Archive for 'Culture'
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…
Why is integrating such a problem? Posted by Karoly Molina on Nov 4, 2015
Earlier this year, I wrote about the requirement most immigrants in the Netherlands must go through: inburgering. In summary, those wishing to obtain a Dutch passport must take an integration exam within 3 years of their arrival to the Netherlands which covers topics such as language, history and the work force. An alternative to this is…
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…
So what do we do next summer? Posted by Karoly Molina on Oct 15, 2015
Het Nederlands Elftal had a very tumultuous and, in the end, disappointing journey in order to qualify for the European Cup 2016. After some embarassing defeats, the possibility of joining the next Euro Cup hung on the ability of the Netherlands to beat the Czech Republic AND Turkey loosing to Iceland. Neither of these was possible…