[insert witty title]

I noticed the other day that the Dutch words for many articles of punctuation are really literal, and just describe what the symbols look like. For example:

# = hekje = little gate
* = sterretje = little star
() = haakjes = little hooks
^ = dakje = little roof
@ = apestaart = monkey tail
: = dubblepunt = double full stop
; = puntcomma =full stop comma
& = en-teken = and symbol

I like this a lot, it’s a lot easier to remember than the unintuitive English equivalents (colon, ampersand, asterisk). I want to start using the English versions of these in everyday conversation:

“Ok so my email address is cmb, then the monkeytail button…”
“To unlock your phone press the little gate button, then 07 then the little star button”
“Yeah it’s the text between the little hook things that you’re looking for…”

The Dutch government today asked me to fill in a large questionnaire concerning my experiences working for them. Everything was going fine until I ran into probably the most horrendous compound noun I have ever seen:

loopbaanontwikkelingsmogelijkheden

Gaaaaah! What. The. Fuck. Is. That.

Turned out that after the initial bafflement it was actually pretty easy to understand by splitting the word into pieces (loopbaan ontwikkelings mogelijkheden):

loopbaan = loop baan = the course of your work = career
ontwikkeling = development
mogelijkheden = possibilities

career development possibilities. I am actually very happy that I managed that without a dictionary

In other “things that amuse me about the Dutch language” news, the Dutch word for asparagus is asperges. Every single time I read that I just think of Aspergers syndrome.

In the morning at work I usually take the lift to get to my office, recently I happened to glance at the writing on the lift control panel, here it is:

I’m riding in Schindler’s Lift!

edit: the title of this post is the first part of a Dutch tongue-twister, and translates to “the [good, precise, learned] barber cuts well”

Today I purchased a book on traditional Dutch cuisine, I really enjoyed reading through a few of the recipes and plan to make one or two soon. However, one recipe stood out in particular: “zure zult”, here are the first ingredients:

1/2 pig’s head (jaws removed)
four pig’s feet

and the start of the instructions:

carefully clean the pig’s head and feet and put them in a pan covered with water

Later on, the recipe instructs you to add 1 tablespoon of salt, 1/2 a teaspoon of grated nutmeg and a teaspoon of pepper.

Now this really reminds me of that scene in Red Dwarf where Lister painstakingly measures out half a teaspoon of chilli powder, then discards it and tips the entire rest of the pot of chilli into his curry. I can’t really imagine that the subtle aroma of half a teaspoon of nutmeg and a teaspoon of pepper will be all that noticable against the overpowering flavour of HALF A FUCKING PIG’S HEAD (JAWS REMOVED) AND FOUR PIG’S FEET

^{p.s. the title of this post, Neuken in de keuken, is Dutch for “Fucking in the kitchen”, and it’s great fun to say, very mellifluous. You should try it out!}

^{p.p.s. I just googled “Neuken in the keuken” to check I spelled it correctly. The fourth hit was for “Neuken met dieren”. Yep, fucking with animals. *sigh* sometimes this country lives up to its stereotype perfectly}

I have been sat here for ages now trying to figure out how to roll my r’s. So far I can make a pretty mean buzzing noise, I can growl like a big cat, gurgle like a drowning man and also make noises like a child pretending to be a machine gun.

So far the elusive r-sound remains locked up inside my mouth.

Can any of you guys roll your r’s and have any advice for me?

Babydrome! With a name like Babydrome I’m imagining what goes on inside to be something between David Lynch’s 1983 film Videodrome (where Videodrome is a sadistic, plotless program that depicts only torture and murder in a bright orange room) and the 1985 post-apocalyptic thriller Mad Max: Thunderdome (two men enter, one man leaves the thunderdome).

Sadly I think that the truth is somewhat less interesting, and besides, I’m scared to investigate further in case I get dragged into a horrifying, shadowy world of Dutch death-sports.

In an effort to regain some semblance of fitness I am forcing myself to go on a bike ride every week (and also bicycle commute every day, regardless of the weather). Each week I extend my range a little more. When I first arrived here, the three mile ride to work would leave me out of breath, and my first weekend trip to the seaside pretty much killed me. However, my daily and weekly bike riding seems to be having an effect and I’m finding that I can ride for longer and longer. Today I managed a new record of 50km, and would have continued if it were not dark and raining. I know this is not really too impressive in the grand scheme of things but compared to my fitness levels a couple of months ago I’m very happy (and have lost some weight).

With this in mind I wanted to push myself a bit more, and think I have found the perfect, fun, challenge.

Goal: Ride the Elfstedentocht this summer

The Elfstedentocht (eleven cities tour) is an occasional Dutch winter racing event. If at any point during the winter it becomes cold enough that the canal and river waters freeze to a depth of more than 15cm then the Elfstedentocht takes place. The race, almost 200 km in length, is conducted on frozen canals, rivers and lakes between the eleven Frisian cities: Leeuwarden, Sneek, IJlst, Sloten, Stavoren, Hindeloopen, Workum, Bolsward, Harlingen, Franeker, Dokkum and finally again Leeuwarden.

Obviously I’m not going to try and ice skate the whole thing (especially since it only happens about once a decade, and there is a massive waiting list to get a go), but there is a well marked bike route that follows the same course as the elfstedentocht. This bike route takes in all eleven cities as well as an assortment of smaller villages. During one of the Summer months I plan to take three days holiday and bike it. It’s only ~75km a day, and it passes through so many cities that it will be easy to find hotels and food. This plan is definitely within my grasp, and provides a great, and fun, target to keep me motivated. I also really want to see Friesland, and if the weather is nice it will make for a very pleasant few days.

p.s. First post in the new “Low Lands” blog category

…What the A-Team’s van would look like if they were absolute white trash

(click to embiggen)

Just in case you can’t make out what is airbrushed on the side of the van, here is a closeup:

(click me for largeness)

There was also a picture airbrushed on the other side; it was of an implausibly muscular man, wielding an electrified axe and slaughtering undead. The (I assume) owners of the van were stood nearby, they looked _exactly_ like Wayne and Garth out of Wayne’s World, except obese. From an inspection based entirely on the photographs above, and my own brief glimpse of the owners I would say that they were both into the following things: 1) Iron Maiden 2) World of Warcraft 3) Posting on internet forums about Conan the Barbarian 4) Driving the white-trash mobile around Holland

Bonus picture: A car dealership called “Munters” (explanatory link for non-brits)

Yep, yet again I’ve beein thinking about political correctness. There are two main reasons for this. The first is that I’m reading Junk by William S. Burroughs, a semi-autobiographical account of the life of a heroin user in 1950’s America, and widely considered to be a seminal text on the lifestyle of heroin addicts in the early 1950s. It makes for really interesting reading, but a few passages serve only to remind me how standards of acceptable speech and behavior have improved over the years.

Can you imagine the following passing without comment in a mass-market autobiographical paperback nowadays:

In the French quarter there are several queer bars so full every night that the fags spill out onto the sidewalk. A room full of fags gives me the horrors. They jerk around like puppets on invisible strings, galvanized into hideous activity that is the negation of everything that is living and spontaneous. The live human being has moved out of these bodies long ago. But something moved in when the original tenant moved out. Fags are ventriloquist’s dummies who have moved in and taken over the ventriloquist

He looked like one of those terra-cotta heads that you plant grass in. A peasant face, with peasant intuition, stupidity, shrewdness, and malice. He couldn’t have been anything but Irish

Weird, eh?

The the second thing is that it is almost Dutch Christmas time, when the antecedent of Santa Claus, Sinterklaas, arrives in Holland amongst much merrymaking and present giving.

Sinterklaas traditionally arrives each year in November by steamboat from Spain (which is odd as he is also said to live in a palace in Madrid - a city without a port!), and is then paraded through the streets, welcomed by cheering and singing children. Invariably, this event is broadcast live on national television in the Netherlands

the odd bit to me is that Sinterklaas’s helpers, the Zwartepieten (Black Petes), are all white guys in blackface, who are subservient to their white master (Sinterklaas)*

The Zwartepieten have a television show, and it actually makes me a little uncomfortable to watch blacked up men tumbling and clowning around trying to help their master. Here are a few pictures of blackfaced Dutchmen:

*I know that there are many stories of how the Zwartepieten became black, from being dirty from climbing down chimneys, or being freed slaves who stayed on as their master’s servants, to having their blackness as a result of being devils. Still, in the here and now it is hard to look at it in any way other than the obvious one