafficking charges for having exploited a Chinese chef forced to work in restaurants in Amsterdam and Arnhem.

“The victim was intimidated and had to work under miserable conditions. He was not allowed to visit a doctor and had to sleep in a cage in an Amsterdam restaurant under video surveillance.” He also worked for long hours for almost no pay, and his bank account was plundered.

Many human trafficking victims in the Netherlands are women brought to work in the sex industry, but a broader type of exploitation is apparently on the rise.

(Link: www.expatica.com, Photo of dumplings by filipe.garcia, some rights reserved)

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