May 12, 2012

Portrait of a red cabbage

Filed under: Art,Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 12:02 pm

Margaretha de Heer painted this red cabbage sometime during the seventeenth century (she lived from 1600 – 1665 in Groningen and Leeuwarden).

The painting fetched 61,000 euro at an auction at Christie’s in Amsterdam last Tuesday, three times the price that was originally expected.

Historiek.net says the auction house had several explanations for the high price. For one, it is the only antique painting depicting a red cabbage. For another, it was painted by a woman, which seems to have been unusual in the age of guilds.

Tags: , , , ,

February 27, 2009

Online market place refuses Frisian adverts

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 9:50 pm

logo

While skiing in Austria recently, the nice inn owner ask me if the Netherlands had other official languages than Dutch. I said yes, and promptly grabbed a copy of the Leeuwarder Courant that just happened to be lying around, a Dutch and Frisian newspaper from Leeuwarden, the capital city of the province of Friesland.

And then this happens. Online market place site Marktplaats.nl (owned by Ebay, by the way) has told the media today that it refuses to place adverts in Frisian.

Their excuse? According to a spokeswoman, the employees cannot check the adverts because they do not speak the language. Fine, so find someone who can, I would think. Obviously, if a company wants to pay good money in these tough times to advertise in one of the country’s official languages, you could make an effort. Problem is the sites says yes to Dutch — and English adverts. Ouch.

The chairman of the Fryske Beweging (Frisian Movement) Jabik van der Bij called their refusal to run Frisian adverts ‘foolishness’ and are thinking of taking Marktplaats to court.

(Link: leeuwardercourant.nl)

Tags: , ,

February 15, 2009

City of Leeuwarden lost its porn

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 10:35 am

The city of Leeuwarden has lost its porn stash archive, a staff member of the Historisch Centrum Leeuwarden reported last Thursday. The collection was part of a larger archive about everything to do with the Frisian capital, and was put together in the 1970s. Apparently the porn archive got lost during a move.

“It did not have its own spot,” the staff member told De Telegraaf (Dutch). The paper speculates that somebody stole the collection. Somehow it takes a Telegraaf reporter to imagine appreciation of second hand porn.

Totally unrelated photo of the Achmea Tower in Leeuwarden by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved. It was either this or a picture of a nun. I talk too much.

Tags: , , , ,

January 24, 2009

Awesome ‘flyswatter’ bridge

Filed under: Architecture by Branko Collin @ 9:25 am

This bridge, which looks likes a huge flyswatter, is in Leeuwarden. It was designed by Bruggenbureau Van Driel and built in 2000 by Ballast Nedam and BSB Staalbouw. The way I figure it, it works as an ordinary drawbridge, except when you’re in a hurry, then it’ll flip you like a pancake (which is what you’ll look like afterwards).

This is the Slauerhoffbridge, named after a local poet. I translated his “Voor de verre prinses” once, but not very well, so I’ll just link to it.

Via Jalopnik. Photo by Van Driel Bruggenbureau, used with permission. Much more (and more recent) photos after the links.

Tags: , , , ,

December 1, 2008

Blame the navigation device

Filed under: Automobiles,General,Technology by Orangemaster @ 1:36 pm

According to the police, a 47-year-old man on a scooter in Apeldoorn, Gelderland was fined last Friday for driving on the A50 motorway. The man listened and blindly obeyed the advice of his navigation system (I’d love to know which one, as I can’t automatically assume it’s from that Dutch brand, but it’s a distinct possibility).

The guy drove his scooter over the emergency lane of the A50 in the direction of Zwolle en route to Leeuwarden. The police eventually stopped him and fined him. The man claimed his GPS ‘told’ him that the quickest route to Leeuwarden was to scoot over the A50.

So the GPS obviously screwed up, but the man deserves a ticket for forgetting anything he learned about driving and safety. And how about that GPS software?

And just in case it was that Dutch brand:

(Link depers.nl)

Tags: , , ,

June 1, 2008

Giant fried egg sculptures sunny side up in Leeuwarden

Filed under: Art by Branko Collin @ 3:43 pm

Google Maps and Google Earth introduced a new rule for the makers of public art: your art must be visible from outer space. Henk Hofstra certainly applies this new rule with vigour: first there was the river street in Drachten, now he’s installed a project called Art Eggcident in Leeuwarden, which consists of giant fried eggs on the Frisian’s capital’s Zaailand square. Many more photos at Hofstra’s site.

Via BoingBoing. Source photos: The Wooster Collective.

Tags: , ,

March 28, 2007

Running drugs is tax deductible

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 8:14 am
hash1.jpg

A fisherman in Arnhem convicted of smuggling drugs could deduct the cost of buying and shipping hashish to The Netherlands from his income on his tax return. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported that the smuggler appealed to the Arnhem court after being slapped with a tax bill in the millions of euro. The court ruled that because he had only been convicted of drug running and not trading he could deduct the cost of buying and transporting the drugs on his tax form, which cut his tax bill in about half.

In 2005, judges in the city of Leeuwarden ruled that witches can write off the cost of schooling in witchcraft if it increases the likelihood of employment and personal income.

(Two clichés for the price of one: we’re all on drugs and women have no serious career plans)

(Link)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,