All Things Holland

Sitting down to write a new post the question came to my mind, "Can a German understand Dutch?" As we have written about before Dutch is thought of as the median between German and English. So what is Dutch? Obviously its a Germanic language, as is English, but couldn't Dutch be classified as a dialect of low German? (By the way low German refers to the area that the German is spoken, mostly Northern Germany where the land is lower in elevation) After reading some posts from native German speakers they agree that the similarity between Dutch and German is close to the similarity between Spanish and Portuguese; they can understand a little of the written language but have a difficult time understanding the spoken language. And linguistics still do not agree on Dutch, some parts of the Netherlands are considered to be low German dialects, Frisian, as well as low Saxon. But, on a whole Dutch is considered a low Franconian, which derived from old Frankish. Yes, the Franks. Ac

Check out this great MSN video - Skating The Canals Of Amsterdam Check out this video above. First glance you may think," OH, their skating down the frozen street...." Ehhhh. Wrong. That is the frozen canals. And why not. Looks like fun. Even more amazing is the amount of people on it. The city I live in has a ice skating rink that opens in the winter. It's covered but still the amount of people who come out to it is nothing compared to the shear numbers you see in that minute long video. Pay attention to their skates. Most people have the speed skates we see during the Olympics. Makes me wonder why Holland isn't more of a Hockey country than it is.

Two posts in two days! Crazy talk. I had to put this up because this guy is amazing and I've learned how to link Youtube videos straight to the blog. After you watched this video you probably thought; who is this crazy person! This is Wim Hof. Born in Sittard, Limburg; Holland in 1959. Along with the one you just watched; he holds many world records involving extremely cold temperatures, 18 to be exact. His recent was the longest ice bath (1 hr, 13 minutes and 48 seconds). Some of his other accomplishments are climbing to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in only a pair of shorts in 2 days. Story He tried Mount Everest but failed due to a foot injury. Ran a full marathon above the polar circle in temperatures of -4 F in nothing but shorts in 5 hrs 25 minutes. And stood fully immersed in ice for 1hr 44 min. Ya. Cold. You thought running outside to get your mail in the winter in your pajamas was cold.... How is he able to do this? According to Hof, it is due to his extreme meditation tec

Seems the other author is always posting neat youtube videos about Dutch musicians. I finally found one. Not my personal taste or style but here is a neat video of a Dutch DJ; Tiesto. Dance music to the max. A little about him. T iësto was born Tijs Michiel Verwst on January 17 th 1969 in Breda, North Brabant. He has had numerous names associated with him but the most famous one is DJ Tiësto. About five years ago he decided to drop the “DJ” portion of the name and is now known as Tiësto, which is an Italian twist of his old childhood nickname. Tiësto became interested in music from around the age of twelve and by the age of fourteen he was already DJing at school parties. His success has continued to grow and in the early 2000’s he became the first DJ to perform to a large audience without any other DJs or opening acts. From 2002-2004 he was crowned the “World’s Number 1 DJ,” three consecutive times by DJ Magazine . Tiësto was also recently voted “The Greatest DJ of All Time” in