July 15, 2016

World’s biggest green façade on Venlo building

Filed under: Architecture,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 7:49 pm

stadkantoor-venlo-57307ac36b803

Rotterdam architectural firm Kraaijvanger has built the new city hall in Venlo, which claims to have the greenest façade in the world measuring two thousand square metres.

A greenhouse above the building purifies the air and can deliver heat to the entire building. The green façade purifies air from the nearby road and railway. According to Kraaijvanger, tests in labs of the Eindhoven University of Technology have proven that the façade filters 30% of nitrogen and carbon dioxide from the air.

As well, the building has applied many sustainable techniques such as using the parking garage to either warm up the air or cool it down, depending on the weather. It also catches and filters rainwater before flowing back into the Maas river and makes optimal use of daylight.

Venlo’s new city hall is entirely energy neutral and has been built following the cradle-to-cradle design concept.

(Link: www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl, Photo: Kraaijvanger)

Tags: , ,

March 19, 2016

Denim obsessed brothers make their own jeans

Filed under: Fashion by Orangemaster @ 9:21 pm

Jeans

They say the Dutch are really big on denim, with big Dutch names such as G-Star, Denham, Scotch & Soda and Kuyichi competing with the rest of the world on the jeans front. Even American brand Tommy Hilfiger, which also makes jeans, has its international headquarters in Amsterdam.

The Dutch can dress quite informally at work as compared to the rest of Europe, making denim a common occurrence at the office for both men and women. There’s no need for casual Friday over here.

A new small-scale jeans brand from Chèvremont, Limburg called Grivec Bros could very well be a brand to watch out for. Twin brothers Marcel and Roger, 44, are huge denim fans and owners of Jeanpaleis in Kerkrade, Limburg, which they inherited at age 18 from their parents when they got divorced. Even though Amsterdam can claim to be the ‘jeans capital of the world’, the brothers explain that the first jeans were sold to mine workers in their mining area way back when, linking Limburg to the US as far as jeans go.

Grivec Bros jeans are made in Portugal and cost 209 euro, with names like ‘Cool Pete’ (above) and ‘Hower’. They just started selling them in their shop, and they will be available online soon. Marcel says he can’t wait to see someone with his name on their ass. Their motto is “we eat, breathe and shit denim!”

(Links: www.limburger.nl, www.euromonitor.com, Photo: Grivec Bros)

Tags: ,

January 6, 2016

How to miss out on millions in the lottery

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:37 am

Lottery story No. 1: young man from Sittard, Limburg buys four tickets for the New Year’s Eve lottery draw and figures he’s won because the draw is done based on your exact postal code (numbers and letters).

However, he had a standing order with the bank for his tickets and it didn’t go through because he didn’t have enough money in his account. He wants to sue, but he’ll probably lose.

The jackpot was 43.9 million euro, half of which was divided among 15 winners and the other half divided among other people in the same postal code, save the letters.

Then there’s lottery story No. 2: a man from Amsterdam thought he had won 2.1 million euro, but his ex wife had something to say about it.

Married for 30 years, a couple separated, the man moved out of their home while going through the divorce, but sometime after he had moved out, the postal code of their home was the winning lottery number.

Although the couple was still married but separated and not living together, the man didn’t jointly pay for the ticket, his wife argued. He took her to court and lost.

They had played the lottery together for 30 years, but once he moved, he stopped paying his share. She proved that they had actually been living separately for four years and that he had moved in with his new, younger girlfriend.

The judge took the woman’s side purely because the man had not paid for the lottery ticket and that he had already moved out and moved on.

Moral of both stories: make sure you’ve actually paid for your lottery tickets.

(Links: www.waarmaarraar.nl, nos.nl)

Tags: , ,

December 17, 2015

Colourful wasp makes first Dutch appearance

Filed under: Animals,Dutch first,Nature by Orangemaster @ 10:18 am

Wasp1

A new type of gold wasp, the rainbow wasp, was spotted for the first time this summer in the woods of Limburg. It took a while to identify it, but with the help of an Estonian expert, the colourful critter was found to be a Chrysis equestris, part of a family of wasps called ‘cuckoo wasps’.

Besides their beautiful colours, these incandescent wasps are ‘kleptoparasitic’, laying eggs in others insects’ nests, hence the cuckoo reference. The baby wasps then eat the eggs or larva in the nest, a bit like crashing a banquet.

The Netherlands has 57 types of wasps flying around.

(Links: www.naturetoday.com, www.nltimes.nl, Photo: sploid.gizmodo.com)

Tags: , , ,

September 29, 2015

New type of butterfly spotted in the country

Filed under: Nature by Orangemaster @ 11:34 am

thumbnail_scheefbloemwitje_pieter_vantieghem_1

On September 28, the association that has time to watch butterflies announced that the southern small white (Pieris mannii) of the Pieridae family has been spotted and photographed at Fort Sint Pieter near Maastricht, Limburg. Hardcore butterfly enthusiasts knew this day was coming, as this species was slowly making its way north.

The big question was whether it would show up in Belgium or the Netherlands first. The cosmos amusingly forced a compromise by having a Belgian man discovering the southern small white in the Netherlands.

According to Wikipedia, the southern small white is usually found in South Europe, Asia Minor, Morocco and Syria.

(Link and photo: natuurbericht.nl)

Tags: , ,

September 4, 2015

A water bottle that doubles as a bicycle bell

Filed under: Bicycles by Orangemaster @ 12:58 pm
TDF 2007

Designed by former bicycle repairman Bill Rombouts from Heerlen, Limburg, the Bi-Bell is a water bottle with a built-in bell (eight-second video) aimed mainly at amateur racing cyclists. It took him three years to launch and it’s now available for 12,95 euro.

Dutch cycling law and etiquette requires bikes to have bells so they can warn fellow road users. However, many amateur racing cyclists can’t be bothered with bells on their bikes because real racing cyclists don’t have one. Then again, real cyclists have a race completely secured just for them, which is not the case for normal cyclists.

Racing cyclist enthusiasts go faster than most and cannot warn people properly that they are coming, making them ‘less sociable and less safe’, according to Rombouts. By putting a bell in a water bottle, a cyclist just has to extend their arm and ring their bell. Amateurs can now still look cool. After all even retired top racing cyclist Joop Zoetemelk has a Bi-Bell now.

(Link: www.deondernemer.nl)

Tags: , , , , , ,

May 7, 2015

Emigrating down the street to Germany

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 10:53 am

Kerkrade

As people are moving from Kerkrade, Limburg to the connecting city of Herzogenrath, Germany due to cheaper house prices, Kerkarde discusses how it could ever become a true European cross-border city with a mix of Dutch and German rules and regulations. It’s one thing to regroup a bunch of Dutch cities into a collaboration like Parkstad Limburg, which includes Kerkrade, it’s another to run a city within two countries that have their own laws, language and culture.

In 2012 two-third of emigrants in Herzogenrath came from Kerkrade, sometimes even on the same street: Nieuwstraat in Kerkarde, Neustrasse in Herzogenrath. And if you move down the street to another country, you’re still an emigrant. Even your mobile phone provider doesn’t know where you are half the time, and I’m often told that the border people speak dialect on both sides and understand each other perfectly.

The mayor of Kerkrade Jos Som has to deal with the differences in legislation every day: “Sometimes we use Dutch law, sometimes German law, and sometimes no law at all”. He explains that it can be rewarding or frustrating because after all it’s Europe and we still have to do things together.

For true border complications there’s always Baarle-Nassau, with its collection of Belgian enclaves that put Google Streetview to the test.

(Link: www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl, Photo of Kerkrade by FaceMePLS, some rights reserved)

Tags: , , ,

August 28, 2014

Two Belgian tanks ram each other on Dutch motorway

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 4:18 pm

Dear stand-up comedians: Christmas has come early this year.

Like two cars swerving to avoid a duck crossing the road in slow motion, two Belgian Piranha-type tanks rammed each other near Valkenswaard, Limburg on the busy N69 (giggle) motorway, attempting to avoid a tractor. Both tanks are leaking fuel, but fortunately no one was hurt. I’m sure some egos are bruised though, as they should be.

Let me see how many cheap shots I can take before reading other people’s comments:

‘Sergeant! There’s a big green tractor that keeps getting closer! BAM!

‘Whew! It’s a good thing this is just a military exercise’.

‘Crew cruise control on these things really suck.’

After the crash:
‘Right, I’m off for a slash, toodles’.

(Link: www.nu.nl)

Tags: , , ,

February 21, 2014

Tuk-tuk makes hilly trip to nearest ATM machine

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 9:10 am

tuktuk-chris-mossIn the town of Vijlen in the southeasternmost part of the Netherlands, the local bank has shut down all the ATM machines. That is why resourceful villagers have started taking a local tuk-tuk service to Mechelen, 3 miles down the road, to get their cash, Nieuws.nl wrote last Tuesday.

The tuk-tuk, ran by a local volunteer organisation called Traag Heuvelland, has been operational for over two years. Originally it was used to cart tourists around, but these days it is popular with the local elderly in a quickly ageing area of the Netherlands.

The tuk-tuk operators have dubbed their service the ‘pinpendel’ due to its use as a bus service to and from an ATM machine. Viktor Terpstra told Nieuws.nl: “We can take six passengers at a time. The ride takes about half an hour both ways including the money stop. There is a café at the start of the route so that people who missed the tuk-tuk the first time around can have a cup of coffee while they wait.”

Rabobank closed ATM machines in eight villages in the South of Limburg last November because the machines weren’t used often and were difficult to secure against ‘ramkraken’ (ram-raiding).

(Photo of a tuk-tuk in China by Chris Moss , some rights reserved)

Tags: , ,

February 8, 2014

‘Gay threat’ makes Belgium and Netherlands rethink shared border

Filed under: History by Branko Collin @ 11:37 pm

eijsden-openstreetmap

Big Think writes:

A combination of sex and drugs (and possibly rock ‘n’ roll) is forcing two governments to change the border that divides them. The Presqu’ile de l’Islal, a small Belgian peninsula stranded on the Dutch bank of the river Meuse, is to change hands to eliminate a zone that is, to all practical effects, quite literally beyond the law.

Due to its political status, the uninhabited peninsula is off limits to the Dutch police. And because of its geographic isolation, it is out of reach for their Belgian colleagues. These circumstances conspire to make the peninsula a sanctuary for unlicensed sunbathing, loud bacchanalia and unrestricted drug dealing.

In parts of Limburg the border is formed by the river Meuse. Over time gravel extraction has led the river to change its course, creating tracts of land that the Belgian police can only reach by taking a long detour over Dutch territory. Binnenlands Bestuur explained in 2001: “The peninsulas have become popular as a gay meeting ground. […] In the summer the beach is popular with youths. […] Recently there have been indications that the gays have been bothering the youths. These allegations cannot be verified because the Dutch authorities have no legal status in the area and the Belgian authorities cannot act there because,” and here the author cranks up the dramatic background score to eleven, “they would have to invade our country through the town of Eijsden!”

Oh the horror! The voice of sanity is one Johan Lahaye speaking for the town of Eijsden who told Trouw shortly after: “There is no gay beach there. We’ve had the grand sum of exactly one complaint.” By that time however the Dutch parliament had started to study the issue and the Minister of the Interior had promised to make the border correction a priority. Last year De Limburger reported on a border committee that had visited the area and was ready to send a report to the capitals of both nations.

The border correction is expected to take place in a year or two. Gentlemen, start your engines.

The last time the Netherlands changed its borders was in 2010 when it gained 3 volcanoes (a number which had been 0 since 1945) and its highest point became 887 metres (formerly 323 metres)—three of the Dutch Antilles became a part of the country.

(Map by OpenStreetMap contributors, some rights reserved; the big purple line is the border)

Tags: , , , , , , , ,