Although there’s a crisis on and journalists and photographers all over the country are fighting over jobs, they decide to launch Vogue in the Netherlands. Launched on 22 March, it joins 18 other international editions around the world. Edited by former Dutch Glamour editor Karin Swerink, the debut issue features models Ymre Stiekema, Josefien Rodermans and Romee Strijd.
As long as they don’t make fashion mistakes like Jackie magazine did by calling singer Rihanna a niggerbitch, they should be just fine. And we do hope it won’t be all super blond and Caucasian as well.
Filed under: Art,Music,Nature by Branko Collin @ 1:48 pm
Last Thursday the Keukenhof bulb gardens in Lisse (between Amsterdam and The Hague) opened its doors for its yearly exhibition.
This year’s theme is “Poland, Heart of Europe”, which is celebrated amongst others with a 50,000 flowering bulb portrait of composer Chopin.
The park will remain open until May 20, and expects to receive about 900,000 visitors.
If you would like to know what Keukenhof is about, Flickr is your friend. (Although that stream also shows photos of flower fields that have nothing to do with the Keukenhof.)
Filed under: Art,Comics by Branko Collin @ 1:55 pm
If you look closely, you may recognise a famous duck.
Niels Kalk lives and works in Berlin, but is from the Netherlands and studies at the Minerva Art Academy in Groningen. In 2004 he drew a four-pager for Zone 5300. His Flickr collection is extensive and also shows off his love for collage.
Filed under: Animals,Nature by Branko Collin @ 6:13 pm
Inbreeding is having a negative effect on the otter populations of Friesland and Overijssel, nature preservation organisations say.
The Das & Boom Foundation and the Leeuwarden Otterstation are sounding the alarm and have asked (PDF) Nature Minister Henk Bleker to take action, De Volkskrant reports.
Because of Bleker’s budget cuts, no research has been done into the otter population since January 1. The letter writers claim that the same things as always endanger a healthy otter population, including fyke nets for fishing, extermination of musk rats, and traffic.
The otter disappeared from the Netherlands in 1998. A program was started in 2002 in which several dozen otters from Northern and Western Europe were reintroduced in Friesland and Overijssel. At last count there were approximately 60 otters in the country.
It looks like the province of Friesland will be getting its own domain name extension, .frl. Major hosting company MijnDomein has put in the request with ICANN and plans to sell the extension to Frisian companies and individuals. The provincial government is very happy with this, as they are not in a position to ask for such a domain name themselves, knowing that it costs a whopping 185.000 US dollars to get the ball rolling.
Back in February the Labour Party in Amsterdam mentioned getting a .amsterdam, but that’s still just a rumour. I get the point of local businesses in Friesland, a province with its own language and culture, being willing to pay extra for a .frl, but .amsterdam is way too long to type in and maybe even a bit pretentious. I know Canada has provincial extensions (.on, .qc), but they always carry a .ca at the end. I have a business in Amsterdam and technically in Europe, but I can’t be bothered with any other extension than .nl or .com and the likes.
A few days ago, beekeepers placed some 20,000 bees on the roof of the Amsterdam Municipal Theatre smack downtown in a serious attempt to help increase the honey bee population and eventually make honey. There are enough green spaces and trees in Amsterdam to hopefully start making honey this summer according to an optimistic beekeeper. And if you thought keeping bees on the roof of a theatre is weird, it’s been all the rage for years on the roof of the Paris Opera, in New York and other European cities.
Bees have been disappearing for years in Amsterdam, and so this is just another attempt at keeping them buzzing around. We apparently need bees for food growth and could use a boost of the wild bee population.
Bees can’t hurt you unless you mess with them, then they will sting you and die. I might be allergic to a proper bee sting so I go around them like the bully in the school yard at recess. I love watching them work, and who doesn’t like a good waggle dance?
Amsterdam is apparently the first European city to have a North Korean restaurant, which opened in January at the edge of the city in Osdorp. It has a cultural centre attached to it as well, although many people are sure it’s a propaganda centre. In fact, it’s been almost impossible to talk about restaurant Pyongyang, named after the North Korean capital, without it turning to politics.
Owner Remco van Daal keeps reminding the press and his patrons that his restaurant and the cultural centre is not politically motivated, but it’s a hard sell because in Asia, Pyongyang restaurants are associated with money laundering. If we could have Russian restaurants a few decades ago in the West, we should be able to have North Korean ones as well. And which major European city doesn’t have an Italian restaurant with ties to the mafia? Van Daal could be telling the truth, he could also be lying, but encouraging his restaurant is optional.
Two friends of mine went to Pyongyang for dinner, one for his birthday and to indulge in his fascination of dictators (no pics of Kim Jong Il there since his portrait may not be filmed), the other went with friends who are actually going to visit North Korea this spring. They both said it was expensive and not particularly special food-wise, but the song and dance provided by real North Korean women is worth experiencing at least once.
In this video you’ll see the clumsy decor and lighting with North Korean art on the walls, the food and the traditional song and dance. And if my friends or other patrons are horrible people for funding an oppressive regime, so are people who consume Nestlé products or whatever else that is on the current bad corporations hit list. And consuming questionable products has always been optional.
A Dutch man who underwent hip surgery two years ago has appeared in a TV interview claiming he has not been able to stop laughing ever since.
According to Huug Bosse’s wife, her husband now spends his days laughing at everyone and everything and it all started when he had a hip replaced under anaesthesia in 2010.
Bosse (70) used to be a greengrocer in Krommenie, halfway between Amsterdam and Alkmaar. He was known for his cheerful disposition, but according to his wife Nolda, it has gotten too much: “If you are trying to have a conversation, and all you get in return is laughter, it starts to get annoying.”
The interview was shown in Man Bijt Hond, originally a Flemish programme of which this is the Dutch version. Dutch television, or rather Christian broadcaster NCRV, likes its eccentrics—Showroom (1977-1982) and De Stoel (1990-2004) focused exclusively on them.
In one case the victim was a boy who had been sexually abused by a priest in a Roman Catholic boarding school. The paper says there are indications that the church castrated dozens of more boys. The church had hoped to ‘cure’ the boys from ‘homosexual behaviour’.
In 2010 the church appointed a committee led by former education minister Wim Deetman to study sexual abuse of minors within the church. In its report, the committee somehow failed to make any mention of the castration cases, even though it knew about it.
The current right-wing government has always blocked a parliamentary enquiry into widespread sexual abuse by the Catholic church. Coalition partners VVD, CDA and PVV claim that this is because an enquiry would be of no use to the victims.
According to the optimistic Deetman report, the rape machine that is the Catholic church made tens of thousands of victims among children in the Netherlands alone between 1945 and 1985.
Last week Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) cheerfully reported at a congress for fundamentalist Christian youths—it is still anybody’s guess what he was doing there—that for him as a liberal, judeo-christian principles are very important. Somehow I doubt this government will do much to stop the criminal practices of white religions.
Filed under: Shows,Weird by Branko Collin @ 12:50 pm
We suggested last month that politician Rick Santorum may have broken the world record on bald faced lying in his weight class when he talked about the horrors of the Dutch health care system.
If anything Santorum’s statements left Dutch pundits flabbergasted. Yesterday US comedian Stephen Colbert came to the rescue of every confused Dutch person and explained why Santorum says just the darndest things. The part about the Netherlands starts at 2:58.
“Evidently Santorum’s comments about the Netherlands were yanked out of … his nether parts.”
Stephen Colbert is a comedian who pretends to be a right-wing blow-hard pundit styling himself on the likes of Bill O’Reilly.
Last Thursday the Keukenhof bulb gardens in Lisse (between Amsterdam and The Hague) opened its doors for its yearly exhibition.
Inbreeding is having a negative effect on the otter populations of Friesland and Overijssel, nature preservation organisations say.
NRC reports that the 