April 25, 2013

Timelapse video of basketball hall morphing into concert venue, and back again

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 11:44 pm

This is a lovely time-lapse video by videographer Pepijn Koning of the MartiniPlaza venue in Groningen, of which the centre hall seats 4,500.

Earlier this month the Dutch Basketball League play-offs were held here, but in the middle of the play-offs the basketball hall had to make room for a dance hall in which a paint party was to be held (folks dancing while squirting each other with paint).

The video shows how the hall transforms from one type of venue into the other and back again.

(Video: YouTube / Pepijn Koning)

Tags: , , , ,

November 7, 2012

Dutch professor’s fake research keeps piling up

Filed under: Science by Orangemaster @ 1:22 pm

Last year ‘Professor’ Diederik Stapel from the University of Tilburg was suspended for making up pro-vegetarian research, which other ‘Professors’ bought into hook, line and sinker, like a school of professional fish.

An investigative committee was set up to find out how much nonsense he actually made up over the years and apparently, it’s a big pile. From his Groningen period, nine articles and two dissertations have been added to the heap of his confirmed 36 cases of fraud. The committee is also looking into his work at other Dutch universities where fraud is being called ‘highly probable’, which will surely add to the big pile.

(Link: www.volkskrant.nl, Photo of the Erasmus University auditorium released into the public domain by Wikifrits)

Tags: ,

May 15, 2012

Cellist thrown out of train because of cello

Filed under: General,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:17 am

Young Frisian cellist Dana de Vries who studies at a conservatory in Paris was kicked off the train in Groningen a few days ago because she didn’t buy an extra ticket for her cello. The female train attendant, the media specifies, said that the cello was too big and was not hand luggage, which is complete nonsense according to her employer’s house rules. She’s being travelling to Paris for years and this is the first time this has happened.

Dutch railways apologised for the incident, letting the cellist and her cello ride first class for one day.

The part I dislike is Dutch railways calling this a ‘misunderstanding’. A misunderstanding is when someone doesn’t understand someone else or when there’s a disagreement. Neither applies here, as the cellist didn’t misunderstand anything. The term ‘misunderstanding’ is far too often used to spread blame between two parties so that the one that screws up doesn’t feel as bad about doing so. Sometimes, you’re 100% wrong and need to say sorry like an adult, which I am glad Dutch railways did.

And if you though her cello is big, imagine if she was a double bass player.

(Links: www.waarmaarraar.nl, nos.nl, Photo of Cello by Grumbler %-|, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

May 12, 2012

Portrait of a red cabbage

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm

Margaretha de Heer painted this red cabbage sometime during the seventeenth century (she lived from 1600 – 1665 in Groningen and Leeuwarden).

The painting fetched 61,000 euro at an auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam last Tuesday, three times the price that was originally expected.

Historiek.net says the auction house had several explanations for the high price. For one, it is the only antique painting depicting a red cabbage. For another, it was painted by a woman, which seems to have been unusual in the age of guilds.

Tags: , , , ,

March 25, 2012

Drawings by Niels Kalk

Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 1:55 pm

If you look closely, you may recognise a famous duck.

Niels Kalk lives and works in Berlin, but is from the Netherlands and studies at the Minerva Art Academy in Groningen. In 2004 he drew a four-pager for Zone 5300. His Flickr collection is extensive and also shows off his love for collage.

(Link tip: Remco Polman)

Tags: , ,

March 16, 2012

Cops fine pregnant woman having a miscarriage

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:00 am

A 21-year-old pregnant woman trying to avoid a little girl tripped out of a bus in Groningen and fell flat on her stomach. An ambulance was called to bring her to the hospital. She was in pain, and realised that she was losing her unborn child. The police showed up and asked her for ID, which she wasn’t carrying at the time, something that is required by law at all times. She gave her details to the police, but they decided to fine her for not having any ID. She yelled at the police in pain, waiting for the ambulance. “If I could have stood up, I would have kicked them”, the woman said.

The police didn’t even wait for the ambulance and left. The panic was probably even greater, since this was apparently her second miscarriage. The police didn’t confirm the story, saying they don’t check who they hand out fines to (huh?) and the woman has lawyered up.

I’m wondering if there’s any CCTV footage or witnesses to corroborate the story, and if this is true, my general opinion of the police is not getting any better.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Illustration by Leonardo da Vinci)

Tags: ,

March 9, 2012

Stealth cheese steals show, cookbook wins in Paris

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 4:24 pm

Yes, the Netherlands took first prize at the World Championship Cheese Contest in the US and kicked Switzerland off its pedestal this week, but a group of five women from Groningen also won a Gourmand World Cookbook Award in Paris recently for the cookbook, ‘Koken Met Kruidnoten’ by Karin Sitalsing. They won the award for the illustration of a cookbook that features a lot of ‘kruidnoten’ recipes from local chefs Pierre Wind and Siemen de Jong.

Back to the cheese bit: the winning cheese, Vermeer, is a low-fat Gouda type cheese by Campina from Wolvega, Friesland, and is only called by that name for export, as nobody had ever heard of it until a few days ago. Remember, this is a country that boats Australian Homemade as a Dutch chocolate brand.

(Link: www.rtvnoord.nl, Photo of totally unrelated Gouda by Jon Sullivan, released into the public domain by its author)

Tags: , , , ,

December 11, 2011

Battery pack disguised as classic Dutch bicycle repair kit

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 1:04 pm

Leiden-based American blogger Alicia likes long bike trips (50+ km), and the batteries of her smart phone tend to run out on these day-long rides, so her boyfriend made her a battery pack that can charge her phone twice. For the casing he used the box of a Simson cycling patch repair kit. These kits have been around as long as I can remember.

Simson was a brand of glue founded in 1881 in Groningen by Jehuda Levi Wijnberg (Wikipedia dixit). In 1989 the company was sold to German competitor Stahlgruber. Simson repair kits are sold almost exclusively in the Netherlands.

(Photos by Alicia, used with permission. Disclaimer: although I still have a Simson box, I refill it with the contents of the competing Hema kit. Orangemaster is a Brompton folding bike rider, and its anybody’s guess really how these people fix their flat tires.)

Tags: , , , , ,

July 7, 2011

Lady Gaga goes Dutch design

Filed under: Design,Fashion,Music by Orangemaster @ 1:24 pm

Bart Hess, 27, from Eindhoven was asked to design a ‘slime dress’ (pic) for Lady Gaga. “I was given free reignrein. It had to have something to do with the album title ‘Born This Way’. The trick was to make sure that the colours were perfect and that it would also stay in place that way.” He went to New York to the photoshoot to slime Gaga into her dress.

Lady Gaga is also rumoured to have been asked to open an exhibition about her at the Groninger Museum, Groningen. Museum director Kees van Twist managed to get singer Bono of U2 to open the exhibition of work by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, so I bet he’s confident he can pull that trick off again.

(Link: ed.nl, Photo of Lady Gaga by TJ Sengel, some rights reserved.)

Tags: , ,

June 24, 2011

University of Groningen gaining popularity with Brits

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 2:21 pm

While the slow Dutch students run off to Flanders to finish their studies, the British students in question don’t necessary plan to study up north in Groningen, but their application numbers have gone from 38 to about 100. Big whoop? Not if you can study at a good university for 2,000 euro instead of the 10,000 (9,000 pounds) they will soon have to pay in England. According to the BBC, tuition fees in England will go up from 6,000 to 9,000 pounds as of 2012.

Back in 2010 Maastricht University was busy cashing in on Brits who failed their A-level exams (British entry exams for higher education) by offering degrees in English in eight subjects, with the cost of tuition about half that charged by British universities. The idea behind Maastricht University’s move was to tap into the huge mismatch between demand and supply in the UK in general, amounting to some 150,000-200,000 students missing out on a place.

(Link: rtvnoord.nl)

Tags: , , , ,