September 3, 2009

Amsterdam bullies critical group into dropping name and logo

Filed under: Architecture,General by Branko Collin @ 10:08 am

A group of Amsterdam citizens critical of the way the city is run has decided to change its name and logo under heavy pressure of the city government, Volkskrant reported last week (Dutch).

The group called Ai! Amsterdam (meaning Ouch! Amsterdam, a play on the official city marketing slogan of the city, I Amsterdam) has publicly criticized the city’s ban on drinking-while-standing, the gradual closing down of the Red Light district, and other less illuminated measures. The city has threatened with costly legal procedures if the group do not give up their name and logo, procedures which the group estimate would cost them tens of thousands of euro.

Ai! Amsterdam points out to De Pers (Dutch) that the city centre’s candidacy for becoming a UNESCO world heritage site (not just the canals, the entire city centre!) threatens the liveliness and openness of the city even further, creating a real risk of Amsterdam becoming just as staid as Bruges, Belgium, which is also a world heritage site. I think the group are underexaggerating things. At least Bruges started out boring. Amsterdam on the other hand has something to lose.

Ironically, the official I Amsterdam manifesto proclaims: “It’s time for Amsterdam to speak out for itself and make its relevance known in a proud, supportive and positive manner.”

(Illustration: the old Ai! Amsterdam logo, source: Ai!)

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August 13, 2009

Belgian telecom advert offends the Dutch and Flemish

Filed under: General,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:36 am
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There is no lack of references about Belgians in the Netherlands, often referred to as ‘our southern neighbours’ by the media. When they do something stupid or brilliant, the media is on the front lines either poking fun at them or praising them for their ingenuity. However, poking fun at people’s lesser national traits, albeit a top sport in Europe, is not always appreciated.

The Belgian organisation for ethical advertising (JEP) has reprimanded the new Belgian mobile phone company Vikings because of their questionable slogans. “Gratis is voor Hollanders” (“Free is for Dutch people” – ‘Hollanders’ is a pet name for the Dutch in Flanders) has the press buzzing. The company’s French-language slogan “Gratuit, c’est pour les Flamands” (“Free is for the Flemish”) plays on the stereotype of the Flemish being cheap and is not going over well either.

AustralianSwedish telecom provider Tele2 (shown here) has had adverts in the Netherlands for months using the concept of cheapness. The idea here is two-fold: the sheep are a reference to ‘being cheap’ (the ads in the Netherlands are all in English and subtitled in Dutch) and point out the similarity of the words ‘sheep’ and ‘cheap’ with a talking black sheep standing out from the herd. Although boring to look at more than twice on telly, Tele2 is doing it right, while the southern neighbours are doing it wrong.

Why the cheap jokes? The Dutch have a reputation (deserved or not) of going on vacation to France driving through Belgium with their caravans and bringing all their own food to save on costs. The goal is to enjoy the weather.

The Flemish part of Belgium used to be poor and frugal I would imagine. Today the Flemish part of Belgium (including Brussels or not, technically a governmental no man’s land) is the most dynamic part and the Walloon part has many economic problems.

(Link: zibb.nl, Photo: pleasecopyme.blogg.se)

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July 29, 2009

Cross-border speeding: Dutch cash in on Belgians

Filed under: Automobiles,General by Orangemaster @ 10:50 am
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Down South in soft-spoken Maastricht, Limburg, the police raked in a cool EUR 2.5 million from Belgians caught for traffic violations last year, 37,417 of which were speeding violations.

And what about the Dutch on the Belgian side? An estimated 15,000 Dutch people brought in EUR 1.5 million according to the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, which is a lot less.

The amusing part is that Belgian Limburg has twice as many speed cameras as Dutch Limburg (Yes, both countries share the name of a province).

As an exercise in pure unfounded speculation, the Belgians have more physical room to get their motors going whereas in the Netherlands you’ll miss four exits if you bat your eyelids too long. Germans often get caught speeding into the Netherlands because slowing down is not fun and takes time. When you’re going a roaring 220 km for like an hour (been there, done that, yes it sucks petrol fast), slowing down to 50 km feels like going backwards in time.

(Link: blikopnieuws.nl, Photo by Wikipedia user Naaldenberg, some rights reserved.)

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May 18, 2009

Bodybuilders flee doping check

Filed under: Sports by Branko Collin @ 12:47 pm

All 20 contestants of the Belgian bodybuilding championship fled the venue in the Dutch city of Vlissingen, Zeeland, yesterday when three doping inspectors entered the room. The championship was cancelled, and the 300 or so spectators had to go home without seeing a single bodybuilder compete.

One of the inspectors, doctor Hans Cooman, told Nieuwsblad (Dutch): “I have never witnessed anything like it.” Nieuwsblad insinuates that the organisers of these contests often move their competitions off-shore in the hope of escaping doping tests even though these tests can be held anywhere. Says Cooman: “Sometimes sports federations take the initiative and invite us to come by, like the cycling union does. But we have never had an invitation like this from bodybuilders.”

(Photo by Jo Christian Oterhals, partially based on a photo by Lin Mei, both some rights reserved)

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November 1, 2008

Geeked out coin wins design comp

Filed under: Architecture,Design,Dutch first by Branko Collin @ 4:18 pm

Stani Michiels, artist by day and Python hacker by night, created a five euro coin using only free software for a design competion issued by the Dutch mint, and won. The coin, commemorating a rich Dutch architectural tradition, should be available nowish.

The coin’s obverse consists of a portrait of the queen made up out of the names of famous architects, and the reverse displays an outline of the country that doubles as a skyline made by positioning architecture books in a circle.

Michiels — a Belgian responsible for SPE-IDE, a Python IDE, and Phatch, a photo editor — outlines all the little design details in a long blog post, including the software he used (Python, of course) and the calculations and Google search results that went into this design. Unfortunately the mint would not allow Michiels to release the designs under the GPL license.

The Netherlands has a long tradition of meaningful and elaborately designed money, as we touched upon earlier.

Via LWN.net.

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August 7, 2008

Fake cop stops gold transport; gang takes off with 70 kilos

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 7:24 am

A gang robbed two Belgians of 70 kilos of gold last week after one of them had stopped the transport dressed as a policeman. The Belgians, driving an inconspicuous BMW, had just left Schiphol and were on their way to their country when a policeman on a motor cycle signaled them to leave the highway towards a tunnel near De Meern (Utrecht). There his accomplices waited with a van and another car. The two Belgians were forced to leave their car at gunpoint. The robbers took all 70 slices of gold, totalling about 1 million euros in value.

A gold dealer from the Hague, a mr. Klumpers, says in Algemeen Dagblad (dagblad = “daily”) that he does not understand why the victims would transport gold in such an unsafe manner. “For shipments of this size we always use an armoured transport, for wich we pay about 10,000 euro. It’s a lot cheaper to do it yourself, but I’d prefer not to run the risk.”

Who would you stop for if you had a cool million in the boot?

Photo by Oleg Volk, some rights reserved.

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March 31, 2008

Belgium looking to rent jail cells abroad

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 9:13 am
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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)

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February 26, 2008

Murder on the border

Filed under: General by Branko Collin @ 8:30 am

Photo copyright 2001, Jérôme. Distributed under the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2.

Imagine two detectives working on a murder case, each having to solve the same crime independently, with each only having access to half the clues: it sounds like a great recipe for a mystery novel. Unfortunately, the murder in the Noord-Brabant town of Baarle-Nassau last week was anything but fictional. Early last week a 26-year-old Belarusian woman was found dead in a former bank building straddling the border. Police detectives from the two countries each had to look for clues in their own half; they feared that if they literally overstepped their boundaries, any case they might have against a suspect could later be thrown out on a technicality.

Nevertheless, the Dutch Departement of Justice said last Friday that the cooperation with its Southern neighbours had been excellent, forgetting for a moment that the Belgians had let the main suspect escape, the victim’s 26-year-old husband. The Dutch DoJ then issued an international arrest warrant against the Dutch man who is still on the run with the couple’s four-year-old daughter. The case is now fully in Dutch hands because the body was found in the Dutch half of the building, and the main suspect is Dutch.

Although there are many more buildings in the world built across borders, the Baarle-Nassau case is special because half of the town, called Baarle-Hertog, is a Belgian enclave within the Netherlands. Wikipedia says that the municipality of Baarle consist of 22 Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands, and 5 Dutch ones in Belgium.

Via BN/De Stem (Dutch) and Brabants Dagblad (Dutch).

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March 12, 2007

Jumpstyle dancing: an heir to Gabber

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 8:30 am

I just stumbled upon this techno sub-genre called jumpstyle, or jumpen (Dutch for jumping), a name that describes the style well. At times it appears to be a mix between gabber and folk dancing. Loads of kids are uploading videos of their moves to Youtube, so that you have plenty to sample. According to Wikipedia, jumpstyle started in Belgium and is now slowly spreading to the South of the Netherlands.

Below is a tutorial for the style. Warning: being a type of hard techno, the sounds emanating from your computer may not be considered workplace friendly. The actual tutorial starts 27 seconds into the clip.

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