Dutch Speed Skating Dominance

I decided not to do a medal by medal count of the Dutch Olympic results for the 2014 Sochi Olympics this year. Good thing I didn't. It would have been repetitive. The 'Orange Crush' won an astonishing 23 of a possible 36 medals in Speed Skating with 3 'sweeps'. Take this into consideration. The Canadian team brought 140 athletes to Sochi and only left with 1 more medal than the Dutch who only brought 41... all they really needed was their Speed Skating team. They had twice as many medals in speed skating than all the other countries combined. In fact, it was so dominant the International Skating Union is looking at why the other countries did so poorly and is considering making changes for up coming Olympics. Speed Skating is a way of life for the Dutch. It's their unofficial sport and they backed it up finishing 4th in the total medal standings with 23 of their 24 medals coming in speed skating. The 24th was also skating... short track.

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Songs Called Amsterdam

iTunes free song of the week last week was a song called Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons. I've never heard of them but it's a catchy Alternative song. But it made me think. In my own personal music collection. I have a few songs named Amsterdam. Three to be exact. This may give to much away about my music tastes but hey, I'm out of ideas for posts as evident by the lack thereof. I don't read into song lyrics deep enough sometimes, so not sure what some of these are talking about but most are hardly about the city itself. 1) Amsterdam by Imagine Dragons Just got this one like I said. Not sure yet. Here it is below. Make you want to ride a train. 2) Amsterdam by Guster Couldn't find a good video for this one. But here is the song. I guess, it's easy to get lost in Amsterdam... 3) Amsterdam by Coldplay My favorite of this bunch. Turns out it's called Amsterdam because Chris Martin wrote this in Amsterdam. The song says nothing of the canal fille...

Holland is just a step away

When life gives you lemons make green tea lemonade. So, when one lives in the midwest why not make the best of it and explore the sites in this area? You don't need a lot of money or even a passport. That brings us to Holland, Michigan a Dutch settlement in America. Obviously the city is very proud of its Dutch heritage, as shown in the klompen picture at the top. Klompen is the name of the Dutch wooden clog dance. There are many dutch settlements in Michigan but what makes Holland so distinctly Dutch are its two festivals: the tulip time festival in the spring and the winter festival. The tulip festival is held in mid-May and lasts for 8 days. The festival includes tours at the local windmills, tulip farms, local dutch houses, as well as dances, concerts, street scrubing, and a dutch marketplace. One interesting thing about the Dutch costumes that are presented during the festival is that they are from the 8 out of 12 different provinces of the Netherlands. Here is...

Ambulance Garage = Home

So I couldn't sleep tonight so I thought I write my next blog entry about a place where you could sleep. See what I did there? That's called a 'segway'. I think. Recently MSN had an interesting article entitled '10 unique structures transformed into astonishing homes'. Structure 3 was a Parksite Ambulance Garage in Rotterdam, Netherlands. Here's the description from that article. "This 2,800-square-foot living space was converted in 2008 from an ambulance garage. The Doepel Strijkers team transformed what was a flat space into a multilevel[ed] habitation by creating a dugout in the center. [This] dugout also created room for a second level. The bedrooms are suspended over the sunken kitchen area in a polycarbonate 'light box' with integrated LED lights. The kitchen has custom cupboards. [Orange blocks] on the stairs to the living room act as a seating [area] or tables. A new glass wall looks out to the greenery of a park." If you search Doe...

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