November 27, 2008
Two burglars from Dordrecht have to pay a child 93 euro in damages, a local court decided. After the burglars broke into the child’s home, the child was afraid to sleep in its own bed for fear of the criminals returning, Algemeen Dagblad reports. After the two men were arrested, the parents asked for the symbolic amount in damages.
(Link: Z24 (Dutch))
November 26, 2008
Any cat in the small town of De Marne, Groningen that dares climb up a tree in the future will costs their owner a fistful of euro. Ask the friendly, local voluntary fire brigade to fetch kitty kat for you and they will charge you somewhere between 350 to 500 euro. I wonder what the difference in price entails. Tree height? Time? Cat cuteness?
Tjerk Elzinga, the local fire brigade commander says, “providing a service is something that is not part of our legal tasks. (…) There are companies specialised in that sort of thing and it would lead to unfair competition.” Either this man is enlightened and the rest of the country’s volunteer fire brigades should follow suit or he’s really, really annoyed with not having any fires to put out.
Local residents are divided on the issue, but everyone thinks 350 to 500 euro is a helluvalot to ask for a cat up a tree. The idea is that small, non life-threating situations like rescuing cats costs the fire brigade money, so they feel someone else should pay for it.
Dutch entrepreneurship in times of recession or just plain weird, you decide.
(Link: rtvnoord.nl, Photo (non lolcat version): arttherapyblog)
Tags: cats, fire brigade
November 25, 2008
The unveiling of a very prominent statue of philosopher Baruch Spinoza in Amsterdam took place Monday, 24 November in the presence of the city’s mayor, Job Cohen. It has been placed on the Zwanenburgerwal near the Stopera (the city’s opera house), which is at the entrance of the former Jewish quarter where Spinoza grew up. The statue was crafted out of bronze by Nicolas Dings and the head was specifically made to match the one on the former 1000 gulder banknote.
Our very own roving reporter and photographer Branko Collin says that, “according to a radio item this morning, the symbols on the cloak – the roses, parakeets and sparrows – stand for Spinoza himself, immigrants (a reference to the parakeets in Vondelpark) and natives (sparrows are a diminishing breed).”
(Link: elsevier.nl, photo: Branko Collin)
Tags: Amsterdam, Jewish quarter, Job Cohen, Spinoza, statue
November 24, 2008
From 18 to 28 December, the city of Amsterdam will have a new gay event to gawk at: Pink Christmas. On 21 December, there will be a big Christmas market at the Pink Christmas Square (wherever that is) featuring a live Christmas nativity scene with Josephs, Marias and a bunch of pink Christmas trees (and no baby Jesus). I say gawk because let’s face it, the Gay Pride parade in the summer on boats is all about gawking at scantily clad men and a few women no matter what the message is or your sexual preference.
According to Stichting ProGay (ProGay association), the goal is to rival the summer Gay Pride parade as an event. ”We know that it will take time before this event is as popular. For now this market is basically just a nice street party,” explains chairman Frank van Dalen.
Does Amsterdam really need a new gay event? Maybe, why not, sure, we’ll see. But why it is Christmas related besides the fact that it is held at the end of the year? I don’t know, but it feels weird for reasons that have nothing to do with sexual orientation.
Christmas is not the most popular holiday in the Netherlands, Sinterklaas is, and it is mainly a children’s party. Christmas is in third place, after Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day) in April. And so Christmas, as compared to many other European countries, seems increasingly secular in nature, with Christmas cards more often depicting snow, snowflakes and symbols of winter than traditional Christmas symbols. Just go to the shops anywhere in the country with this in mind. It’s just not a big deal to the Dutch apparently, so maybe making it pink and gay is the way to go. We’ll see.
(Link: parool.nl)
November 23, 2008
Graphic designer René Put has designed new Dutch postage stamps with Braille called “Voel je mee” (“Sympathize”, but also a play on words with “to feel along”) for the visually impaired. The stamps combine letters with the Braille alphabet featuring missing letters filled in with Braille ones. The postage stamps pay tribute to Frenchman Louis Braille whose devised this alphabet 200 years ago.
Modern Dutch stamps have always been quite interesting. Here’s a unique one, the Dutch silver stamp, which was minted not printed with real silver.
(Link: rtl.nl)
Tags: Braille, postage stamps, silver stamp, visually impaired
November 20, 2008
A gravedigger in Laren, Noord Holland, was buried alive last Tuesday when an excavated pile of sand fell back into the hole he was standing in. Two of his colleagues managed to escape the impromptu burial, Blik op Nieuws reports, but it took firemen half an hour to extract the third, a 50-year-old man from nearby Hilversum. Afterwards the man was transported to a hospital by an ambulance with what appeared to be light injuries.
Photo: Salem graves by by Alanna Ralph, some rights reserved.
Tags: accidents, cemeteries, graves
November 19, 2008
A quarter of the Dutch goes onto the Internet right after waking up in the morning, even before going to the toilet or drinking coffee. (Coffee is the other national addiction.) A study from KPN also shows that 8% of the Dutch consider a day without Internet wasted, says Webwereld. Some 58% of the Dutch even feel a sense of panic coming up after two days offline.
Me, I’ve got one of them old-fashioned steam powered computers that takes a minute or so to start up, so that’s the ideal pee and coffee break. And at the end of the day…
Photo by E-magic, some rights reserved.
Tags: coffee, Internet, mornings, statistics, traits
November 17, 2008
I have no idea why this happens or why this is considered news, but there’s this ‘game’ the print media plays every once in a while which I call “Find the Dutch person” (“Zoek de Nederlander”). Allow me to explain.
Way back when Britney Spears was on the straight and narrow, Dutch Daily De Gelderlander had an article that read something like “Britney Spears has Dutch blood” and went on to explain she had ‘family’ in the province of Gelderland on her father’s side and that made her one fourth Dutch. This was seen as a source of pride.
Then right after Estonia won the Eurovision Songfestival in 2001, the papers said the win was “half Dutch” because Dave Benton was born on the island of Aruba, part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. This came off more like envy because the Netherlands’ last win in the Songfestival dates back to 1975.
And today, popular Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that Tiger Woods has Dutch blood because he is – get ready for this – one eighth Dutch! And apparently he’s really proud of being ‘multicultural’ too. He’s about as ‘African-American’ as Barack Obama is. That was sarcasm.
What’s wrong with the Dutch people ‘we’ (you) already have? As a Canadian, I go out of my way to point out that someone is Canadian or else they will be classified as American or French. Back in 1996 De Telegraaf called actor Leslie Nielsen American and sometime around 2004 some Flemish exhibition centre boasted about the great American singer Neil Young. I couldn’t let that last one slide.
Although there are tons of great Dutch people, islands and all who are surely a source of pride, I just cannot understand this identity soul searching. Even Anne Frank was seen a source of Dutch pride although she was German, while the growing amount of populists in the Netherlands are still not sure any Dutch person with a second passport qualifies.
Tags: Anne Frank, Barack Obama, Britney Spears, Dave Benton, Dutch identity, Neil Young, Tiger Woods
November 14, 2008
According to a survey carried out by research institute TNS Nipo for the Volkskrant and broadcaster NCRV, a few eyebrow-raising conclusions were drawn about raising children in the Netherlands:
“Parents spoil their children too much and do not teach them to take others into consideration. The survey also says that 75% of older generations are not happy with the way children are raised. Child-centred upbringing has been the trend in the Netherlands since the 1970s as a result of smaller families and growing prosperity and this had led to a generation which is demanding and self-centred.”
My Dutch friends refer to annoying kids or parents who let their kids walk all over them by pointing to them in disgust and saying “ikke ikke ikke”, which means “me me me”. A recent case in point was a little boy of about two who kept hitting other smaller children at a children’s party and the parents stopping him, but not reprimanding him in order to stop the behaviour. This went on the whole time I was there. What I’ve heard is reprimanding your kids is bad for them (?) and so getting them to stop bad behaviour has to involve not making them feel bad.
How does that work? It doesn’t. I saw a man hit a five-year-old on the head (!) in an organic supermarket populated by the middle class because he kept poking the man and the mother let it happen. The mother actually had no problem with the swat, as she got to avoid the ‘confrontation’ of trying to punish her own son. Guess what? The kid stopped his bad behaviour.
“However, Dutch children are also the happiest in the western world, according to a World Health Organisation survey in 2008. The report found they are the most pleased with life, get on well with their parents, have a large social network and like their schools. A UNICEF report a year earlier also found that Dutch teenagers are the happiest in the developed world.”
Hell, I’d be happy too if you let me do what I wanted all the time!
Is being all “ikke ikke ikke” a really good universal value to teach your children?
(Link: dutchnews.nl, Photo: Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Tags: children, Dutch upbringing
November 12, 2008
Can you promote eating Dutch smoked sausage as a vegetarian? The animal activists at Wakker Dier don’t seem to have a problem with that. Jan Vayne, currently the main celebrity plugging Unox smoked sausage on television, was nominated as one of the sexiest vegetarians of the Netherlands. (Personally, I would vote for columnist Leon Verdonschot, but that’s just me.)
On the list of Dutch celebrities that claim not to eat meat, the description of Vayne reads “With his wild hair, Jan Vayne would rather sit at the piano keyboard than sit down for a plate of dead animal.” If I remember correctly, he made it pretty clear more than a year ago that sitting down for a plate of dead animal was mmm mmm profitable. You don’t see him eating any sausage on television though.
Wakker Dier is very much against the bad bad bad meat industry, but not when it comes to their annual most sexy vegetarian contest, which is quite odd. Both Wakker Dier and the Netherlands’ political party Partij voor de Dieren (Party for the Animals) held a huge campaign last year against Unox because they use pork from pigs that were not castrated under anaesthesia.
I once had a boss who claimed and acted superior because he did not eat meat, but showed up at work once, back from visiting the United States with fire engine red snake skin boots. They had midlife crisis part deux written all over them. When I told this to my best friend she said, “he doesn’t eat animals, he just wears them”.
(Link and photo: vleesmagazine.nl)
Tags: Jan Vayne, Partij voor de Dieren, vegetarianism, Wakker Dier
