I enjoyed this video by Mark Wagenbuur because it lists all of the “typical Dutch” things that I can’t do on a bike!

Holding an umbrella, guiding another bike, riding on someone’s rear rack (or carrying someone on mine)—none of that’s for me. Of course, I can ride next to another person, although I’m not comfortable getting as close as some Dutch people do.

According to a poll of viewers of the Dutch TV show De slag om Nederland, the top three ugliest places in the Netherlands are:

• The Stokhorst shopping centre in Enschede, which is almost empty and surrounded by fencing
• The Zoetermeer train station, which is surrounded by a huge, poorly maintained “concrete desert”
• Brinkmann passage in Haarlem, another dilapidated and half-abandoned shopping centre

Viewers actually voted on ten locations, so here are the rest in no particular order:

• Bos en Lommerplein in Amsterdam, which is a “gaping hole between high-rises”
• The A2 highway around Den Bosch, where the noise barriers are made of bright yellow plexiglass
• The IJsselhallen in Zwolle, a former livestock hall that is surrounded by fencing and covered in graffiti
• The Nesselande residential towers in Rotterdam, which disturb the countryside view from the village of Zevenhuizen
• Raadhuisplein, the city hall square in Haren, which is an empty-feeling space like Bos en Lommerplein
• The Scheringamuseum in Opmeer, a giant, unfinished building that has been plagued by legal problems
• Marconiplein in Eindhoven, a collection of abandoned buildings where a demolition company is dumping materials

Last week, @eatamsterdam tweeted about the zuiderMRKT, an outdoor food market that happens every Saturday in Amsterdam Oud-Zuid. I intended to go, but laziness got the better of me.

However, Sven and I did go to Amsterdam today, to visit the Japanese grocery store Meidi-Ya. We intended to walk from there to Le Pain Quotidien, a brunch spot often recommended by expats who are much more hip than I am. On the way, we stumbled across a ridiculously charming little square with tables set up for an outdoor market. It was, of course, the zuiderMRKT!

Le Pain Quotidien was immediately scrapped because we both love trying market food. We started at the Fishes stand, where Sven bought a huge chunk of delicious-looking tuna. From there, we hit up La Maison du Saucisson for some French sausage that was smoked with beech wood (beukenhout).

Next we stopped at Pieman for some savoury English pies. You can get three small pies for €10, and they’ll heat them up for you on the spot. Finally, we visited Brandt & Levie for more sausage: this time, a dried sausage with rosemary.

I really enjoyed the market, and I can’t wait to go back. Oud-Zuid is a bit of a trek from Almere, but I think it’s worth it. I’d like to get olives from Olives and More, cheese from Erik’s Delicatessen, and coffee from ManvandeStad.

The zuiderMRKT is located at the intersection of Johannes Verhulststraat and Jacob Obrechtstraat and is open from 9:30 to 17:00.

For the first time in five years, the Van Gogh Museum has purchased a new work: Knotwilg, or Pollard willow in English. Knotwilg is a watercolour, painted in The Hague in July 1882. From the Van Gogh Museum:

The work displays a path alongside a stretch of water, with a pollard willow standing beside it. Clearly visible in the background are the buildings of the depot at Rijnspoor railway station. Van Gogh stumbled on this spot on one of his many journeys in the surroundings of his house on Schenkstraat, in The Hague. He describes the motif at length in two letters, absorbed in the atmosphere of the scene that he wished to evoke. In a letter to Theo, he wrote: ‘A sombre landscape — that dead tree beside a stagnant pond covered in duckweed, in the distance a Rijnspoor depot where railway lines cross, smoke-blackened buildings — also green meadows, a cinder road and a sky in which the clouds are racing, grey with an occasional gleaming white edge, and a depth of blue where the clouds tear apart for a moment.’ Vincent van Gogh to Theo van Gogh, 31 July 1882.

Here’s a video featuring the curator of prints and drawings, Marije Vellekoop:

Pollarding is the practice of pruning a tree’s branches close to the trunk. You can see some examples on the right side of this photo that I took in Almere last April.

The Van Gogh Museum will feature Knotwilg in a special presentation until July 10, 2012.

I found this BicycleDutch post about a “cycle superhighway” in Copenhagen very interesting. My daily commute involves two bouts of riding: one that’s only 750 metres (0.47 miles) long, and one that’s 1.9 km (1.2 miles). That’s not much riding, but it’s enough to make me appreciate wide, straight bikes lanes, where the pavement is good, pedestrian paths are clearly marked, and cars have to yield to cyclists.

Here’s a video of Almere from the blog post:

Spoorbaanpad is the long “fast cycle route” that stretches from the IJmeer to Almere Buiten (12 km, or 7.46 miles). It’s definitely a convenient way to quickly cross the city. It’s not very beautiful; it’s next to the railroad tracks and much of it is unshaded by trees. But it’s smooth, straight, and only requires cyclists to yield to buses (with one exception that you can see at 4:47 in the video, and at 5:23 in this video).

This kind of useful infrastructure seems obvious, but it requires serious investment; the Dutch spend almost €1 million per kilometre of cycle path! However, it’s clear that if you build bike paths, people will use them, so it’s an investment worth making.

The Dutch and their Delta: Living below sea level is a book by Dutch interculturalist Jacob Vossestein. Here is an interesting video featuring Mr. Vossestein talking about water management in the Netherlands.

Dutch astronaut André Kuipers—known for requesting Old Amsterdam cheese on the International Space Station—takes some gorgeous, amazing photos of the Earth from space.

You can see them at his Flickr page, and you can follow him on Twitter at @astro_andre. Photos and tweets from 400 km above the Earth—how awesome is that?!

I had a challenging week, and I’m glad it’s Friday. Let’s keep things positive with a list of some songs that make me happy!

1. Bill Withers – Lovely Day
2. Billy Preston – Nothing from Nothing
3. Herman Dune – I Wish That I Could See You Soon
4. Depeche Mode – Just Can’t Get Enough
5. Clem Snide – I Love the Unknown
6. Wilco – Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway(again)
7. The Beatles – Golden Slumbers
8. Me First and the Gimme Gimmes – Uptown Girl
9. Emiliana Torrini – Jungle Drum
10. Gers Pardoel – Ik Neem Je Mee
11. Morcheeba – Wonder Never Cease
12. J.G. Thirlwell – Tuff
13. Neutral Milk Hotel – Everything Is
14. Yelle – A Cause Des Garçons (TEPR Remix)
15. Styx – Mr. Roboto DON’T JUDGE ME

 

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The Dutch flag might be red, white, and blue, but the real national colour of the Netherlands is orange. The explanation seems simple: the country is ruled by the House of Orange-Nassau, founded by William the Silent in 1544.

Convenient that the royal house name includes a colour, no? I’ve always wondered about that. The “Orange” bit comes from a place called Orange, located in what is now southern France, but does the place name have any connection to the colour or the fruit?

Turns out, the answer is no. Orange’s name originated in the same way that many modern words did: confusion.

The settlement was founded by Romans in 35 BC; they called it Arausio, which was the name of a local Celtic god of water. At some point in the Middle Ages, people started confusing this old Celtic word with the French/Late Latin word orange. It’s as simple as that!

The area eventually became the County of Orange under the Holy Roman Empire. In 800, it was awarded to a guy named William of Gellone. In 1163, Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa elevated it from a county to a principality; and it was still a principality when William the Silent inherited it from René of Châlon (who was the last of the princes descended from the original Orange family).

The word orange itself originates way back in a Dravidian language spoken in southern India (probably Telugu, Malayalam, or Tamil). When the word first showed up in English, it referred to the fruit; the colour was geoluhread in Old English/Middle English. It wasn’t until the sixteenth century that people started using the same word for both.

The House of Orange-Nassau adopted the colour orange as a symbol sometime after the sixteenth century. They probably figured the association was inevitable!