Filed under: Automobiles by Orangemaster @ 8:59 am
Dutch construction company Heijmans has published a time-lapse video on Facebook of them digging a 70-metre stretch of tunnel and then inserting it very efficiently under motorway A12 near Ede, Gelderland all in one weekend. The film has been viewed over 750,000 times on Facebook (it’s now floating around on YouTube) and their post has had 7,200 likes and over 8,400 shares so far.
Someone posted, ‘Hey, it would be nice if it has some music to it’, and then Heijmans gave them the classic Dutch radio answer of ‘You asked, we’ll play it’ and here is the result below.
If you hadn’t heard the news, this is the first time since 1984 that the Dutch won’t be participating in the UEFA European Championship. So what’s a Dutch fan to do?
In Amersfoort, the city has decided to get behind Belgium’s Red Devils with a huge flag of Belgium hanging off a church tower, something you’d never see in any other context. Also known as the southern neighbours, Belgium seems to be the logical choice, although opinions differ.
A whole bunch of Dutch-Turks will just root for Turkey as usual, with countryman Oğuzhan “Ozzy” Özyakup being the only Dutchman playing in the competition, apparently. Some of my friends are cheering for whatever nationality their partner is that’s actually in the competition like Poland and France.
According to the Guardian’s Joris Luyendijk in a sad article about the state of the Netherlands this week, the Dutch national team’s proudest moment, “probably came in June 1988 when an ethnically mixed team of Dutch footballers won the European Championships, beating the all-white teams of arch-rival Germany and then Russia. It felt like the ultimate vindication of multiculturalism.”
Have a look at this English presentation of what it looked like when ‘Oranje’ (Team Orange’) killed it back in 1988.
Filed under: Music,Weird by Orangemaster @ 6:32 am
Nobody likes a long and hot traffic jam due to an accident, and neither did Adriaan Stoop, drummer of the band The Moods from Eindhoven, who pulled out his kit from the back of his truck and jammed it out on a Dutch motorway last Sunday.
“At first, I didn’t want to do it, but people were saying ‘go for i!’,” he told the AD newspaper. “I saw the queue of cars and figured it was going to last quite a while, so I started drumming on the motorway.”
Just last week we told you about the ‘frikandellen vlaai’ and many other frikandel-related ‘inventions’, but we can now call it a hype.
Joining in is Roberto Gelato from Utrecht with a video of the owner listing off other frikandel delights such as pizza-frikandel from Urk, but then what about Utrecht, he says to the camera. Well, Utrecht is going to make frikandel ice cream!
According to Waarmaarraar, the ice cream is ready to roll. Foodies could combine it with Van Gogh potato ice cream and be all set.
Even though the Netherlands is a small country, many institutions apparently don’t know what their country looks on a map, seeing as they have cut out the region of Zeelandic Flanders four times in one year. The mistake has been spotted with a rugby union, a funeral insurer, a website for beach hangouts and more recently amusement park De Efteling.
According to Wikipedia, “Zeelandic Flanders (‘Zeeuws-Vlaanderen’) is the southernmost region of the province of Zeeland in the south-western Netherlands” and is “bordered to the south by Belgium”. Barely any trains go there and you’ll need to drive or take a bus to get to part of it, but that’s still no excuse.
In an attempt to encourage Chinese tourists to come to De Efteling, Zeelandic Flanders was left out (see what that looks like) of a video, although they’ll correct their mistake soon. For them it was painful because one of their newest attractions, The Flying Dutchman, named after Willem van der Decken, hails from Zeelandic Flanders. As well, the rugby bond omission is also painful since it was made by a club from Middelburg, the capital of the province of Zeeland.
According to the NOS, Pablo Picasso rarely went on holiday, but in 1905 he took off to the Netherlands. The 23-year-old artist fled the heat and bustle of Paris and stayed several weeks in Schoorl, at the cottage of his acquaintance Tom Schilperoort whom he knew from Paris.
The Alkmaar Municipal Museum is dedicating an exhibition to Picasso’s rare holiday entitled Picasso in Holland, which opens on June 7 and runs until 28 August. The exhibition will show a special reunion of famous paintings never before shown together: ‘La belle Hollandaise’ from Brisbane, Australia and ‘Les trois Hollandaises’ (shown here) from Paris.
According to the museum, Picasso’s painting ‘La famille de saltimbanques’, a family of circus acrobats with a desert-like background said to have been inspired by the dunes in Schoorl.
Filed under: Music,Sports by Orangemaster @ 11:42 am
By now Formula 1 fans around the world have heard that Dutch-Belgian F1 driver Max Verstappen, the son of former Dutch F1 driver Jos Verstappen and former Belgian kart driver Sophie Kumpen, is the youngest winner of a Formula 1 race at age 18. According to Wikipedia, he’s had a bunch of other firsts before that, but some firsts are more interesting than others.
What better way to celebrate than with a song, which is exactly what Dutch rap duo Dos Hermanos decided to do, inspired by Max Verstappen. Dos Hermanos from Haarlem are currently participating in a talent search show and their assignment was to write an ‘anthem’. Apparently, they didn’t have to think about it for very long. “There’s one person who deserves an ‘anthem’ and could use one! That’s why we chose the young hero Max Verstappen.”
Even if you don’t speak Dutch, every speaks F1 motor noises.
There’s been a run of weird food combos lately, including pancakes with fries and the discodel. Now the frikandel sans disco has made its appearance in ‘vlaai’ (‘pie’) from Limburg turning a sweet dessert into a savoury one.
Bakers from Grubbenvorst, Limburg whipped up a ‘frikandellen vlaai’ for a friend’s birthday. It can have curry sauce, chopped onions and mayonnaise on it if you like that sort of garnish. Other frikandel fans started asking for the pie after a picture of it was placed on Facebook.
British advertising agency D&AD have recently announced this year’s winners of their D&AD Pencil Awards for creative excellence in design and advertising, and the Netherlands nabbed seven awards this year, three less than last year. Studio Joost Grootens picked up a coveted Pencil award for the design of the new Dikke Van Dale, the “oldest and most extensive dictionary of the Dutch language”.
The pearly white cover presents a major break with the familiar dark hues [dark blue, maroon, etc.] traditionally used by the publisher. This signals the current association between the pursuit of knowledge and our use of white and silver digital devices as the portals to information.
With Almost 5000 pages of knowledge and in its fifteenth edition, this year the Van Dale was also fitted with navigational elements such as colours, symbols and illustrations.
Filed under: Art,Technology by Orangemaster @ 9:35 pm
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has been working in Amsterdam this week, and he also decided to soak up some culture by visiting the Rijksmuseum with former European Commissioner Neelie Kroes.
Cook’s eye fell on a painting from 1670 entitled ‘Man handing a letter to a woman in the entrance hall of a house’ by Pieter de Hooch, where the letter looks a bit like a mobile phone. Cook did think it was a Rembrandt because well, why not, and he also thought the letter looked like an iPhone, when it fact it looks more like a smaller type of mobile phone if you ask me.
