Marien van Os was walking with his camera through Amsterdam when he heard a big splash. Turned out a drunken tourist had jumped into a canal. Van Os photographed the ensuing rescue by Erik Blom and other bystanders.

(Via Making Light. See also: interviews at AT5. Source photo: Flickr / Marien van Os.)

The beer arms race is still on. Brewers Het Koelschip from Almere have come up with Obilix, a 45% alcohol beer that will surely attract the attention of both beer aficionados and comics trademark holders.

Last month previous champ BrewDog ousted Germany’s Schorschbock with 41 percenter Sink the Bismarck. Pussies!

Het Koelschip suggests you drink their beer like a gin, sipping it from a nice cognac or whiskey glass.

(Link: Food Holland.)

A tour company in Amsterdam claims it wants to hire alcoholics as guides, writes Z24 (Dutch).

Amsterdam Excursions believes that habitual drunks know where to find the bars for its tour of Amsterdam watering holes. In order to test suitability the company lets applicants fill out a questionnaire, open a beer bottle without an opener, and do a breathalyser test.

So far it appears only people who drink in the street or quietly at home have shown up, not the ‘kroegtijgers’ (bar flies) the tour company was hoping for.

This is the same company that organized an economic crisis themed tour.

According to Dutch television program Editie NL, this new coca leaf liqueur made in Amsterdam has caused quite a stir in Taiwan and even Germany. Since it is made from coca leaf extract, it has trace amounts of cocaine in it, although the company claims it does not, much like Coca Cola.

Agwa de Bolivia, a kryptonite green, 30% alcohol drink, gives you an uppity kick and is apparently all the rage in the Dutch party scene as an alternative to energy drinks which usually contain caffeine or guarana, the latter containing twice the amount of caffeine usually found in coffee. Agwa de Bolivia was confiscated in Taiwan because it contains cocaine, as if the bottle was full of it and if their Taiwanese television report was properly subtitled. An expert on television said you’d have to drink 100 bottles to get the minimum effect of 10 mg of cocaine and of course nobody can drink that. Germany is trying to ban the drink ‘because it contains cocaine’, which is again not quite true, another odd response for a drink that is perfectly legal throughout the EU and even the US. I say ‘even’ because the war on drugs in the US is a total and utter failure and cocaine is all the rage.

I plan to go out and try it one of these days. So far it’s been said to be refreshing and have a kick much like coffee does. I can’t say drinking green drinks is my thing, but life is short and I do live in Amsterdam.

UPDATE: Since you’re all asking where you can buy this stuff in Amsterdam, the address is Warmoesstraat 32 at the Coca Leaf Experience, the first-ever and only Coca Leaf museum in Amsterdam, not far from Central Station.

(Photo: Bevmo)

National Geographic made this handy interactive chart that shows how different cultures deal with hangovers. According to the chart, only one people kills its “brackish” feeling, as they say here, by pouring alcohol on top of alcohol, and that’s the Dutch. Visit the site and hover the images for more illumination about inebriation.

Via Sargasso (Dutch).

Stolen credit card data for sale in user-friendly web shop

Zembla, the news show of Labour broadcaster VARA, bought stolen credit card data from a Russian website and used those data to purchase goods. Director Ton van der Ham told Webwereld: “The site is hidden behind a login. You can search credit cards by country and card type, and then you select a data package which you can pay for online. It’s almost unreal.”

The program got permission from the credit card holders before making the what Webwereld calls “fraudulent” purchases. Either Webwereld knows something about fraud that I don’t, or it’s trying hard to become the Telegraaf of Dutch tech news sites.

In 2006 investigative news show Zembla took claims of 9/11 conspiracy theorists serious by testing them. It concluded most of the claims were unfounded. The show is also famous for “exposing” (the news was not news to a limited circle) that politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali had lied in her asylum claim, which led to her resignation from parliament.

Serious satire

Perik is a copywriter who, when he noticed that he could write 2000 words about anything, decided to quit and become a bartender. The writing bug has never left him though, and now he is blogging satirical pieces at Sargasso. And darn it, he is good! Today he caught me unawares with his (fake) report about a banned ad in which fathers are encouraged to spend more quality time with their children. The ad is titled: “Who is this whiny broad anyway?” and in Perik’s world raised a storm of protest from the child protection board, which, as everybody knows, “has been campaigning for a radical feminization of the child rearing domain for almost a century.”

Disclaimer: the entire 24 Oranges editorial team has shared alcoholic beverages with Perik, so our conclusion that he’s a good egg might be somewhat clouded by the aforementioned beverages.

What Dutch space travel would look like

(From a 1983 ad for pot plants.)

Via Trendbeheer. Disclaimer: we’ve also shared alcoholic beverages with Trendbeheer contributor Jaap Verhoeven. At the same parties! What can I say? We like our drinks, and we go to the right parties.

Monday night, the police in Renesse, Zeeland arrested people in the same car three times. The first time because the driver had too much to drink. Then, the second passenger took over the wheel, but also had too much too drink and no driving licence. For an encore, dumb and dumber called up a friend, who took over the wheel but – you saw this coming, right? – also had too much to drink and had to hand over his driving licence. How they all got home is a mystery.

(Link: Omroep Brabant)

Five students from an institution in Boxtel, North Brabant have developed a powder that by adding water turns into an alcoholic drink. The powder has been baptised Booz 2 go and contains 3% alcohol. And of course, the students did their marketing research and found out that students like the I-can-take-it-with-me-anywhere idea. Once it hits the market, the powder will cost a little more than 1,50 euro. It seems to have all the trappings of a hype.

(Link: zibb)

The town of Oirschot in the province of Noord Brabant will open the very first four star resort for alcoholics. The hotel, which will be called RoderSana, is scheduled to open in May. According to interim director Van der Meer, regular care facilities are full of drug addicts and there is no room for alcoholics. Moreover, he says that treating alcoholics is totally different than treating drug addicts. This will be the first facility in The Netherlands dedicated to kicking the drinking habit, as alcholics usually have to be treated outside the country.

(Link: fok.nl)