September 5, 2012

Mayor of Maastricht does 180 on weed pass

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:04 pm

This April we announced the coming of the weed pass for NL residents only, supposed to deter cross border drug buying in the southern provinces of Limburg, Brabant and Zeeland. The weed pass will be introduced in the rest of the country as of January 2013, and Amsterdam is already gearing up for some sort of a fight.

The mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes, was a big fan of introducing the pass until this week. He now believes that coffeeshops shouldn’t be members only clubs, saying people are now avoiding coffeeshops.

You don’t say! Creating a database of weed smokers is not only awkward for the smokers, but it is a hassle and a half for coffeeshop owners. I know this for a fact, as I tried to buy a joint recently in the South to see how that went. Oh, and you don’t get a pass, what’s that all about, man.

First of all, besides meeting friendly all-female staff, they did need to see some ID and not any kind of letter stating where I actually lived. Second, besides telling me which parties I should vote for in the upcoming election with regard to the weed pass, they showed me their membership administration: a bunch of recipe cards in a box, nothing digital. They said if the cops come in, they need to be able to show their membership. I guess if it’s on a computer, you can’t produce it as quickly as with a rolodex, but that all sounds very shifty to me.

Someone else also said that forcing the south to follow the law, while other provinces don’t have to abide by that same law just yet isn’t really fair, either.

This story is far from over as it’s a matter of time before smart people from Amsterdam will figure out a way to buy weed for tourists and make a killing from it.

(Link: www.nu.nl)

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April 27, 2012

Weed pass kicks in 1 May, for NL residents only

Filed under: Dutch first,General by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

Some 19 coffee shops and several interest groups went to court to fight the government’s plan to introduce a ‘weed pass’ to prevent foreigners (actually, non-residents of the Netherlands) to buy marijuana at coffee shops and lost. The weed pass will come into force on 1 May in the southern provinces and eventually be rolled out throughout the country. The lawyers representing the coffee shops plan to appeal the decision, and even the Mayor of Amsterdam, Eberhard Van der Laan is opposed to the pass and wants to work out a compromise.

Besides the fact that coffee shops in big cities are major tourist attractions, they felt they were being forced to discriminate against certain clients, as a weed pass can only be obtained in the city where one resides. Collecting personal information about clients brings up a lot of privacy issues as well.

The original plan was to stop drug tourism in border regions like in Maastricht, but that doesn’t apply at all to cities like Amsterdam. Coffee shops will basically become private clubs with membership open only to Dutch residents and limited to 2,000 per shop.

Discriminating between EU citizens on the basis of where they live is apparently illegal, making coffee shop owners responsible for drug enforcement sound like a burden, and who’s to stop me for going into a coffee shop and buying joints for somebody else? I don’t see the point of this, besides the government owning a database of people who smoke marijuana. I think drug dealers will make a small fortune selling bad quality weed to tourists and I don’t see how that looks like stopping criminality.

In the mean time, the people who can’t be bothered to get a pass down south will buy their drugs up north or start growing more of their own, which is perfectly OK as long as it’s limited to a few plants.

And for the record, smoking marijuana is illegal in the Netherlands, but it is tolerated.

Here’s a famous Dutch song about ‘nederwiet’ (Dutch weed) by megastars Doe Maar:

(Links: www.coffeeshopnieuws.nl, www.nu.nl, Photo of Joint by Torben Bjørn Hansen, some rights reserved)

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January 26, 2012

Poor understanding of dialect ruins old man’s reputation

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:22 pm

A 90-year-old pharmacist in Maastricht is said to be devastated after popular Dutch talk show De Wereld Draait Door messed up the translation of a subtitle in their film of the elderly man.

In a segment where they show funny videos, a woman walks into his pharmacy and asked for something for her throat. He makes a charming joke, saying, “Did you sing too much?”.

Problem is, the television show didn’t air this because they thought he said “did you sing too much”, but they understood it as “did you suck too much”, which, if that had been what he said, would be kinda funny.

But he said ‘sing’ (‘gezongen’) and not ‘suck’ (‘gezogen’). The man has a Limburg accent that the subtitler didn’t understand, made an assumption and basically trashed a hard-working old man out of ignorance.

My friends also tell me that if the old man had meant ‘suck’ (blow job), he’d have used a totally different verb in local dialect.

The show sent the man a ‘we’re sorry’ bouquet of flowers, but he still claims he’ll never watch the show again.

(Link: www.limburger.nl, Photo of Old drugstore by fpeault, some rights reserved)

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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)

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September 28, 2010

Which city will win as the Most Hospitable?

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 4:08 pm
Maastricht1

Based on criteria such as ‘friendliness and safety’ and ‘accessibility and Information’, five Dutch cities are up for the Most Hospitable Dutch City this year.

Just to put things in perspective, none of the main Randstad cities (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht) were nominated, so that you understand why the Dutch aren’t fond of these cities and tend to complain about them to others. I found myself explaining to Germans last week why the Dutch are not proud of their capital city and it wasn’t easy.

Breda (Noord-Brabant), Haarlem (just outside of Amsterdam, North Holland), Den Bosch (Noord-Brabant), Maastricht (Limburg) and Nijmegen (Gelderland) were given top marks this year “in the research for the 2010 Most Hospitable City in the Netherlands.” The winner of this year’s award will be announced in Haarlem, the Most Hospitable City of 2009, on 14 October.

Haarlem is generally upper middle class, Caucasian and quaint. Breda is a student city and much-loved by the people there (that’s where DJ Tiësto and Mentos come from). Maastricht, also a student city, is the ‘jewel of the south’ where people celebrate carnival and speak their own dialect. Den Bosch is just as cute as a button and I enjoy visiting it. As for Nijmegen, another student city, I lived there for three years and I know that the Roman ruins and architecture attract many visitors, including my own family.

My guess is that Nijmegen or Maastricht will win it this year. I’m leaning towards Nijmegen.

(Link: dutchdailynews, Photo: a shopping street in Maastricht)

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August 17, 2010

Netherlands wins world champion Stratego

Filed under: Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 1:30 pm
stratego11.jpg

Out of four countries represented — the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and England — the Dutch won this year’s Stratego World Championships, held in Maastricht. With six victories and four draws Pim Niemeijer of The Netherlands became the new individual Stratego World Champion. Last year, Steffen Annies of Germany won the Stratego World Champion of 2009, the year before, Pim Niemeijer had won it.

And then we also wrote about a women’s championship, also won by a Dutch woman in Kiev back in 2008.

There are also Computer Stratego World Championships held around the world and there’s also my co-blogger’s time-old classic of placing all five of his bombs around his flag.

Stratego is a Dutch game published by Jumbo that was distributed internationally by Milton Bradley, giving the impression that the Americans came up with it, if you read Wikipedia. Read more about Stratego history with pics galore on Ed’s Stratego Site.

(Links: ad.nl, isfstratego)

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July 23, 2010

German and Dutch students don’t mix in Maastricht

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:49 am
Maastricht1

At Maastricht University in Maastricht, just a few kilometres away from both Belgium and Germany, Trouw claims the Germans keep to themselves and so do the Dutch. The main reason is that stereotypes prevail: the Dutch like to party a lot and are considered lazy, while the Germans actually want to be studying and are too serious. Those are excellent reasons not to hang out together, although not convient for collaborative school projects. The article says the Germans don’t ‘integrate’ and that’s a loaded word to use, they didn’t ‘immigrate’, they just ‘don’t mix’.

Even though there are foreign students in Enschede, Groningen and Nijmegen, half of them are German, which doesn’t give an international allure to any of the establishments. A student council representative explains that it’s easy to mix with international students (non-German), but much less with Germans. No explanation is given and that’s odd.

And then apparently the Dutch “are annoyed at the level of Dutch the Germans speak, as it is not good enough”. Isn’t that usually a given? That’s cold.

Non-German students in Maastricht came for an international atmosphere and have ended up in the middle of a Dutch-German group, forcing them to try and blend in with both. “Maastricht should not make promises it can’t keep: don’t call yourself international when all you have is Dutch and German students,” said one student to the newspaper.

Anyone from Maastricht, expats, students, Germans have anything to add? Don’t mention the war for no reason or make stolen bicycle jokes in the comments please.

(Link: trouw.nl, Photo: a shopping street in Maastricht)

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April 8, 2010

Blaming hacker for intercom malfunction in Maastricht

Filed under: General,Online,Weird by Orangemaster @ 3:41 pm

On Wednesday 6 April around noon, the Maastricht train station had to deal with some unrest when passengers were asked over the intercom to evacuate the station. It took station employees 10 minutes to figure out that it was all in error. So what did they tell people? They basically made up a story about a hacker breaking into their system.

Apparently a women’s voice in English told passsegers for more than an hour to leave the station. The employees told people a hacker was responsible, although the system had a malfunction, pure and simple. A spokesperson eventually explained that the station was busy installing a new system, which had a malfunction.

Interestingly enough, ‘serious’ news channel RTL4 ran with the hacker idea and are still claiming that is the case.

(Link: limburger.nl)

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January 12, 2010

Artists sneak in and hang their works up in museums

Filed under: Art,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:20 pm
Bonnefantenmuseum

Last night, a group of young artists hung up their own works of art in three major Dutch museum, the Groninger Museum in Groningen, the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht and Museum de Fundatie in Zwolle. This act of protest was meant to draw attention to the fact that not just established artists should be in museums, but young, up and coming artists as well.

This morning the Bonnefanten Museum (shown here) said that they found a large black-and-white photo in the old art wing, while de Fundatie found a small colour painting among its collection. Both museums were closed at the time and neither of them has any idea how the art got there. Employees of the Groninger Museum saw a big object in their security cameras and when they went to check it out, the big object had disappeared. Spooky.

So besides this stunt making the news and all, it also tells me how useless the security actually is at all three museums.

(Link: depers.nl, Photo of Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht by Peter Zoon, some rights reserved)

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November 2, 2009

Stranger in your own country: Maastricht

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:49 pm
carnival

It’s not carnival or ‘Alaaf!’ yet, but I just came back from a smashing night of DJing at the 125 jubileum of Maastricht’s Bonnefanten Museum and felt like writing about Maastricht. Just imagine a party in four huge rooms with some 700 guests accompanied by food, drinks, a live band, musicians and DJs, and the entire thing having to be cleaned up in time for Sunday’s museum opening.

Yes, Maastricht that hidden jewel of a fun-loving yet classy city way down in Limburg near the German and Belgian borders is very different than the rest of the country culturally and linguistically, the two being linked and all. For Jasmijn, a Dutch student from Gelderland who must get around in a wheelchair, she writes as if she had ‘immigrated’ to Maastricht for her studies.

Jasmijn likes the ‘relaxed attitude’ (translation: more ‘Latin’ like) of Limburgers, as here in Amsterdam you have to make an appointment with most people just to grab a beer and the fact that they generally speak of things ‘indirectly’ (translation: more politely) rather than blurt things out like they do here in the Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht and The Hague area).

Read about Jasmijn’s cultural experience in her own country.

(Link: Crossroadsmag.eu, Photo: a Maastricht carnival prince, 2008)

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