July 8, 2012

Turkish brothers win prestigious herring award

Filed under: Food & Drink by Branko Collin @ 1:47 pm

A herring stand in Leiden.

There are few things more Dutch than herring and xenophobia, which makes today’s catch deliciously ironic. Turkish-run, Leiden-based fishmongers Atlantic won the AD Herring Test 2012.

Brothers Abdullah and Umut Tagi were the only fish sellers to score ten points this year.

AD writes:

The first place in the national herring test is the ultimate revenge for the brothers Tagi: “We were always ‘those Turks’ to the rest of the trade, at least, that is how it felt. We have definitely made a mark now that we have won the most important prize there is. […] We are fighting a battle, and that battle is yet to be won. That will only be the case once every Dutch man and woman can enjoy the real thing, traditionally prepared herring.”

The brothers Tagi have been ‘in fish’ all their lives. Fresh out of Turkey, 10-year-old Abdullah helped clear fish waste at the The Hague market, while his mother—pregnant of Umut—cleaned herring in Scheveningen. Today the brothers run two stores in Leiden and The Hague, and a wholesale business that specializes in hand-cleaned herring.

Meanwhile the folks over at DutchNews.nl would like to know, how do you feel about raw herring?

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July 7, 2012

Oldest farm in Western Europe almost torn down

Filed under: Architecture,History by Branko Collin @ 11:36 am

Farmer Piet Scheepers from Best, Noord Brabant, simply did not know that this barn of his was so old. He figured 300 years, tops. And because it was difficult to work in due to the low ceiling, he was ready to tear the building down, six years ago.

Research by local historian Dick Zweers has since put a stop to those plans, Omroep Brabant reports. Zweers found out that the wood in the building was from 1263: “The first thing I noticed that this used to be the sort of house where there was always a fire, people were always in the same room, they always had a need for warm water—you can tell by those sooted beams.” He adds: “There have been changes, but the construction is in essence still the same.”

Scheepers had already acquired a permit for demolition, now the government wants to turn the barn—which currently houses calves—into a state monument, and is willing to invest 100,000 euro in renovation, as is the provincial government.

Omroep Brabant calls this the oldest farm still in use in Western Europe. Back in November, Zweers was still hedging his bets: “Great Britain has also got a lot of old stuff.”

(Photo: Google Street View)

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July 6, 2012

Dutch Olympians to be fined or fired by government

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 9:59 am

Hurdler Gregory Sedoc is one of five soldiers to get the boot.

Dozens of students taking part in the 2012 Olympics will be fined for failing to meet their study goals, Dutch News reports:

At least a quarter of the Dutch squad for this summer’s Olympics in London may end up with a fine for taking too long to finish their college or university degrees, the Volkskrant reports on Wednesday.

Of the 180-strong team, around 50 are still studying and are likely to end up with a €3,000 fine for taking more than a year too long to graduate.

The bitter irony is that the students still have it good. Having to pay a fine is nothing compared to losing your job, which is what will happen to two judokas, a hurdler, a middle distance runner and a shooter as of December 1. The five athletes are part of a project that puts top Olympians on the Defence department’s payroll. The project is stopped due to extensive budget cuts.

The five athletes were told they were fired by phone, Telegraaf reports

I doubt there are many other countries that treat their heroes this way.

The students will be fined because of a law that states nobody should take more than 5 years to finish a university or polytechnic education. The law itself fits nicely in a long standing tradition of painting students as lazy for political gain. Meanwhile studies confirm that Dutch students often work hard.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Vice-Prime Minister Maxime Verhagen used a total of 18 years to finish their degrees.

(Photo by Erik van Leeuwen, some rights reserved)

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July 5, 2012

Waiter, there’s a swarm of bees in my soda

Filed under: Animals,Nature,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:04 pm

Imagine you’re chilling on a terrace in downtown Nijmegen, minding your own beeswax when along comes a swarm of bees heading right for your table like a homing device.

Last Tuesday, some 15,000 bees decided to go shopping for a new home and took a liking to the underside of one of the terrace tables. The patrons fled inside and the cafe shut its doors and windows. Forget calling the police, the owner called up a beekeeper to explain to the bees in bee speak that his cafe was not a good place to expand their honey business.

It was a battle to the end, with the queen bee not wanting to go gently. Finally, the beekeeper grabbed her with gloves on and they were all sorted. Nobody was stung.

The year 2012 is the year of the bee, but this major hive meeting was not on the agenda.

(Link: www.gelderlander.nl, Photo of Bee swarm by quisnovus, some rights reserved)

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July 4, 2012

A cat with an enemy?

Filed under: Animals by Branko Collin @ 8:50 pm

A cat in Almelo has been shot at twice in one year.

Estelle, the cat of of the Tolsma family in the Schelfhorst neighbourhood was shot in its lungs yesterday by an unknown assailant, RTV Oost reports. The owners believe that Estelle was shot when she was out in the yard, because they could hear two bangs. “She never leaves the garden”, Mrs Tolsma told the reporter.

The bullet is lodged beneath the spine, which is why it cannot be removed by the local vet. The Tolsma family will have to take it to a specialist in Utrecht for an operation.

Last year Estelle was shot in her right front paw with an air gun.

(Video: Youtube / RTV Oost)

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July 3, 2012

The Dutch-Québec connection

Filed under: Food & Drink,Technology by Orangemaster @ 11:22 pm

Any links to be made between Dutch things and Québec ones are just me thinking that some things could be Dutch even if they aren’t. There’s nothing Dutch about the Keurig coffee maker, it comes from the US. However, ‘keurig’ in Dutch means ‘proper’, ‘neat’ and ‘trim’. I just have this feeling there could be a connection.

A Dutch oven is not an oven but a pan (duh), although the one I use, called a braadpan is apparently the same thing. These pots are made to fry things in as well, and then let them simmer. I had to get used to that as I always fry things in a frying pan first.

As for other Dutch things that people either know is Dutch or at least know they are European, Heineken beer is always one of them, as is TomTom navigation systems. TomTom apparently doesn’t have the best customer service in Canada, and charge extra for a bunch of things that Garmin (US) provides for free. I use my smartphone for navigation, while nobody does that here because a) no smartphone b) no mobile Internet (it’s like 45 CAD a month as compared to 5-10 euro a month in the Netherlands).

I also heard that the city of Montréal wants to move its prostitutes from the usual downtown spot to an industrial area like the Dutch do, called the ‘tippelzone’ (roughly, ‘hook up zone’). A ‘tippelzone’ is a municipally controlled area of town where prostitution is tolerated. The problem is, the Netherlands has tons of problems with theirs, and in Montréal, industrial businesses don’t want to be associated with prostitution — it’s bad for business. Hookers are very scared of working where the police wouldn’t normally come to help them if something went wrong.

I’m keeping my eyes open for any other connections.

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July 2, 2012

Wild police chase using a tractor

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 8:45 am

Police officers had to resort to requisitioning a tractor to catch three suspected bicycle thieves in a field last Thursday, the Breukelen police report.

Earlier that evening a citizen saw the three suspects loading bicycles into a van and alerted 112 (the European emergency phone number). A motorcycle cop spotted the van and signalled the driver to stop, but the van continued onto the A2 motorway in the direction of Amsterdam. During the chase, the van stopped on the shoulder and three men emerged, fleeing into a meadow.

Several officers ran after the suspects, and at that point one of the officers requisitioned a tractor with which he or she continued the chase. With the help of wardens of a nearby nature reserve who were passing in a boat, the officers managed to stop and arrest the suspects on top of a dike.

The suspects turned out to be from Haarlem and were aged 29, 37 and 43. The van had a stolen license plate.

You read it here first, folks: three men from Harlem arrested in Brooklyn using a tractor.

(Photo of a dike in Kockengen, near where we suspect the three were apprehended, by E. Dronkert, some rights reserved)

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July 1, 2012

Floating bicycle roundabout in Eindhoven

Filed under: Architecture,Automobiles,Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 6:50 pm

The city of Eindhoven wanted to change the roundabout at the Noordbrabantse laan back to a regular intersection, but figured that this would be too dangerous for bicyclists. Their novel approach? To keep the roundabout for bicyclists, but shift it a couple of metres up into the air.

The engineers of ipv Delft designed a bridge that hangs off a giant pylon in the middle. The pylon is 70 metres high, and 24 cables support the bridge. A concrete nubbin appears to protect the pylon from adventurous heavy goods vehicles.

This video by Omroep Brabant shows what the bridge looks like from above:

The bridge was opened for the first time 3 weeks ago, but closed down again when it turned out that the wind caused the cables to vibrate dangerously. Since then dampeners have been installed that should fix the problem.

Eindhoven could have opted for bicycle tunnels instead of a bridge, but the city felt tunnels lack ‘social safety’, which Fietsberaad describes as “the extent to which (in this case) bicyclists feel free of threat or confrontation with violence”. (In other words, tunnels are dark and may be full of bad guys.)

(Link: Bright. Photo: ipv Delft. Video: Youtube/Omroep Brabant. More photos at Wegenforum)

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June 30, 2012

Indian judge surprised by question about riding a bicycle

Filed under: Bicycles by Branko Collin @ 11:02 am

An Indian judge moving to The Hague got a bit of a shock when they asked him about certain transport preferences, The Indian Express wrote last month:

Justice Dalveer Bhandari is to leave for The Hague next month to join the International Court of Justice. Bhandari was perplexed when he received a phone call from The Hague asking whether he would like a bicycle to be booked for him. In India, justices are used to limousines and pilot cars, and the thought that in The Hague most people travel by cycles for short distances came as a culture shock to the honourable judge.

Justice Bhandari was sworn in on June 19, Indlaw writes.

For more about dignitaries and their bicycles, see also: Journalistic portraits of photojournalists.

(Link: Bicycledutch. Photo of the Peace Palace in The Hague by Alkan de Beaumont Chaglar, some rights reserved)

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June 29, 2012

Chips, crisps and croustilles

Filed under: Food & Drink,Religion by Orangemaster @ 4:36 pm

Since I’ve been back to visit family in Québec, the comments about the Netherlands have been reduced to coffeeshops, whores and cheese, which are polite jabs, but also pretty accurate. However, a recurring theme is chips or crisps, or even ‘croustilles’ for the proper French word. The proper Dutch word is ‘chips’, following the North American tradition. Szechwan, that’s pretty exotic. Salt n’ vinegar, nothing special. Mesquite BBQ I had to look up, and has something to do with a style of BBQ sauce in Texas.

One interesting trend was that many of these Canadian chips were advertised as kosher. Canadian food products have always had kosher symbols on them, but there are many different ones (COR, K, MK, etc.) and seem to me to be more prominent. It was swiftly pointed out to me as well that these products (not all junk food by the way) are in fact more expensive to produce because a rabbi has been part of the process. In other words, these kosher products cost more for people who don’t eat kosher. The press has written that regular people are being had for more money at the expense of people who choose to eat kosher and even halal foods, as it is a life choice and not a health issue. The conclusion was that there are tons of symbols for gluten-free, no nuts and low-sodium products, which can even be life-saving for many people, even religious people, and may even cost more to produce, but they are for the benefit of society as a whole, not a select religious group.

I am amazed this discussion hasn’t popped in the Netherlands yet, albeit regarding halal foods.

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