April 12, 2008
The Netherlands Institute for War Documentation in Amsterdam has been given 1,500 colour photos from WWII by Alphons Hustinx, a rich photographer from Roermond, Limburg who used the rare technique at that time of colour slides. When we think of photos from WWII, we usually picture black and white images, but this new collection will actually add colour to an otherwise grey era.
The entire collection will be available for viewing online at the end of April.
(Link and photo: rtl.nl)
April 9, 2008
On 20 April, some 20 kilometres of hiking routes for lesbians will be officially opened in the province of Brabant. In the woods near Alphen lesbians will be able to enjoy nature and “get together”.
The first Dutch “ladies’ route” was opened in North Holland, and there are also routes in Zeeland and Drenthe. Noord-Brabant is now the fourth province to go lesbian friendly. The goal is to have lesbian hiking routes throughout the country.
(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)
April 8, 2008
I don’t care about the story, it’s the picture that basically cancels out the story for me. The story is about “experiments to increase health with young people,” which sounds fine, but the picture shows a teenager eating ontbijtkoek, which for the foreign crowd is gingerbread for breakfast. And it’s chocked full of sugar and fat. The background shows a vending machine with Balistos, a muesli (granola) based candy bar, with chocolate and tons of sugar. The captions read “Eating healthy in the cantina of the Werkplaats Kindergemeenschap.”
Did the photographer just do their job or is the author of this article stupid, unaware, fat or something else? With this kind of well-intended advice, no wonder Dutch kids are getting fatter. The road to obesity is paved with junk food.
(Link: ad.nl)
Tags: candy bars, children, junk food
April 3, 2008
American Robert McDonald, a former Hollywood stunt man now living in the Dutch town of Emmeloord, has built a 45-foot replica Viking ship made of millions of wooden ice cream sticks and more than a ton of glue. It will set sail on Saturday for London at the start of its voyage to America along the same route taken by the Vikings. The ship took five years to build with the help of 5,000 Dutch school children and 15 million sticks.
McDonald named the ship the “Mjollnir” after the hammer of the mythic Norse god of thunder, Thor. After the 13-ton boat was lifted into the water by crane, McDonald stood calmly on the stern as a team of volunteers rowed the apparently sturdy vessel around the IJ River behind Amsterdam’s Central Station.
But will it make it? Stay tuned.
(Link and photo: firstcoastnews.com, via dutchnews.nl)
April 1, 2008
Singer and well-known gay personality Gordon is the founder and station voice of the new digital radio station OZ Radio. It will be online in August and will only play “happy, feel good, gay music”.
The name OZ was taken from the film ‘The wizard of Oz’, starring gay icon Judy Garland. Other artists that qualify for airplay include Shirley Bassey, Diana Ross, the Village People and Kylie Minogue.
I have this feeling that Melissa Etheridge, The Gossip and K. D. Lang won’t get any airplay… or is it just me?
Not impressed so far. Sounds like a huge gay excluding lesbian cliché fest. And an Australian one at that.
(Link: gaykrant.nl)
March 31, 2008
Belgium wants to rent some 300 jail cells from jails in Breda and Maastricht, cities close to the Belgian border. According to the Belgian media, the country has some 10,000 prisoners (out of some 10,5 million inhabitants), while there is only room for 8,500. In the Netherlands some 20% of jail cells are empty. So far, the Dutch government has said no and suggested that they might rent or sell jail boats to the Belgians, which didn’t really ‘float’ with the Belgian government.
You could draw all kinds of conclusions from this article, the kind of article you learn to analyse at school to show off your debating skills: Why are Dutch prisons empty? Why are Belgian prisons full? What’s wrong with boats? And so on.
(Link: omroepbrabant.nl)
Tags: Belgium, Breda, Maastricht, Netherlands, prisons
March 30, 2008
Between 12 July 2005 and 12 July 2006 Canadian Kyle MacDonald traded up a red paperclip for a house in Saskatchewan in 14 separate trades. Two Dutch high school students are now trying to follow in his footsteps by trying to trade up a red thumbtack for a place to stay in Utrecht because next year they will attend business school there. So far they traded a red thumbtack for a lighter, the lighter for an analog photo camera, the camera for a digital photo camera, the second camera for an MP3 player, the MP3 player for two days worth of canoe rental, and the canoe rental for a key chain that doubles as a photo player.
For those of you unfamiliar with the lack of rooms who are thinking what’s the big deal, you have to understand how unbelievably tough it is to get any kind of housing in the Netherlands, let alone as a poor student who needs a place to sleep and shower. Allow me: 1) Many students continue to live in their rooms after their studies because they cannot find housing, so life is rough for new students. The law also says you can’t throw them out to make way for the new arrivals. 2) There are even stories of universities telling foreign students to go study somewhere else because of a lack of rooms. 3) Emergency living space, which is supposed to be temporary but ends up permanent, is made out of shipping containers. During a severe wind storm a few weeks ago, one of the stacks of containers detached itself from the pier to which it was attached and started floating.
Tags: commerce, lack of space, paperclips, thumbtacks, trading
March 27, 2008
After a private performance by tap dancer Marije Nie to inspire the troops, Steve Korver, Editor-in-Chief of the Amsterdam Weekly, Amsterdam’s award-winning English-language free weekly, reminded us that print media doesn’t come cheap. After backers of the paper decided to retire themselves and their money, the paper had to come up with a plan to ‘keep it all together’. Here it is:
“In the publishing world, it turns out that it’s hard to be free. Tja… So, while we hatch more secret plans to stay alive, we’re coming to you – the reader – for help. The plan is to sell you our editorial space for the next three issues. Each page is divided into 204 blocks and each block costs €5. So, hey… buy a few. It’s clean, safe, simple and cheap. Then we can go back to being free.”
In the hopes of attracting more interest and branching out in true Web 2.0 style, the Amsterdam Weekly has just started a blog to give you even more of the AW experience. It’s just a few days old and yours truly has gladly become one of their bloggers. Soon enough, you will be able to read the AW blog on Twitter! But, first, let’s get through the weekend.
Tags: Amsterdam, Amsterdam Weekly, fund-raising, new blog, web 2.0
March 26, 2008
New York’s Brooklyn Brewery is planning to sell a pilsner type beer in the Netherlands through distributor De Brouwketel, a subsidiary of Heineken. The Brooklyn Brewery is a well-known independent brewery located on the East River. The relatively small brewery already delivers beer abroad in the Far East, England, Turkey, Switzerland and Scandinavia.
“The low dollar helps us tremendously. Importers can now make a good profit and the European consumer is happy with the price. We expect a serious rise in exports,” says Brooklyn Director Steve Hindy, a former journalist who decided to start brewing beer with a friend some 20 years ago.
I once had a full evening of Brooklyn Brown Ale in Greenwich Village, New York City with a German friend. We both joined a table of local New Yorkers who just happened to be interpreters for the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta. The running joke was that Brooklyn Brown Ale was made with the water from the East River, which gave it its colour. It’s an ok beer.
(Link: www.z24.nl)
Tags: beer, Brooklyn Brewery
March 19, 2008
The wave of nannyism that has hit the Netherlands as of late sounds like waves crashing onto the Delta works and then wooshing back into the sea right back where they belong. Famous Dutch weblog GeenStijl (in English, No Style), up again this year (today!) for Best Weblog has finally let the group ‘Vroeg op Stap’ (roughly, ‘Let’s party early’, as opposed to staying out late) get a word in edgewise, albeit to make them look utterly stupid.
GeenStijl claims that they have been spammed for months now by these Frisian housewives, as they wanted to gain support for their cause: letting their drinking teenagers go out early so that they can come home at a decent time and not sleep in. The problem is that contrary to Dutch society’s live and live attitude, they want the whole country to follow suit.
To get a good idea of how GeenStijl pushed that wave back into the ocean, they produced a film showing “one MILF and one non-MILF” handing over the petition to the right politician who then accused them of wasting his time because the petition only had digitial signatures, about 120,000 of them.
Long story short, a big fat waste of time. This is how mommy sinks her own boat and goes down with the ship, kids, watch and learn.
(Link: geenstijl.tv)
Tags: digital signatures, geenstijl, petition
