July 10, 2012

Major band write song via Twitter (#doemaarmee)

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 10:24 am

Influential Dutch band Doe Maar are holding a competition in which anyone over eighteen can help write their next song.

Over the next eight weeks, each week the band will indicate which two lines of the song they need written, and entries are accepted when they are posted on Twitter using the hashtag #doemaarmee. The prizes are little more than what you would expect for co-writing a hit—royalties and free tickets—but I am guessing that most people will enter in the hope of being a part of the Doe Maar legend.

Doe Maar are a big thing in the Netherlands. They are to Nederpop what the Beatles are to Britpop, and what Kraftwerk are to techno. (The fact that they played ska and wrote open, honest lyrics was not part of that influence. The fact that they made quality songs in a modern genre in Dutch was.)

They had a short but bright career in the early eighties, reviving the pop song in the Dutch language single-handedly, scoring hit after hit and drawing halls full of teenage girls. The pressures of fame—seeing scores of young women faint in front of you night after night is apparently the opposite of ointment for the soul—led to a break-up of the band. They have been recording and performing together on and off since.

The competition started this week, and Doe Maar are currently looking for two lines that start with “Op een dag komt de dag (dat)” (one day will come the day (that)).

(Screenshot: doemaarmee.nu)

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July 9, 2012

Photo album exhibition at FOAM

Filed under: Art,Photography by Branko Collin @ 10:29 am

They used to exist, books in which people pasted prints of pictures they had taken.

Now that we’ve landed firmly in the digital age, in which prints appear to be the sole domain of ‘pixel peepers’ and newly-weds, Erik Kessels (him of In Almost Every Picture) has curated an exhibition at FOAM in Amsterdam that puts the photo album in the spotlight once again.

Writes FOAM:

Album Beauty is an ode to the vanishing era of the photo album as told through the collection of Erik Kessels (1966, The Netherlands). Once commonplace in every home, the photo album has been replaced by the digital age where images live online and on hard drives.

Photo albums were once a repository for family history, often representing a manufactured family as edited for display. They speak of birth, death, beauty, sexuality, pride, happiness, youth, competition, exploration, complicity and friendship. Album Beauty is an exhibition about the visual anthropology of the photo album.

Walking through the exhibition will be like leafing through a photo album. Erik Kessels is known for his unorthodox manner of installation and Album Beauty is no exception. On display will be hundreds of photo albums, all telling different but familiar stories. Some albums will be exaggerated in size and exhibited as wallpaper while others will be displayed in their original format. There will be interactive albums to flip through and life size cut outs for the viewer to walk around. Album Beauty features the endless formats of analogue photography many of which are no longer manufactured as well.

The exhibition will run from June 29 to October 14.

(Photo: FOAM)

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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 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 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 27, 2012

Turkish special Zone 5300

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 7:19 pm

Illustration: MK Perker

The celebration of 400 years of diplomatic relations between Turkey and The Netherlands might tempt a magazine’s editors, looking for fresh angles, to dedicate an issue to the topic… Zone 5300 did, and struck gold.

The thing about European comics is that the genre seems to have just a few torchbearers, Belgium being the Mount Olympus and The Netherlands, France, Spain and maybe Italy the foothills. Discovering that there is another country on the continent with a rich comic traditions (and a narrative of adversity to boot—censorship being a day-to-day reality in Turkey)? This is just the thing I am reading Zone 5300 for, baby!

Illustration: Bahadır Baruter

Issue 98 has comics by MK Perker, Bahadır Baruter, Memo Tembelçizer, Betül Yilmaz (who writes and draws for Bayan Yanı, a magazine filled only by female cartoonists), Kenan Yarar and Ersin Karabalut. The issue also contains a six page history of Turkish comics and an interview with Dutch illustrator Gijs Kast about his drawn portraits of the streets of Istanbul.

I especially liked Ersin Karabulut’s comic Under the Skin about a skin disease that manifests itself as a life form that can speak. It does this by forming letters on the skin of its carrier. Although Karabulut does not shy away entirely from the farcical possibilities his idea offers, the comic really is an exploration of how the carriers respond to their new predicament, specifically how they change under the pressures of their environment… or do they? I really don’t want to give away too much, but this comic alone packs a lot of punch in only six pages. I would not mind reading more from Karabulut to see if he can keep up this level of story telling.

Illustration: Gijs Kast

Illustration: Ersin Karabulut. The disease says: "Why don't you ever make filled eggplant?"

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