When mayor Vreeman of Tilburg goes to Changzhou in China next September, he will present the sister-city with a so-called Socialsofa, reports Brabants Dagblad (Dutch). The Social Sofa is an invention by local comedian Karin Bruers who wants the outdoors to be a place where people talk to each other again.

Meanwhile real Tilburgers shun the English, marketing-friendly name and call the thing ‘benkske’ (little bench).

The Socialsofa is made of concrete, weighs about 1,550 kilo, and can be illustrated using paints or tiles. The bench in the photo is one of eight placed in The Hague in October last year.

(Photo by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved. Design of this bench’s mosaic by Wouter Stips. The text reads “If You Love I Hope It’s Me.”)

After one Moroccan entrepreneur decided to make Gouda cheese in the Sahara, another Moroccan in Rotterdam is going to attempt making stroopwafels – also originally from the town of Gouda – and sell them in Morocco.

You’d think someone would have thought of this already, but according to businessman Mimoun el Arkoub, no one has. He explains that Moroccans love sweets and many of them know about Dutch food, so why not sell stroopwafels there? He bought himself two huge machines to produce the delights and is getting ready to crank them out and sell lots of them.

One major flop of pushing Dutch fare I have heard about in the past and seen on TV was convincing the Chinese to eat cheese. From what the Chinese, the Dutch people I know who have lived in China and others have said, the Chinese are not big on dairy products in general and have a problem with the smell of cheese. I mean, have you ever had cheese at a Chinese restaurant? The appeal of a huge market like China does not mean that if you just market real hard, they’ll start eating cheese. How many decades did it take the Dutch to drink wine? Think about it.

(Link: bizz.nl)