What it means to live in a country with history dating back to the dawn of man:
"Holland wasn't always known for its flowers. That only began in the 16th Century."
For those of us who always mix up the numbers, that's the 1500's.
The New World was still new to most Europeans. (The Norse had been there, done that, got the t-shirt.) In 1500 Columbus was arrested by the Spanish government. In 1503 DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa. In 1517 Martin Luther pinned his note to the church door. (The note said, "Now hang on a minute!" only in German.) You know, the 16th Century, that stuff that so did not happen yesterday by any stretch of the imagination.
Except in Holland. The oldest Dutch city (Voorburg) was 12 years past its 1500th birthday in 1500AD. The second-oldest city, Nijmegen, didn't get around to turning 1500 years old until 1505. Those are cities that are still around. Tools discovered in Holland date back some 370,000 years; human remains as old as 40,000 years (that's pre-homo sapiens sapiens, homo sapiens neanderthalis) have been discovered.
So to the Dutch, it's perfectly reasonable to say, "That only began in the 16th Century."
Kinda blows your mind if you didn't grow up with that span of history acknowledged in your society.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Election Day
Election Day here in Holland. I don't get to play along. *sad face* I can vote in municipal elections after five years' residence, but only Dutch citizens get to vote in the general elections. And they do. Voter turnout runs between 75 and 80% for Dutch general elections. (The 56.8% US turnout in 2008 was the highest since 1968. Multiparty system, I'm telling you.)
"Normal" elections are in March on a Wednesday. By "normal," I mean at the end of the four-year maximum term. Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) decides the exact date for the election. This also applies when, as in this case, the ruling coalition loses its ability to lead. That happened in spring, although Parliament has continued to function quite normally in the meantime. "The government has fallen" doesn't mean quite the same thing here.
Elections have to be held with a lead time of around 3 months, to allow for arrangements for non-resident Dutch citizens to vote as well and to allow time for political parties to register candidate lists for the election. Since the government fell in April, that would put elections in the summer. Summer elections are avoided because too many people are on holiday then. That moved them along to September. While elections could have been held last week, Monday 10 September was a big day for NL, as that's when the National budget had to be sent to the EU, so here we are.
As of 8 September, VVD and PvdA would each capture 35 seats of the 150 seats available. This represents an increase for both parties, from 31 and 30, respectively. PVV would drop from 24 seats to 19, being passed by SP who would increase from 15 to 21 seats. The remaining seats would be shared by CDA, D66, CU, GL, SGP, PvdD, and 50 plus.
Nice letters. Who are they? VVD, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, while far left of the American Republican Party, is towards the right in Dutch politics. They're essentially Libertarians. PvdA, the Worker's Party, is a Democratic Socialist party, pragmatic socialists who look for ways to make the ideas of a social society work in the real world. PVV, Party for Peace and Freedom, is a quasi-socialist party whose central idea is that the enemy of peace and freedom is multi-culturalism. SP, the Socialist Party, is just that.
But wait, none of those is more than half of 150. That's the idea. The party with the most votes has the first chance to form a coalition that does account for more than half of the 150 seats. If they can't, then the second-largest party has the opportunity to present a coalition capable of governing. Mind you, the poll numbers I've shown are four days old.
This is an election about the question of whether austerity on the backs of the populace should be the primary method of paying for the debt created by the cascade triggered by fraudulently rated American bank derivatives, or whether education and healthcare should be preserved at the expense of the wealthy, or better said, where the proper balance is between those two approaches. VVD puts the balance point solely on austerity measures and even cut taxes on the wealthy. PvdA is left-of-center toward preserving social infrastructure. SP is is the polar opposite of VVD on this question.
Today, the voters will speak.
"Normal" elections are in March on a Wednesday. By "normal," I mean at the end of the four-year maximum term. Parliament (the Tweede Kamer) decides the exact date for the election. This also applies when, as in this case, the ruling coalition loses its ability to lead. That happened in spring, although Parliament has continued to function quite normally in the meantime. "The government has fallen" doesn't mean quite the same thing here.
Elections have to be held with a lead time of around 3 months, to allow for arrangements for non-resident Dutch citizens to vote as well and to allow time for political parties to register candidate lists for the election. Since the government fell in April, that would put elections in the summer. Summer elections are avoided because too many people are on holiday then. That moved them along to September. While elections could have been held last week, Monday 10 September was a big day for NL, as that's when the National budget had to be sent to the EU, so here we are.
As of 8 September, VVD and PvdA would each capture 35 seats of the 150 seats available. This represents an increase for both parties, from 31 and 30, respectively. PVV would drop from 24 seats to 19, being passed by SP who would increase from 15 to 21 seats. The remaining seats would be shared by CDA, D66, CU, GL, SGP, PvdD, and 50 plus.
Nice letters. Who are they? VVD, People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, while far left of the American Republican Party, is towards the right in Dutch politics. They're essentially Libertarians. PvdA, the Worker's Party, is a Democratic Socialist party, pragmatic socialists who look for ways to make the ideas of a social society work in the real world. PVV, Party for Peace and Freedom, is a quasi-socialist party whose central idea is that the enemy of peace and freedom is multi-culturalism. SP, the Socialist Party, is just that.
But wait, none of those is more than half of 150. That's the idea. The party with the most votes has the first chance to form a coalition that does account for more than half of the 150 seats. If they can't, then the second-largest party has the opportunity to present a coalition capable of governing. Mind you, the poll numbers I've shown are four days old.
This is an election about the question of whether austerity on the backs of the populace should be the primary method of paying for the debt created by the cascade triggered by fraudulently rated American bank derivatives, or whether education and healthcare should be preserved at the expense of the wealthy, or better said, where the proper balance is between those two approaches. VVD puts the balance point solely on austerity measures and even cut taxes on the wealthy. PvdA is left-of-center toward preserving social infrastructure. SP is is the polar opposite of VVD on this question.
Today, the voters will speak.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Boerenrock!
Yes, it's the moto-cross and music festival that can't decide what it is. Half the posters said Boerenpop and the other half said Boerenrock. There was no Pop in the house. What the heck am I on about?
Boerenrock is an annual moto-cross/music festival, the Drenthe/Groningen version of which is held the last weekend of August, when Dutch summer promises a charming mix of rain and sunshine: warm mud. I went because van Dik Hout was going to be there, and I love them a lot. And because my friends laughed, which made me determined to go. :)
Held near the border between Drenthe and Groningen, Boerenrock was unique. The festival pass was just 65E including camping and all-access. All access meant we got to walk around in the drivers' area. Well, we had to, really, since we had to pass through the drivers' area to get from the camping to the festival area. Anyway....
Camping: My friends lent me their tent and sleeping bag and bedroll. Was perfectly dry and snugly warm, so yayy on that score. The neighbors accidentally cracked the daylights out of one of my tent poles while putting up their awning, so boo to them, but it didn't affect tent operations. Most of the campers were late-teen/early-20's, hard-rock fans, with a couple of old farmers [boeren = farmers] thrown in. Leaving the tent to use the restroom in the early morning hours was a bit of a risk, as there were always groups of youngsters sitting around shouting, "Gooiemmmmmorgen, buurvrouw/buurman" [Good Mmmmmorning, neighbor(woman/man)] at anyone leaving a tent or camper at any time between 3am and 9am, when they all went to bed.
The old farmer next door was complaining the first afternoon that farmers plus music should equal a party but it wasn't a party when they wouldn't (according to the posted rules) let you bring in booze or food. This did not prevent any number of people from walking around with fifths of whatever, nor the ever-present smell of BBQ, so I'm not sure what he was on about, exactly.
Farmers: Popeye legs. That will be my lasting impression of farmers. (Along with some interesting highlights listed below of course.) On Saturday it was raining off and on but warm, so many of the guys put on shorts. It was only when the crowd gathered for music in the evening that I noticed that every single guy had Popeye legs: amazingly exaggerated calf muscles. Well-developed calf muscles are one of the key features that separate human anatomy from apes'. The anatomists at UC Berkeley will tell you that Cal Bear people are more human than Stanford Cardinal people because there are more hills in Berkeley and therefore better-developed calf muscles. Holland is not a hilly place, but Dutch farmers are extremely human. Must be all the walking in clogs, which brings me to....
Clogs: They wear them. Really really. I only saw guys in clogs. Apparently they were wearing their fancy dress clogs, though, because they were all wearing them with their fancy dress black socks. [Insert shudder.] Socks aside, clogs have been around forever because they work. By all reports, it is easier to walk in the mud in clogs than in any other type of shoe. So there you go. Those guys who did not wear clogs wore mid-calf pull-on boots. Even with shorts.
Highlights:
Tons more. Fireworks. Hard rock. Local bands recording videos. Raining pijpstelen (pipe-stems, the Dutch version of cats'n'dogs). A guy in a dress with a hag-mask on a tiny bike winning his division in motocross. The 7-year old on a teeny little ATV owning the mud track like he built it. Girls love my big rooster t-shirt.
And with all that I've broken the highest rule: What happens at Boerenrock stays at Boerenrock.
Boerenrock is an annual moto-cross/music festival, the Drenthe/Groningen version of which is held the last weekend of August, when Dutch summer promises a charming mix of rain and sunshine: warm mud. I went because van Dik Hout was going to be there, and I love them a lot. And because my friends laughed, which made me determined to go. :)
Held near the border between Drenthe and Groningen, Boerenrock was unique. The festival pass was just 65E including camping and all-access. All access meant we got to walk around in the drivers' area. Well, we had to, really, since we had to pass through the drivers' area to get from the camping to the festival area. Anyway....
Camping: My friends lent me their tent and sleeping bag and bedroll. Was perfectly dry and snugly warm, so yayy on that score. The neighbors accidentally cracked the daylights out of one of my tent poles while putting up their awning, so boo to them, but it didn't affect tent operations. Most of the campers were late-teen/early-20's, hard-rock fans, with a couple of old farmers [boeren = farmers] thrown in. Leaving the tent to use the restroom in the early morning hours was a bit of a risk, as there were always groups of youngsters sitting around shouting, "Gooiemmmmmorgen, buurvrouw/buurman" [Good Mmmmmorning, neighbor(woman/man)] at anyone leaving a tent or camper at any time between 3am and 9am, when they all went to bed.
The old farmer next door was complaining the first afternoon that farmers plus music should equal a party but it wasn't a party when they wouldn't (according to the posted rules) let you bring in booze or food. This did not prevent any number of people from walking around with fifths of whatever, nor the ever-present smell of BBQ, so I'm not sure what he was on about, exactly.
Farmers: Popeye legs. That will be my lasting impression of farmers. (Along with some interesting highlights listed below of course.) On Saturday it was raining off and on but warm, so many of the guys put on shorts. It was only when the crowd gathered for music in the evening that I noticed that every single guy had Popeye legs: amazingly exaggerated calf muscles. Well-developed calf muscles are one of the key features that separate human anatomy from apes'. The anatomists at UC Berkeley will tell you that Cal Bear people are more human than Stanford Cardinal people because there are more hills in Berkeley and therefore better-developed calf muscles. Holland is not a hilly place, but Dutch farmers are extremely human. Must be all the walking in clogs, which brings me to....
Clogs: They wear them. Really really. I only saw guys in clogs. Apparently they were wearing their fancy dress clogs, though, because they were all wearing them with their fancy dress black socks. [Insert shudder.] Socks aside, clogs have been around forever because they work. By all reports, it is easier to walk in the mud in clogs than in any other type of shoe. So there you go. Those guys who did not wear clogs wore mid-calf pull-on boots. Even with shorts.
Highlights:
- Two 20-something guys in jeans with pink thong panties over their jeans, simulating sex with their guy friends, who all bent over for it with a laugh.
- The "Ik ben homo" song, sung to the tune of "We are sailing." The verses were: Ik ben homo [I'm gay], Jij bent homo [You're gay], Wij zijn homo [We're gay]. Everyone sang along.
- Mosh pit for Stil in Mij. You'd have to hear the song, but Stil in Mij is a slow, romantic song about having no words for the emotions you're having about your love interest. One of the great songs from van Dik Hout. Crowds often sing along. This crowd moshed. Go figure.
- Beer. So. Much. Beer. The music was played inside a circus-sized tent conveniently served by eight bars inside the tent. (And two more outside.)
- Clean toilets. In spite of the beer, the toilets remained amazing clean. It helped that there were many of them [32 women's and 32 men's in the main area serving a crowd of a couple thousand; 5 women's and 5 men's in the camping area (plus showers) serving 400 campers] and that they were serviced every 5 minutes or so. Thumbs up to the festival organizers on that score.
- Cups. How do you serve 50k or so beers and not have a single plastic cup on the ground? You pay 2E per 20 cups, and the little kids run around picking them up. The parents are happy because the kids are occupied; the kids are happy because they get money to buy sweets and soda and play games; the place is happy because the ground remains continuously cup-free. Brilliant.
- Trekker trek. [Tractor pull] Now this is hick as all get out, but it turns out to be fun to watch! There was every kind of tractor from high-tech, Star Trek-looking things to 25-year-old-plus tractors with car engines. And there was a ton of mud. Oh, and beer. Yep, fun to watch.
- Gronings. NL has a number of dialects. Because cities and villages are so old, they develop individual accents and even distinct languages for each town and region, and the Eastern part of the country is influenced by German, while the Western part of the country is influenced by English plus every other language the very-international West comes into contact with. I can read Gronings just fine, just as I can read Drents, but I hadn't actually heard anyone speak this dialect. It sounded like a cross between Dutch, German, and mush, to my untrained ear. Nary a consonant to be distinctly located, so near as I could tell. Just wow.
- Terrible kibbeling. Holland has some of the best fish-and-chips-type fish in the world, sometimes. And some of the worst. Viskramen (fish stands) are ubiquitous. The quality is a gamble. I got all excited at this one because the young man was cutting the fish and battering it himself. Sadly, it was not completely cooked and the breading wasn't all that crunchy. They do get a +1 for their spices, but as my friend said, "What do farmers know about fish?"
- Amazing sausages. Now what farmers do know about is sausage. And they shone. The sausage of the day was a light-tasting, white sausage, grilled over charcoal and wood, with a thin skin that crisped right up around the sausage. To die for.
Tons more. Fireworks. Hard rock. Local bands recording videos. Raining pijpstelen (pipe-stems, the Dutch version of cats'n'dogs). A guy in a dress with a hag-mask on a tiny bike winning his division in motocross. The 7-year old on a teeny little ATV owning the mud track like he built it. Girls love my big rooster t-shirt.
And with all that I've broken the highest rule: What happens at Boerenrock stays at Boerenrock.
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