April 24, 2019

Utrecht’s Dom church attic open to the public

Filed under: Architecture,Dutch first,History,Religion by Orangemaster @ 11:24 pm

On 5 May, the attic of the Dom Church (“Domkerk”, in Dutch) in Utrecht will be open to the public for the very first time. And as of that date, people can enjoy one-hour tours every Sunday starting at 14:30. RTV Utrecht went and took a peek:

The Dom Church is about 32 metres high, up to the highest part of the choir vault. Half way up there’s a gallery where nobody has ever been before until now. Utrecht’s well-known symbol was once the Netherlands’ largest church, but the nave collapsed in a storm in 1674 and has never been rebuilt, leaving the tower isolated from the east end.

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April 4, 2019

Sex robot to give live interview in Utrecht

Filed under: Technology by Orangemaster @ 6:54 pm

For the first time, Dutch sex robot Robin is going to give an interview at the Hashtech talk show in Utrecht at TivoliVredenburg on 8 April.

Part of the discussion is how technology influences love and sex, virtual reality pornography, Tinder, and robot sexuality. Robin will be joined her maker, Niels van der Voort, researcher Elisabeth Timmermans and author Jeanneke Scholtens. The evening will also feature presenters Marcel Bamberg, Thom Egberts and Ruud Schapenk.

According to the group, it will be the first time that Dutch-speaking sex robot Robin will be interviewed in front of a live audience. What started off as a joke eventually became a serious event. The presenters called around and found out that sex robots were being made in the Netherlands, and that one actually spoke Dutch.

Manufacturer Motsudolls hopes to start shipping Robin in the Summer of 2019.

Robin was also the name of a robot in 1980s’ children’s TV-show Bassie & Adriaan, featuring the adventures of clown Bassie and acrobat Adriaan. That Robin had a built-in alarm clock and a radio that could intercept any broadcast between the various villains that populated the series but was probably never invited to talk-shows.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl; photo by Motsudolls)

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March 18, 2019

Sudden street name changes hurts business

Filed under: Weird by Orangemaster @ 11:07 am

A couple from the small town of Soesterberg, Utrecht apparently woke up one day to find out that their street had changes name, from Sterrenbergweg to Sternbergweg. Google and the likes point to Sterrenbergweg, while there are no streets called Sternbergweg in the Netherlands.

They thought maybe it was a mistake, but walked down the street to read Sternbergweg once more, so in fact, it’s probably a huge mistake. What’s more, they run a business from their home and have had to tell their clients that their street name has changed for reasons unknown, which has costs them money. And I bet they’ll have to do another round if and when the town fixes the mistake or doubles down and have to compensate people for messing up their lives.

Of course, they contacted the town, but have to wait a whopping 14 days for an answer, which is a good reason to go to the media. They love their town, but this has upset them quite a bit. Their theory is also that whomever ordered the signs can’t spell.

People make mistakes, but when it forces people to incur costs, that’s not OK. We’ll keep you posted.

(Link: .rtvutrecht.nl)

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March 13, 2019

Religious political party wants UFO-inspired roundabout art gone

Filed under: Art by Orangemaster @ 9:15 pm

The town of Houten, Utrecht features two roundabouts meant as landing pads (‘air strips’) for alien ships, installed some 15 years ago. One of the roundabouts is a kind of traffic tower for the UFOs, similar to what you would see at an airport, while the other is the actual landing pad, a bit like a helipad, but once again for a flying saucer.

A local politician of the SGP, the same religious sad sacks that regularly complain about metal music, paid parking on Sundays and more recently clutched their pearls over a poster of women kissing, forgetting that the law is not the Bible in the Netherlands, said “a landing pad for UFOs has little to do with reality”, at which point I laughed out loud for a few minutes, wondering if the guy realised what he was saying.

The politician said the art has little to do with what Houten has to offer and should be replaced by references to cycling, fruit or forts. The artist, Martin Riebeek is not from Houten, but lives in Breda, Noord-Brabant and is originally from Haarlem, North Holland, and why is this used as an argument is beyond me.

The ‘U’ on the landing pad in the picture does not stand for UFO, but for ‘you’ in the polite form in Dutch (‘U’) according to Riebeek.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, Photo of UFO air strip by Jeroen Komen, some rights reserved)

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February 11, 2019

Train app to find a seat in real time rolls out

Filed under: Dutch first,Technology by Orangemaster @ 10:19 am

For years, there’s been a Dutch Rail app called ‘NS reisplanner’ (‘NS travel planner’) that helps you sort out train travel. Soon enough, the app will also let you find an actual place to sit in the train, in real time.

After a successful trial that started last year in April, the ‘find a seat’ feature will be integrated into NS reisplanner, with specific trains gradually added, such as Utrecht-Nijmegen. The app uses a sensor per train carriage to see if there’s anywhere to sit and displays the information in the app using the colours green, orange and red. As of next year, the whole country should be covered, according to a spokesperson from Dutch Rail.

The app is available for both iPhone and Android in Dutch and in English.

(Links: rtvutrecht.nl, androidplanet.nl, Photo by Flickr user UggBoy hearts UggGirl, some rights reserved)

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January 21, 2019

Whale in Utrecht made from ocean plastic

Filed under: Animals,Sustainability by Orangemaster @ 1:43 pm

The whale shown above was made from old plastic and is called ‘Skyscraper (The Bruges Whale)’, named after the summer art and architecture festival at which it was exhibited last summer in Bruges, Belgium. A professor from Utrecht University liked the whale so much, she was committed to getting it installed in Utrecht, and it was recently unveiled. It can be found in the Catharijnesingel.

The whale was created by StudioKCA of New York City, run by Jason Klimoski and Lesley Chang. The creators explain that is it a baby whale 12 metres high made from five tonnes of plastic, including a 1970s drum kit for some reason. Klimoski said that if anybody thinks this is a lot of plastic, imagine what’s floating around in the ocean. A lot of the whale’s plastic is from Hawaii where there’s a lot of plastic soup to be found. The rest of the plastic was fished out of rivers in New York state.

Why didn’t they use plastic from the North Sea to build an artwork in Bruges? Simply because they work in the US and that made more sense. Had they built the whale in Belgium, then they would have used plastic from the North Sea for sure. Although the plastic was found in the US, much of it comes from the European continent (namely Russia) and China, which gives people an idea how far plastic travels in the ocean.

(Link and photo: vice.com)

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January 2, 2019

Dutch record malpractice claim sees patient die

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 12:39 pm

Happy New Year! Now let’s get to it.

Irish woman Adrienne Cullen had been campaigning for transparency in hospital care after she was left with terminal cervical cancer due to a grave medical error at a Dutch hospital, the mostly costly in Dutch medical history, to the tune of €545,000.

Sadly, Cullen passed away right before the new year, aged 58.

She had undergone tests in the Netherlands in 2011, but only two years later did doctors notice she had cancer. By 2015 her cancer had spread, and it was terminal. UMCU teaching hospital in Utrecht offered her €500,000 as long as she signed a gagging order to shut her up. Not taking this lying down, Cullen starting campaigning for more transparency about medical errors, and I bet told them to stuff it.

As well as giving lecture in her final days, Cullen was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Cork in Ireland. Her book ‘Deny, Dismiss, Dehumanize: What Happened When I went to Hospital’ will be published soon. Her entire story didn’t go unnoticed by the Dutch-language media either.

(Link: dutchnews.nl)

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December 15, 2018

YouTubers show that being openly Jewish is a problem

Filed under: General,History by Orangemaster @ 4:59 pm

YouTube crew Bongenoten (‘Allies’) enjoy filming social experiments to see how people deal with extreme behaviour.

In the video below, YouTuber Benjamin Beernink decided to walk around parts of Utrecht with a yarmulke (aka kippah), the head cap Jewish men wear. Beernink happens to be Jewish, but does not usually wear a yarmulke. I can say that it is not something we see very often in the Netherlands.

The crew walked around different neighbourhoods (downtown, Ondiep and Kanaleneiland) in Utrecht. Some reactions were really intense, Beernink having been called ‘kankerjood’ (roughly, ‘Fucking Jew’, but then ‘kanker, which means ‘cancer’ is used as an adjectival swear word) in Kanaleneiland, which doesn’t have the best reputation. He was also laughed at inside a shop by staff and called a ‘faggot’ as well.

The reason Bondgenoten made the video was due to a poll presented by Dutch television show EenVandaag claiming that research shows that a large part of Jews don’t dare show they are Jewish and hide their faith.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl)

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November 27, 2018

A hundred Roman coins found in North Brabant

Filed under: History by Orangemaster @ 3:25 pm

20140417 Vroegmiddeleeuwse muntvondst Domplein (11)

Brothers Wim and Nico van Schaijk have found over 100 Roman coins near the Noord-Brabant town of Berlicum. They are silver and bronze coins dating from the first and second century AD, according to the Netherlands Cultural Heritage Agency after studying the coins for quite some time.

Using a metal detector a year ago near the Aa river, the brothers found four silver denarri and 103 mainly bronze sestertii and asses Experts from Leiden University said the coins were minted between the reign of Emperor Vespasian in 69 AD and that of Emperor Marcus Aurelius in 180 AD.

Researchers believe that the ancient Romans may have thrown coins into the water before crossing the river, as a sort of sacrifice for a safe crossing – or perhaps as thanks after a safe crossing. Roman pottery was also found where the coins were discovered.

Back in 2014 some rare Medieval coins were also excavated in Utrecht.

(Link: nltimes.nl, Photo: cultureelerfgoed.nl)

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November 5, 2018

Dutchman wins Welsh bookshop in raffle

Filed under: Literature by Orangemaster @ 2:08 pm

Not only will Cies-Jan van Heerden, a Dutchman originally from Wijk bij Duurstede, Utrecht get the keys from the second-hand Welsh bookshop he recently won in a raffle, but the BBC has also decided to make a film about it.

The BBC will be there to film the hand-over of Bookends in Cardigan, Wales where Van Heerden now lives from retiring owner Paul Morris to both Van Heerden and his new business partner, Sveinejorn Stefan Einarsson from Iceland who has moved to Wales to help run the business. Both new owners were online friends for eight or nine years and only recently met face to face, which can only make for an interesting story.

And in keeping with always mentioning the price of things, Van Heerden only had to buy some 20 euro worth of books to be in the running to win the whole shop.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl)

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