100 things I love about the Netherlands: 9 & 10

9: Holterberg

Last Saturday I went to watch the Dutch Championships Western Riding in Mariënheem (I will post a ‘Cowgirl-series’ on my photoblog, starting from tomorrow), which is near the Holterberg and thát is one of my favourite places in the Netherlands. So I left the Championships early and headed for the Holterberg.

Don’t laugh, but Holterberg in English is ‘Holtermountain’ and that means ‘mountain of Holten’ and Holten is the village located at the bottom of the mountain. So… now that is all clear and you didn’t laugh about the ‘mountain’ (yet), I will tell you some more about it. The Holterberg is part of a National Park called ‘Sallandse Heuvelrug’ and is covered with heathland and woods. The highest point of the Holterberg is 59,5 meters above NAP. NAP is the Dutch zero point that is used to measure heights for topographic maps for instance. And a meter is about 3.3 feet. Which means that the Holtermountain is about 195.21 (I feel that especially the .21 is very important) feet high!

You promised you wouldn’t laugh about our definition of ‘mountain’. 

Actually, the Holterberg is part of a hilly landscape. One of the other hills is the Koningsbelt and that is even higher than the Holterberg. The Koningsbelt is 75.5 meters high! Nów you are impressed, aren’t you?

Anyway, as I mentioned the Holterberg is one of my favourite places in the Netherlands. My parents, my sister, brother and me, and an aunt and uncle and their children used to spend almost every holiday on a campsite in Holten. Childhood memories. Fun! Picking blueberries in the forest (my brother discovered their laxative capacity by eating so many that his poop turned blue and ‘spontaneous’), going for endless walks (well, not really endless, otherwise I wouldn’t be sitting here typing this), enjoying nature and just having the best time!

When I went to the Holterberg last Saturday, I expected the heather to be all purple and beautiful, but for some reason it looked rather dead and brown. Hmm. The views are still beautiful on top (cough) of the mountain (double cough), but the colour of the heather was quite disappointing to say the least.

Anyway…, also on the Holterberg, in the middle of the woods, is another favourite place of mine…

 

10: The Canadian War Cemetery Holten

This part of Holten is official Canadian territory and about 1500 soldiers who died in World War II are buried here.

See for more information about the Cemetery this site, that also contains some great photos, one of which is an aerial view that shows you how enclosed by woodland it is.

This beautiful cemetery is a very peaceful and serene place. Although so many people who lost their lives in liberating a small country they’d probably never even heard of are buried here, it doesn’t feel like a very sad place. It has a very respectful atmosphere. We are forever grateful.

These are my photos:

 

     

Thursday’s Trifles

Thursday’s Trifles are based on remarkable news I’ve read in our local newspaper the Dagblad van het Noorden.

How to create your own indoor swimming pool

A confused prisoner (with a hospital order) has recently created his own indoor swimming pool. The guy used stopper/adhesive and foil sheeting to seal of all the gaps in his accommodation and then turned on the taps.

The water already reached his chest when prison officers first tried to pump out his room. When that didn’t work they pulled open the door, causing the water to flood the hallway. The confused guy’s actions caused a lot of water damage.

 

Want to be a sexy guy? Move your left wrist and your right knee.

Men who want to seduce women through their dance moves should mostly move their left wrist and right knee. Research carried out by psychologists of the British Northumbria University proved that women mainly look at a man’s left wrist and right knee to determine whether he is attractive or not.

The psychologists filmed the dance moves of nineteen men. They then turned that footage into a computer animation, with Avatar-like creatures. So the looks of the men made no difference to 35 women who then had to say which dance moves they found most attractive.

Men who think their posterior determines their success are wrong. Women apparently focus on the left wrist and right knee. Head and chest do also count. Those are the body parts that women use to establish whether a man is healthy, energetic and strong and thus will be a good mating partner.

“If a man knows which moves make the difference, training can improve his chances to attract a woman through dancing”, according to psychologist Dr. Nick Neave.

The Wrong Curtains, and why it is important to know where you live

So… yesterday I went to the home of Mara of Weighty Matters. I had never met Mara, we only know each other through our blogs, but she needed help and I offered to come to the rescue. You’ll have to read her post here, to see why she needed help. I’ll leave you some time to follow the link and read that post (very important that you do)…

pom pompom pompom pom pom pompom pompom (is what I say out loud while waiting patiently for you to return here)

 

 

 

 

….and now you know why on Sunday afternoon I gathered about all my garden tools, stuck them into Bob (and before you think I abused some poor guy named Bob by sticking a rake into him; Bob is our car) and instructed Truus (the GPS system Bob has on board) to lead me to Mara’s home, somewhere in the Netherlands. About an hour and 15 minutes drive from my home. Truus has a loose connection somewhere, so every bump in the road causes her to quit her job. A light tap on the head (her head, not mine) often suffices to get her back to work again, but sometimes that means you’ve missed a turn or two. And Mara lives in one of those neighbourhoods that resembles some kind of maze with all streets interlinking and not in a logical way. But at some point I parked my car where I thought Mara’s house could very well be. I saw a streetname sign that was correct, although it was located at a cycle path and pointed in the wrong direction but that does not have to mean anything in those kind of mazes, and I saw a house number that was the same as she had given me. So I hopped out of the car (Bob is the ridiculously high Landrover Defender that needs climbing into and hopping out of) and walked towards the house with the correct number. But it looked wrong to me. As if nobody lived there, or if somebody lived there they weren’t of Dutch origin, because they had the wrong curtains.

I know. “The wrong curtains?”, you’re thinking. “What?”

But you see, we Dutch have a particular way of dressing our windows (I need to do a ‘100 things-post about that). We don’t usually have pelmets and draped heavy curtains, like you often see in Great Britain. We don’t have net curtains with every pleat in the right place and covering almost the entire window, except for a 15 centimetre gap at the bottom, like the Germans do. We have tidy net curtains, either hanging on both sides of the windows leaving a big gap in the middle, so you can see in and you can see out. Or we have what we call a ‘valletje’; a strip of neatly pleated net curtains at the top of the window. Still leaving most of the window clear of curtains. ‘Valletjes’ are very popular in a certain age group. With all kinds of different coloured azaleas in different pots on the window-sill. And chairs that help you stand up again.

We Dutch do not generally close our draw-curtains at night, except in the colder months and in the bedroom, and we open them as soon as we get out of bed. This isn’t the RULE of course; hubs and I do not have net curtains nor do we have draw-curtains. We do have Roman blinds that are always up. And most of our friends don’t have ‘normal’ curtains, come to think of it. Most have either Roman blinds or only draw curtains that are always open.

ANYWAY, why ‘the wrong curtains’ at the right house number in perhaps the right street.

Well… they were still drawn. They were sort of hanging in a… what shall we say… creative way and looked to be sort of a dull grey colour. I just didn’t expect Mara to have those curtains.

So I went back to Bob, climbed in and phoned Mara.

“Mara.”
”Hi, Carolina here. I’m at the Community Centre (a big brick building that had great BIG letters on it saying “COMMUNITY CENTRE” and was located right in front of the suspiciously curtained house).”
”Oh! That’s not right. That’s at the other end of the neighbourhood.”
”Ah. So the house with the ugly grey curtains isn’t yours”, I laughed.
”No. My curtains are green or yellow.”
”See. I thought those hideous curtains couldn’t belong to you. So, tell me, how do I get from the Community Centre to your house?”
”Uhm, well, uhm, that’s difficult to explain. I don’t even know where the Community Centre is. What colour are the houses in the street where you are?”, Mara asked.
”Well, I can see yellow houses in front of me, and the one with the ugly grey curtains is in a row of pink houses.”
”I live in a pink house”, Mara said.
”Okay, so I’ll go drive around looking for a pink house with yellow curtains. And when I find it, I’ll tell you where your Community Centre is. Could be important to know, because there is a police station too.”
A short silence fell and then Mara shouted: “Ooooohhhh thát Community Centre! In that case you áre at the right place. And the house with the ugly grey curtains is mine. But they are yellow. And the ones in the bedroom are green! Not grey!”

And when I looked towards the house, Mara came out the front door. She’s very forgiving and kind, because she even invited me in after I had so insulted her taste in curtains.

She made us a cup of tea, I insulted her curtains some more, gave her a big Chrysanthemum in a basket to put in the garden after we’d finished tidying it up, and we started work.

Now you’ll háve to go over to Mara’s place again to see the before and after pictures. You’ll be stunned, I promise you. We were amazed too about the result of an afternoon’s hard work.

And Mara made a delicious courgette-cake with red pepper-sauce for dinner.

Thanks Mara! I really enjoyed meeting you and your sweet cats. And I had a fun afternoon ;-)

100 things I love about the Netherlands: 8

Bicycles

We Dutch love our bicycles.

Okay, some love them more than others, but generally we Dutch tend to go places by bike.

Come rain or shine, we brave the weather conditions and heroically pedal towards our destination.
And, even if we don’t have a particular destination, if the weather is nice we take our bicycle from the shed and just cycle through the woods and the fields, stop at a little cafe to have a drink and a piece of apple pie, and onwards and upwards (but not too much upwards, because the Netherlands are quite flat) we go.

 

 

Hubs and I, incredibly young and strong human beings *cough*, sometimes go for a spin on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and on occasions, too many for our liking if we are honest, people who are much older than we are pass us with great speed. As if we are not moving at all. Leaving us slightly out of breath and increasingly depressed.

But we now know how these geriatric overtakers do it! They have a small electrical motor that makes pedalling a lot easier. We are no longer depressed, but proud that we can still cycle using only muscular power. HA! We laugh at those poor souls who need electrical assistance.

Electric bicycles are getting more and more popular. You still have to move the pedals, but if you don’t have very much strength in your legs, or if you are going uphill (what we call uphill makes the Austrians laugh their heads off whilst slapping their Lederhosen), the motor will assist you in turning the pedals around. My parents (79 and 87 years old) have such bicycles. The only problem is that if you want to make a long trip on your bicycle, you need to recharge it somewhere along the way.

But where?

Well, here for instance:

 

Provided by a little restaurant where you can plug in your bike and have a cup of coffee or a lunch, while your mode of transport is recharging it’s batteries too.

Thursday’s trifles

Want to end it all? Wait 6 months!

GGZ Friesland (a mental healthcare organization) will be sending ex-patients a picture postcard to prevent them from committing suicide.

Six months after their treatment with GGZ has finished, they will receive the picture postcard with the question ‘how are you doing?’ and a personal message from their own healthcare worker. Australian research showed that such a sign of care and involvement can prevent people from committing suicide. For people who feel depressed again such a postcard will hopefully be a motivation to seek help.

 

In the same edition of the newspaper:

Suicide and depression are costing Japan billions

Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rates. Last year almost 33,000 Japanese people ended their lives. For the last 12 years the suicide rate in Japan has been structurally above 30,000. Top of the top-list (sorry, very inconsiderate of me) is Belarus. Japan is No. 8 on the list.

 

We just can’t help it

If you favour beautiful people and ignore ugly ducklings, you can’t help that. It is nestled somewhere deep within our being. Subconsciously we prefer more attractive people. Even if we don’t want to judge someone solely on his or her looks, subconsciously we do. Attractive people get better jobs, earn more money and get shorter prison sentences. So we do not purposely discriminate less attractive people, we just can’t help it. This is the conclusion of research by the University of Nijmegen.

 

Sniffer dog hunting for bacteria

Sniffer dog Cliff will be assisting the VU hospital in Amsterdam in their battle against the hospital bacterium clostridium difficile, that can cause severe diarrhoea. The two year old beagle Cliff has been trained to search for patients who are infected with this bacterium, so these patients can be isolated to prevent further spreading of the disease.

Not another tag!

Mimi from Screaming Mimi tagged me. I like Mimi, so I couldn’t refuse. Could I? No. I couldn’t. And besides, this tag only has 5 questions. Easy. If you aren’t as demented as I am and still remember your schooldays ;-)

1. What was your favourite back to school item to buy? Uhm… gosh… what was it? Probably a new calendar (I’m not sure what it’s called in English; we call it an ‘agenda’). The trick was to buy a cool one that had lots of cool information about cool things. Yep. It definitely had to be cool. And then you’d stick all kinds of cool cut-outs in it, so it was at least three times fatter and bursting at the seams at the end of the school year. And the cut-outs had to be from cool magazines about famous cool dudes and beautiful girls. Such a shame you had to write down your homework and other ‘important’ school stuff in it too.
2. What was your favourite subject in school? 
   Art. And Dutch and English. But Art was definitely top favourite!
   Least favourite subject was maths. I do not have a mind for numbers. Although at one time we had a really wonderful maths teacher who made the lessons really fun. But still… I couldn’t understand any of it. Geometry I did understand (up to a point). Algebra = abacadabra to me. Doesn’t make any sense at all. My mind just shuts down. Hugely frustrating, even now.
3. Did you ride the bus or get a ride from Mom/Carpool?  
   Bicycle. I cycled to school. When we moved from Amsterdam to a small town in the country I could walk to school. It was close to our house. But there were a lot of pupils who lived in surrounding villages. They had certain ‘bikepool spots’ where they all gathered and then cycled to school in huge groups. Sometimes they had to cycle about 12 miles to and 12 miles from school. There are no dedicated school busses in the Netherlands as far as I know, only for children who go to special needs schools because of a physical or mental disability, which I’m glad to say I haven’t. Although you might think otherwise, I’m mentally quite sane. At least in my world I am.
4. Do you have a sack lunch or cafeteria food? 
   In my time everybody brought their own lunch to school. Most school cafeterias didn’t provide meals. Only drinks and perhaps fruit. I think. You know, I’m not quite sure anymore. I’ve just asked hubs, who went to the same school (only years earlier) and he doesn’t remember either. We think there might have been soup too.
     
5. What is your favourite memory from your school days? I don’t really have good or bad memories from my school days. I took it in my stride. Went because I had to. Always passed. Had one or two best friends, whom I’ve lost contact with almost immediately after the exams because we all went our own ways, and generally got on well with everybody. That is about everything I remember.
   I might have blocked out a lot and the rest is a blur ;-)

Now I get to tag 5 friends to play along!
I’m a spoilsport so I won’t do that, but if my faithful readers like this tag, please pick it up and play along ;-)

100 things I love about the Netherlands: 7

Poffertjes

Poffertjes are a traditional Dutch batter treat. They look like small, fluffy pancakes, and are made with yeast and buckwheat flour. Unlike pancakes, they have a light, spongy texture. Typically, poffertjes are served with butter and icing sugar.

They are not difficult to prepare, but a special pan cast-iron or copper pan (also available in aluminium with Teflon coating) with several shallow indentations in the bottom is needed. Supermarkets sell ready-made poffertjes, but also stock mixes for poffertjes, to which you only have to add milk and eggs.

Especially in the Autumn and Winter temporary stands selling poffertjes (poffertjeskraam) ‘pop up’ in town squares. Sometimes the ‘poffertjeskraam’ is big enough to provide indoor seating, sometimes you have to eat them outside. 

 

This is a large ‘poffertjeskraam’ that provides both indoor and outdoor seating.

 

This ‘poffertjeskraam’ that was on the ‘Buiten Bezig Dag’ is the smallest and cutest one I have ever seen.

 

Three portions ‘poffertjes’, ready for sale. Hubs is ready to buy two of them. One for him and one for me. Just for the photo of course. The things I do for this blog ;-)

The plate with the little indentations is very hot. The poffertjes baker pours batter in the indentations and as soon as he’s poured the batter into the last little dent, he can start turning the ones he poured first over to let them cook on the other side. Experienced bakers can turn the poffertjes over incredibly quickly.

Yum!

Thursday’s Trifles

Thursday’s Trifles are based on what I’ve read in our local newspaper, the Dagblad van het Noorden.

Most irritating noise

Earplug producer ‘Herriestoppers’ (Noise stoppers) is looking for the most irritating noise in the Netherlands. Reason for our fun loving newspaper editors to interview a ‘Herriestoppers’ spokesperson:

“What kind of noises does this research include?”
”All sorts of noises. Screeching chalk on blackboards, nails on a blackboard. Snoring can be irritating to the partner.”
”Can you send in a snore anonymously? How will you keep them apart?”
”Snoring can vary from deep grumbling to high whistling.”
”Maybe your wife has sent in your snore?”
”There is that possibility.”
”But the most irritating noise is known isn’t it? The Mosquito (an ultrasonic teen deterrent)?”
”Mosquito? Never heard of that.”
”I don’t know how old you are. The Mosquito produces high tones that only juveniles can hear and discourages anti-social youths from gathering somewhere unwanted.”
”A colleague of mine here says he knows about the Mosquito.”
”What is the prize for the winner with the most irritating noise?”
”A holiday to a beautiful subtropical island in the Pacific.”
”But there are lots of little mosquitoes!”
”We’ll give the winner some ‘Herriestoppers’ and perhaps some insect repellent.”
”Who’s in the jury?”
”It’s about the most votes. A filter prevents people from continuously voting for themselves.”
”Will you use the most irritating noise to improve your product?”
”We get an insight in what people find irritating. And people ask for earplugs in fun colours.”
”Earplugs are ‘in’?”
”Hearing impairment is currently a hot item. In discotheques, pop festivals and building projects you’ll notice much more people wear hearing protection. Since my work for ‘Herriestoppers’ I use them too.”
”So everyone in your office wears earplugs?”
”No, we are not allowed to snore in the office.”

 

Most popular pet names

A magazine called ‘Onze Taal’ (Our Language) has taken stock of the most popular pet names in the Netherlands. Apparently people who have multiple pets make combinations of their names. Not only dogs and cats get ‘duo names’, but rabbits, fish and hamsters too. In the Dutch top 5 are:

• Ko and Nijn (rabbit = konijn)
• Ot and Sien (popular characters from an old children’s book)
• Urbi and Orbi
• Black and Dekker
• Chip and Dale
• Sjors and Sjimmie (two comic figures, based on Perry Winkle and the Rinkeydinks)

Most popular are Donder and Bliksem (Thunder and Lightning).

Any ideas or suggestions, dear readers, for the most popular ‘duo pet names’ in your country?

‘Fun’ conversations with my mother-in-law

I: “My nephew will be doing a work-experience project at the Royal Marines.”
MIL: “Why?”
I: “I don’t know. Perhaps he wants to be a Marine.”
MIL: “Oh, but Marines are not in the Royal Marines!”
I: “No?”
MIL (very definite): “No.”
I: “Which part of the Army does a Marine belong to if he isn’t in the Royal Marine Corps?”
MIL: “I don’t know.”
I: “But you’re sure a Marine isn’t in the…”
MIL: “Yes! I’m sure!”
I: “Okay.”
(Just between you and me; a Marine is in the Royal Marine Corps. But just try telling my mother-in-law that.)


My mother tells my mother-in-law that she (my mother) and my father will be going to a rehabilitation centre called ‘Visio’, because my father suffers from an eye-disease.
Mother: “We’ll be going to Visio next week.”
MIL: “You mean thé physio.”
Mother: “No… I mean Visio.”
MIL: “When I go to the physiotherapist I say: ‘I’m going to the physio.’”
Mother: “Whatever. But we are going to Visio. V I S I O.”
MIL: “You’ve spelled that wrong.”



I: “I’d like to taste soy milk. They always have those little stalls with fruit juices or cheese to taste in the supermarket, but never with soy milk.”
MIL: “Why do you want to taste it?”
I: “Because I don’t eat meat. But I do drink milk. And to produce milk a cow needs to have a calf. And lots of those calves end up at the slaughterhouse. So in fact, I’m still guilty of murdering cows.”
MIL: “Oh, but you have special dairy cows who always give milk, even when they don’t have calves.”
I: “I don’t think so.”
MIL: “I’m sure of it!”
I: “No, you see, they take the calf away from the mother cow, otherwise it drinks the milk. And then they feed the calf fabricated stuff. I’ve often fed calves from a bucket when I was a child.”
MIL: “Oh, but Carolina, I’m from a farm and I’m sure there are special dairy cows.”
I: “Yes there are, but they give milk because they have calves.”
MIL: “I’m a Gemini too, Carolina (I hate it when people use my name like that), and I always want to be right too. Just like you!”
I: “But the difference is that I don’t want to be right. I just usually am.” (hubs nodding in the background)
MIL: “Well, I’m going to look it up on the internet. I’m sure I’m right. And I’ll email you the proof.”

I’m sure I won’t get that email.

A fun day out, part 2

See for part 1 of our fun day (well, afternoon… or actually two hours) out the previous post.

 

There were two ladies in folkloric costumes.
(Remember the post I did about those? You can find it here. These costumes must be from Drenthe.)

 

This box contains owls’ pellets…

…and these children (and adults) were taking them apart to see what the owls had been eating.

If you wanted, you could climb up a tree.

This mother sent her poor son up.
He was actually screaming: “I want to go down now!”, but mom wanted to take his picture first. Cruel!

Hubs was looking for some new light fittings. We might have to move to an even bigger house.

There was a pizza baker on a bike (you can just see the ZA of pizza).

The mother of all swings.

Okay, I haven’t a clue what this is. You? But it’s cute.

And goat- and other cheeses.

And there were lots and lots of different types of mushrooms…

 

…but only one type of beetroot. The very decorative chioggia beetroot.

 

What can I say; the sun was shining and the atmosphere was very… relaxed.

A fun day out, part 1

 

I found this photo in a box full of old photos.

 

 

No, I didn’t. I took it today, when we went to the ‘Buiten Bezig Dag’, a fair that was held in the grounds of Havezathe Mensinge in Roden. (A ‘havezathe’ is a fortified building, originally a large farm. In the 17th century you had to be the owner of a havezathe in order to be able to get a knighthood.)

Buiten = Outside
Bezig = Busy
Dag = Day

We didn’t know what to expect, but hey… the weather was nice, we had a couple of hours to spare (a luxury), and I thought it might be a fun opportunity to take some photos. On our way there we followed this beautiful old car. Until it took a left turn where we had to take the right one.

 

As we were at the entrance of the fair, we encountered some friends of us who were just leaving. We hadn’t seen them for a while and it was nice to have a little chat with them at such an unexpected place and time.

Havezathe Mensinge

Pink seemed to be the colour of the day…

Interesting…

 

And this smartly dressed gentleman was doing something intriguing…

…something I’ve done myself a couple of times; although I’ve never dressed up for the occasion…
He was dowsing. In Dutch that is ‘wichelroedelopen’.
I’ve used a dowsing rod to find water. Long story. And, although I was quite sceptic, I’ve discovered that it actually works.

These rather attractive guys are architects.
I liked their inventive use of straw to keep the wind from blowing their designs all over the place.
They also had a market stall, but used this as their ‘office’.

 

More mad hats…

Creative metalwork….

I’m not quite sure what the red metal object is.
But I dó know that the little stall in the background is the smallest ‘poffertjeskraam’ I’ve ever seen.
More about that in the next ‘100 things I love about the Netherlands’-post. (Mr. Rhymeswithplague will be very pleased. As far as I know ‘poffertjes’ are a real Dutch speciality.)

 

There was lots more fun stuff going on at this ‘Busy Outside Day’-fair. More about that in the next post.

Don’t miss it…

100 things I love about the Netherlands: 6

The Dutch skies,

made famous by Dutch painters from the Haagse School (the Hague School), a group of painters who worked in The Hague somewhere between 1860 and 1900. They rebelled against the opinion of that time, to idealize the subjects that were painted, and tried to give a more realistic image of their subjects. Painters like Hendrick Willem Mesdag and Jacob Maris wanted to capture the atmosphere of the landscape in their paintings and stay as true to reality as possible, especially focussing on the light.

Of course they didn’t have a Canon EOS 40D camera. Life would have been so much easier for them.