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“Een nieuw jasje” for speed skating! Posted by Sten on Nov 16, 2015
Thialf blijft Thialf. Voor de rest wordt alles nieuw. With this slogan, the re-make of the most famous schaatsbaan (speed skating rink) of the Netherlands has begun. Before we go more into this slogan more deeply, you probably want to know what Thialf is! The old Thialf Thialf is an speed skating rink in Heerenveen in Friesland. It was opened by…
Dag van de Mantelzorg on 10 November Posted by Sten on Nov 9, 2015
Tuesday, November 10 is the Dag van de Mantelzorg (Day of Caregiving). Before going further into what happens on this day: who are these caregivers? In the Netherlands, mantelzorgers are familieleden (relatives), vrienden (friends), kennissen (acquaintances) and buren (neighbors), who take care of family members, a friend or neighbor that is in need of chronic help. Basically, these are people helping others with whom they have already…
Het Straatnieuws uit Utrecht – Interviewing the Pope! Posted by Sten on Nov 8, 2015
The pope. There is no doubt about it, he is an influential and important person, not just in the Netherlands, but in the entire world. He has now become Onze Vriend in Rome (our friend in Rome). On Tuesday, October 27th at 11 AM, the Straatnieuws journalists arrived to interview Paus Franciscus (Pope Francis). After months of geheimhouding (confidentiality), since nobody was allowed…
Fries – a language for itself! Posted by Sten on Nov 2, 2015
Fryslân – it will probably not tell you a lot. It is a word not from the Dutch, but the Frysian language, het Fries. Fryslân is the name of the Dutch province in which Fries is spoken: Friesland. Now, yes, there are many different dialects, and versions of Fries. But in this post, I mean Westerlauers Fries, or Standaardfries when I mention Fries. This is the…
Dutch Halloween! Posted by Sten on Nov 1, 2015
Halloween has been widely around in the Netherlands since the 1990s. The celebration has been imported from the United States, and thus has more of a commercial character, instead of a deeply rooted cultural one. Shops specialized in costumes and dressing up love it, since Halloween allegedly fills up the niche between the summer and Christmas. Halloween…
De Afsluitdijk – Enclosing the Sea Posted by Sten on Oct 26, 2015
So, last week, I wrote about the Zuiderzeewerken, which gave birth to the province Flevoland. But not only that. The Zuiderzeewerken had as their goal to create more land for agricultural use, and to “tame” the Zuiderzee, the part of the Noordzee (North Sea) that protruded well into the Dutch inland. Another goal, which was pursued already centuries before the proposal…
The Dutch Ui Posted by Sten on Oct 20, 2015
When you hear the Dutch “ui”, you might think about the sound that some words have, such as buis, huis, or sluizen. This post is about something else, however. If you want to know more about the sound, you can find a great post on this by my dear colleague Karoly. Other than the “ui” sound, ui itself also means something…