March 12, 2016

Snack food goes disco in Nijmegen

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 9:14 pm
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The latest junk food hit in the Netherlands comes from Nijmegen, Gelderland and it’s called a ‘discodel’ (photo), a wrinkled hotdog called ‘frikandel’ with mayonnaise on top of it and topped off with small multi-coloured sugary balls that you would normally find on ice cream or cupcakes.

Three Dutch students came up with this one after a night of drinking – what a surprise. They’ve always mixed things up at the snack bar, and one day they went for the frikandel with mayonnaise and coloured balls and the ‘discodel’ was born.

(Link: www.ad.nl)

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March 5, 2016

Book exchange in Nijmegen made of dead trees

Filed under: General,Literature,Nature,Sustainability by Branko Collin @ 9:57 pm

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This charming little street library was spotted today by us in the Lindenholt neighbourhood of Nijmegen. It’s made of tree trunks with added plastic curtains shielding books from the elements. Patrons are supposed to swap books, which means take one out, put one of your their own back in. The tree was placed there in 2014. Two other book trees have been added to the neighbourhood since.

The idea of using real dead trees to house the proverbial ones is not new. A German project that aims to promote women in construction, Baufachfrau, has been adding similar kiosks to the streets of Berlin since 2006 as part of the international Bookcrossing project.

In our neck of the woods, Amsterdam, it’s actually a bit trendy for houses to feature ‘outdoor bookcases’ (‘buiten boekenkasten’), but then Google shows us it’s cool throughout the country.

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October 13, 2015

Student in Nijmegen invents a new mixed drink

Filed under: Food & Drink by Orangemaster @ 12:07 pm

Karls-Koekie

Karl Kouki, a 25-year-old Bachelor’s student at the Radboud University in Nijmegen has crossed a pretty cool thing off his bucket list: getting an alcoholic drink with his name on it, called ‘koekie’ (probably pronounced ‘kooky’ rather than ‘cookie’, referring to his last name and his nickname). Kouki even used part of his student loan to finance the whole project, which started as a joke and has now unexpectedly become serious business.

Cut to quaint student cafĂ© in Nijmegen where Kouki worked as a part-time barman on a shot called ‘koekie’ made up of vodka, caramel liqueur and a bit of butterscotch that become their most popular shot. Kouki says today the bottled version has nothing to do with that combination since he has learned that creating alcohol is not just throwing a few types of liqueur together in a bottle.

It also took him a while to find someone that could bottle small amounts of his shot drink, as well a lab to get the recipe right — after 25 tries koekie finally tasted like the way it was meant to taste. The bottle orders have been pouring in and right now supply can’t meet the demand: you can’t buy any in the West of the country yet. Koekie has an alcohol percentage of 14,7%, which is a bit stronger than wine, but Kouki explains that ’10 minutes later you can still taste it’.

We want some too now.

(Links: munchies.vice.com, www.gelderlander.nl, Photo by Karl Kouki)

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May 6, 2015

Nijmegen to get a bunch of public pianos

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 3:51 pm

After the Pentecost holiday on May 24 and 25, Rhea Elise Khoeblal expects her plan to have the city of Nijmegen place 12 pianos around town to be approved and carried out. The city is still dealing with the permits, and the pianos will stay put for three weeks.

Last year the city had five pianos around town and it was such a success that this year they want to have more pianos at locations such as the Radboud University, the Van Schaeck Mathonsingel, in Brakkenstein parc, the Dukenburg shopping mall and at the Honig food company.

Amsterdam Central Station, Utrecht Central Station and a few other train stations have pianos, which attracts all kinds of happy onlookers. In 2011 Tilburg let pianos take over the streets much to the delight of local residents and visitors.

(Photo of piano keyboard by Adam Henning, some rights reserved)

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February 23, 2015

Tinder-style voting for States-provincial elections

Filed under: General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 6:16 pm

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Talk show host Arjan Lubach has devised a Tinder-style voting app made for fun to help undecided voters for the upcoming States-provincial elections. The States-provincial or ‘Provinciale Staten’ in Dutch are the provincial parliament and legislative assembly in each of the 12 Dutch provinces.

With ‘StemTinder’ (‘Tinder Voting’) you can swipe left or right and find the political party match for you. It’s not the national elections, so why not vote on looks? And there’s nothing wrong with candidates trying to look trustworthy to win votes.

(Links: www.ans-online.nl, nos.nl, Photo by Photo RNW.org, some rights reserved)

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January 21, 2015

Carnival hits 2015: swearing, creepy fitness and fake leather

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 11:24 am

Carnival is less than a month away, so it’s time to fire up some wacky carnival hits for 2015.

FeestChaos (‘Party Chaos’) starts us off with an English-language carnival song called ‘Who The F*** Is Alice’, a reworking of Smokie’s song ‘Living Next Door to Alice’ from 1977 and Nijmegen band Gompie’s next level 1995 version ‘Alice, Who The F*** is Alice?’. You’ll see cafe singing, drinking and dancing, a Hummer limo, children swearing and some serious devoicing of consonants, which makes every ‘s’ sound like that snake in the Jungle Book.

Vieze Jack (‘Dirty Jack’) gives us the corny pun named song, ‘Jump 4 Jack’. Dirty Jack looks more like a zombie than a pervert, but acts like a pervert channeling a blond version of Elvis imitating a zombie. You’ll see men in drag, tits, ass, balls, and a Scotsman with a kilt, bagpipes and no underwear. The song is not too bad, the lyrics are all easy sex puns and the bagpipe riff works for me. Contains 1980s style sexual harassment at the gym and, as an added bonus, some zoophilia.

Although the song is unoriginal, Alberto pokes fun at the very recently former mayor of Maastricht, Onno Hoes. Alberto probably refers to Hoes’ ex-husband Albert. The song is called ‘Onno (mag ik je toyboy zijn?)’ (‘Onno, can I be your toy boy’?) and relates to his recent demise. The unfaithful and not very discreet Hoes was hanging in there as the mayor until some young ‘toy boy from Almere’ told the media stories about him and Onno getting together. The mayor’s exuberant sex life led to a vote to push him out of office. He survived the vote, but eventually resigned.

You’ll see some of the Village People, carnival costumes and a disco ball effect. The idea of the song is better than the song or the video. The lyrics are a bit nasty, but points for being ‘politically relevant’.

(Link: nieuws.nl, Photo of the carnival Prince in Sittard, Limburg throwing oranges)

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September 8, 2014

Bicycle mall in Nijmegen

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 5:27 pm

What do you get when you put several bicycle related companies in one spot? Bigger profits, financial news site Z24 argues.

Earlier this year the Fiets Centrum Nijmegen opened in the old Honig factory (soups, sauces, owned by Heinz), located just outside the city centre behind the central railway station. The shopping centre houses a racing bike store, a design bike store, a recumbent bike store, a bicycle themed gift shop, a bicycle rental, and a coffee house.

Hans van Vugt of Elan Ligfietsen (recumbents) told Z24: “I believe our turnover this year will be 15% to 20% higher than last year’s, and that is without any additional advertising and despite the fact that the demand for incumbents has stayed the same.” He believes the strength of the bicycle mall is that all kinds of related yet non-competing stores can be found in a single place.

Gerard Poels of italmostneverrains.nl attended the opening on 10 May 2014 and liked what he saw. “A feast for the bicycle lover”, he called it. He also noted though that the mall could do more to brand itself. “Currently the outside of the building only shows the logos of the individual companies. I believe that is rather unfortunate.”

See also: It almost never rains in the Netherlands

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September 7, 2014

Pink refuge islands will keep their colour, Wijchen says

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 2:05 pm

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Last week bright pink refuge islands started popping up on Havenweg in the town of Wijchen near Nijmegen.

According to Volkskrant, the civil servant responsible for ordering the paint used the wrong colour code (it should have been a dark red) and the painters never questioned the result, so now Wijchen has its own ‘world famous’ refuge islands.

Realising their mistake, the municipality wanted to have the pink islands painted over but citizens liked the effect, so the striking colour stays. Deputy Mayor Paul Loermans said about the mistakes: “To err is human. Apart from getting the colour wrong, the painters actually did a neat job.”

Omroep Gelderland suspected a marketing stunt because a bike race for women will be passing through Wijchen next week, but everybody involved denies the allegations vehemently. “A lucky mistake”, both the organizers of the race and the municipality told the broadcaster.

This shade of pink is sometimes called ‘zuurstokroze’ in Dutch, ‘candy cane pink’.

(Photo: reconstruction via Google Street View)

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April 14, 2014

Dig in with Nijmegen and uncover something Roman

Filed under: Architecture by Orangemaster @ 11:03 am

From 14 April to 18 May, the city of Nijmegen, Gelderland, the oldest city in the country and synonymous with Roman ruins, is inviting its citizens to come and dig up some finds with archaeologists. You’ll need a ticket to join in the merriment, 10 euro for 2 hours of excavation. All kinds of related events (in Dutch) for children and adults alike are also being organised.

The excavation is to take place on a site belonging to the Honig food corporation, where remains of a 2000 year-old temple have been found. Archaeologist Kees Brok says people have expressed interest in joining in, so that’s why they’ve turned it into a fun group activity.

I doubt anyone can keep what they find though, but it’s a good way to get the job done fast and learn something.

(Link: www.nieuws.nl, Photo: BOOR, Rotterdam)

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January 24, 2014

Flasher keeps flashing kids, parents and police not doing enough

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:14 am

In the village of Lent near Nijmegen a man has been reported flashing schoolchildren goods and all, and making sexual comments when they walk by on their way to school. In Dutch a flasher is a ‘potloodventer’, which literally means ‘pencil salesman’, hence my choice of photo.

Open and shut case you say? Nope. Dutch law apparently says the man needs to be caught in the act if the police are to arrest him and keep him in custody. In the meantime, he gets to keep doing his sick shit to children because the cops can’t do their job and the parents are too lame to be proactive.

So basically one messed up man who needs help is disrupting other people’s lives and nobody is really doing anything about it but complaining. Maybe one of those stay at home moms with free time on their hands could stalk him with a video camera? I mean, it just takes some proof. Why can’t a squad car pick a busy day and catch the man in the act? How tough can it be to catch him, seriously? He’s obviously not dangerous. I would totally do it if I lived nearby.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl)

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