November 29, 2018

Fake fine for putting up Christmas decorations too early

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 3:32 pm
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First, the Dutch celebrate Sinterklaas, then after that’s done and dusted on December 6th, you can put up your Christmas decorations, but not before that, at least not in a fake letter from the city of Tilburg, North Brabant doing the rounds.

People who decorated the outside of their house were fake fined 132 euro for doing so before Sinterklaas. For anyone from North America, it would be like being fined for wearing white after Labour Day, an old school urban myth possibly drummed up by the fashion police.

Speaking of fake things for the holidays, let us remind you that today is Saint Pancake, a tradition that started from a Dutch comic strip.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)

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November 28, 2018

Goose’s honking betrays huge XTC lab

Filed under: Animals,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 2:40 pm
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In the village of Sint Willebrord, North Brabant, people were illegally producing XTC in a large lab in some warehouse, making barrels of cash while keeping their activities on the down low.

Then, one day the cops came knocking on the lab door because they heard a goose honking like the end of the world was coming, on the train tracks near their secret lab.

The goose was a regular at the neighbour’s property, but possibly didn’t like the weird noises it heard and when it heard them, started honking like crazy, waking up the neighbour in the middle of the night. The neighbour then woke up to see a suspicious van making several runs in the night, put two and two together and figured out drugs were being produced.

The neighbour then told the police what she saw, and that’s when the cops went to check it all out.

The cops arrested the 70-year-old owner who claimed to know nothing, saying he rented the warehouse to some guys who paid him cash up front and refused to let him see what they were doing. The owner’s lawyer attacked the woman’s claim, saying ‘she honks as loud as the goose does’, but stick and stones, the man is looking at three years in prison.

The cops had a good day, seizing 1.2 million euro worth of raw materials for producing XTC pills. They said the whole place smelled of anise, a characteristic smell of synthetic drugs. The theory is that the goose wasn’t honking over noise, but about the smell of anise, which attracted it, if we believe the Internet. And since the drugs were made at night, the smell was then at its strongest.

The moral of this story is that the cops were not sent on a wild goose chase.

(Link: vice.com)

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November 27, 2018

A hundred Roman coins found in North Brabant

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 3:25 pm

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Brothers Wim and Nico van Schaijk have found over 100 Roman coins near the Noord-Brabant town of Berlicum. They are silver and bronze coins dating from the first and second century AD, according to the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency after studying the coins for quite some time.

Using a metal detector a year ago near the Aa river, the brothers found four silver denarri and 103 mainly bronze sestertii and asses Experts from Leiden University said the coins were minted between the reign of Emperor Vespasian in 69 AD and that of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD.

Researchers believe that the ancient Romans may have thrown coins into the water before crossing the river, as a sort of sacrifice for a safe crossing – or perhaps as thanks after a safe crossing. Roman pottery was also found where the coins were discovered.

Back in 2014 some rare Medieval coins were also excavated in Utrecht.

(Link: nltimes.nl, Photo: cultureelerfgoed.nl)

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October 30, 2018

Dutch championship escape room scheduled for 2019

Filed under: Dutch first,Event,Gaming,General by Orangemaster @ 1:56 pm

On 7 January 2019, the first ever national championship escape room will take place in Erp, North Brabant and will involve ‘an escaped psychopath from Germany’. The goal is to find out what he’s planning, find his bombs, and thwart his plans.

According to organiser Joris van den Bergh from Erp, they’ll be three preliminary rounds before having a shot at being the winning team. In other words, it won’t be a walk in the park. There is room for 22 teams (sign up here until this Thursday), each of which should consist of four or five people. Sign-up costs 200 euro per team.

Since more than 1000 people will be participating, some 32 escape rooms will be used. The best 75 teams will go for the final in an actual castle, the location of which is still under wraps.

One of the last times we mentioned an escape room, it was one based on Anne Frank’s life, which raised a lot of eyebrows.

(Link: omroepbrabant.nl, Photo by Aapo Haapanen, some rights reserved)

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September 5, 2013

Guilt-ridden thief brings back part of his loot

Filed under: Food & Drink,General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 1:07 pm

Thieves are not necessarily the sharpest pencils in the pencil case, but this thief, caught on camera, is slow and a bit daft.

He apparently stole a big television, but came back an hour later and put it back properly, plugging in the cables and all, which took him an hour, according to the restaurant manager.

He also stole two laptops and three bottles of whiskey, which he kept, you know, like a proper thief should.

Nobody knows yet why he brought the telly back. My guesses are:
1. He couldn’t get the drugs or other illegal things for it.
2. He couldn’t sell it.
3. He watched the match and was done with it afterwards.

(Link: www.waarmaarraar.nl, Photo of Whiskey bottles by rickerbh, some rights reserved)

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February 3, 2013

Glass building printed with farm texture by MVRDV

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 12:08 pm

As the architect’s web page crudely puts it, after Operation Market Garden in World War II the Dutch town of Schijndel in North Brabant was left with an ‘oversized’ market place.

MVRDV’s founder Winy Maas had been lobbying town hall to do something useful with all that space, and after his seventh attempt, he finally got his wish. On 17 January the building of the glass farm on the Markt in Schijndel was completed. The building is made to look like an oversized farm (scale 1.6:1) and is made entirely out of glass, on which a texture has been printed.

MVRDV writes:

The building with a total surface area of 1600 m2 contains shops, restaurants, offices and a wellness centre. The exterior is printed glass with a collage of typical local farms; a monument to the past but 1.6 times larger than life.

In collaboration with MVRDV, artist Frank van der Salm photographed all the remaining traditional farms, and from these an image of the ‘typical farm’ was composed. This image was printed using fritted procedure onto the 1800 m2 glass facade, resulting in an effect such as a stained glass window in a cathedral. The print is more or less translucent depending on the need for light and views.

The print lets in light from outside during the daytime and the building is illuminated from the inside during the night.

This is what the square looked like in October 2010 according to Google:

(Photo: MVRDV)

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April 24, 2012

Dutch to cast monster bell for London Olympics

Filed under: General,Sports by Orangemaster @ 6:52 am

A huge 23 tonne bell, to be the largest in Europe, will be cast by Eijsbouts in Asten, North Brabant for the Olympic Games in London this summer. The British media is miffed because the contract was supposed to be handled by the British company Whitechapel, but they subcontracted it to Eijsbouts yesterday. The reason given was “the bell was sent overseas because it [Whitechapel] lacked the facilities to cast it here.” To me this reads as ‘we couldn’t do the job, but we wanted to score the contract’ and sounds weird because another British company, Taylor’s, claims it could have done the job in the UK. And part of the London 2012 specifications was insisting that the bell is cast in this country.

So why did the Dutch get the order? Enter complaints about losing work in Britain and about foreigners making the Brits look bad. Then again, the organisers are the same brilliant people who wanted to have The Who’s deceased drummer Keith Moon play at the opening ceremonies. He died way back in 1978. I can only deduce that subcontracting was cheaper, cheap enough to ignore specifications.

We know the bell could have been made in the UK by Taylor’s, the largest bell foundry in the world, but Eijsbouts is making it, a company that also claims to be the largest bell foundry in the world.

(Links: nos.nl, www.mirror.co.uk, www.loughboroughecho.net)

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December 2, 2010

The News Kids film: white trash is hot

Filed under: Fashion,Film,Music by Orangemaster @ 10:28 am

A film nobody has really been waiting for is coming out on 9 December: the New Kids film ‘Turbo’. Website Flabber also tell us that they’ll be a German version of the film as well because these wild and crazy guys have fans in Germany. Yes, it sounds and even looks like an American film trailer, but do not be fooled by the voice-over! The English subtitles are both inaccurate on purpose and not on purpose (the swear word ‘kut’ (used like ‘damn’ or ‘shit’, but meaning ‘cunt’) is left intact, while ‘your fired’ should be ‘you’re fired’. And it’s so not about the dialogue.

From the province of Noord-Brabant or just Brabant (there’s no South Brabant, that would be Brabant in Belgium and a long story), the New Kids are popular because they represent relatively modern Dutch white trash with accompanying music, known as happy hardcore and matching late 1990s clothing: sporty camping comfort with mustaches and mullet hairdoes.

“They’re basically always drunk, driving around and destroying everything that comes in their way, which sometimes leads to getting a good beating themselves.”

For the beginners, it’s time to learn what ‘doe normaal!’ (literally, ‘act normal’!, meaning ‘stop it!’), a lesson you’ll not soon forget.

(Link: flabber)

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