All Things Holland

The Olympics began with a bang (or was it Bond) last Friday night. The Dutch entered the stadium wearing their traditional Orange. Gota love those pants. Their uniforms actually won best dressed on this yahoo blog . It also seems the Dutch Women's Field Hockey team has gained worldwide attention before even taking the field to defend their Beijing Gold. Both for their play on the field and their uniforms. An article about it here  Yahoo . And a photo gallery here . Wow. The medals began coming in on Sunday for the Dutch when the Women's 4x100 Free Style Swimming Relay team secured a silver medal. Falling just behind Australia and beating team USA for second place. Followed soon after by Marianne Vos finally winning her elusive Olympic Gold Medal in Olympic Road Race Cycling. Here's a picture of her crossing the finish line (that is one excited and exhausted looking person) and one of her accepting her medal.  As of Tuesday, the Dutch are in 16 place for to

             So I have bought my Raleigh bike but that doesn't mean that I should stop talking about them, ha!  Instead of talking about a Dutch bike brand let's talk about a Dutch cyclist shall we?  Here enters famous cyclist Joop Zoetemelk.  He is a bicycle racing legend.             He has finsished the Tour de France 16 times, which is a record, and he also won the race in 1980.  Not to mention the Olympics and 67 other professional races that he has either won or raced in the top 10 in.  Joop started off as a regional champion speed skater before turning to cycling.  This guy , who has actually become better looking as he ages (if that tells you anything), is an athlete and a robust one at that.  In the 1980 Tour de France which he won, it was claimed that he only won because a competitor Bernard Hinault had dropped out of the race.  This is what Joop had to say about that "Surely winning the Tour de France is a question of health and robustness. If Hinault doesn

   Looking for some inspiration in 1972 the Beach Boys packed their bags and their recording studio and settled down in the Netherlands to record their album "Holland". They hoped that the change of scenery would snap their band leader Brian Wilson out of his depression. Although they did end up getting Brian to come along, 3 attempts, he did not contribute much to the album. (except it seems his very creepy EP Mt.Vernon and Fairway{ A fairytale})      Sailing and port towns are the themes of the CD which is applicable whether you are off the California coast or in the canals of Amsterdam. The single from the album "Sail on Sailor" sounds much like Stevie Wonder, who was a major player in the music scene around that time. "Holland" was famously expensive to record, which makes sense since they needed to send all of their gear to Holland; and it was recorded in the tiny town of Baambrugge which is in the interior of the Netherlands.      

As I type this there are 3 days, 18hrs, 33 mins, and 57 seconds left before the start of the 2012 London Olympic Games. In 2008 the Netherlands won 16 medals. 7 Gold, 5 Silver, and 4 Bronze. The Golds came from; Women's Cycling Track Individual Points Race (figures), Equestrian Dressage Individual, Women's Field Hockey, Women's Lightweight Rowing, Men's Marathon Swimming, Women's Freestyle Relay Swimming, and Women's Water Polo.  Silvers; Women's Judo -57KG, (Sailing) Women's 2 person Dingh and Women's Keelboat, Equestrian Dressage Team, and Women's 8 rowing. Bronze; All came in Judo different weight classes. 2 men's and 2 women's.  What do I take from all those medals? Dutch women kick butt. I would say at least 75% of the medals won were won on women's sports. Nice. They were 12th in the total medal count that year. According to the official BBC website, it looks like around 182 athletes will be competing in sp

Black licorice. The Bane of kids everywhere (in honor of the new Batman movie coming out tomorrow I had to slide that in there). In America when we hear the word licorice, we normally think of the straw looking red kind or the nasty tasting black tar taffy. In Holland, licorice is known as Drop and primarily comes in black and 2 flavors. No stringy red ropes either. Drop comes in these lozenge style shapes. And so I've read, I have never tried the stuff, it is a different flavor than what we're thinking of. One website states that Holland consumes the highest per capita consumption of licorice in the world. Or almost 4 1/2 lbs of the salty stuff a year. Wait, did I say salty? Yes, you read that correctly. Drop comes in a variety of flavors from sweet like we're used to, to this salty flavor. There's soft sweet, soft salty, hard sweet, and hard salty. With added flavors of honey, coconut, mint, etc. The current craze seems to be making the lozenges in the shapes of t

Speaking of bicycles I have been doing some research on bicycles lately. I am a fan of Raleigh bikes but while researching I came across a Dutch brand for road bikes, who would have ever thought (sarcasim). The Netherlands has a strong bicycle racing heritage and one such Dutch brand is Koga-Miyata. Now you might say "wow that name sounds Japanese", and you might be right. In fact you are right. The founders of the brand were originally a joint venture between Miyata a forward thinking Japanese brand and a Dutchman, who just so happens to be the knowledgeable son of the founder of another important Dutch bicycle brand Batavus . Koga-Miyata's are known as a well made bicycle brand, and the design and assembly are all done in Holland. What gave K-M it's good name was the 1980's Tour de France. The company sponsored the Ijsboerke cycle team using the Koga-Miyata FullPro-L bike. Since 2010 the koga-miyata brand no longer exists, instead they have changed into

How to begin...Yesterday while listening to "Afdwaalt" again I decided to check out the rest of Eefje de Visser's artistry. "Man, all of her music is pretty good!" exclaimed a certain surprised person. So, naturally this surprised person decided then and there to buy her album called "De Koek" (The cake). Everyone knows that buying the hardcopy of a CD feels so much better than spending less for the MP3 downloads, so I searched and searched for this CD. It goes to say that very few of these CD's were made, and those that can be found are over the cold salty ocean. Finally I found a website which was recommended by her own official website, bol.com. Here I began digging my hole. Of course it was going to be a tad bit more expensive to buy a CD that was being sold using Euros but I didn’t mind too much. What did worry me was that the website was positively, absolutely, completely written in Dutch. So I may now proudly say that yes I do k

In 1967 THE James Bond (Sean Connery) decided to step away from the world of James Bond films. EOS studios thus had to find a replacement. It came down to 5 men. 2 Brits, an American, a Australian, and a Dutchman. John Richardson, Anthony Rogers, Robert Campbell, George Lazenby, and Hans de Vries. None of those names ring a bell? George Lazenby won the part for the 6th Bond film, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. A movie that has been lauded both as the worst and one of the best Bond films in the franchise. If you haven't seen it, you should. It was the Bond film that 'Breaks the Fourth Wall', Bond gets married, wears a kilt, and goes skiing. But the reason for this post is instead of this; (Yes, THAT is James Bond) We could of had this. Improvement? Probably not. He looks a wee bit angry. Plus, no one watches OHMSS anyway. So, did de Vries have a movie career after Bond? Ha, no. The only notable movie rolls I can find for him were pre bond. And that was

The search is over. I have been looking for a band (that I have actually heard of) who are Dutch for a long time. This band I found almost by accident. I heard their song on the radio, used an app on my phone to identify who it was, then looked at their bio. Low and behold they're dutch! Who am I talking about? Golden Earring Founded in 1961 (A little before my time) in The Hague, Netherlands. Their big international successes were 'Radar Love', 'Twilight Zone', and 'When the Lady Smiles'. I've only heard the first 2. You're probably thinking, "I've never heard of this band." Listen to these songs and you'll say, "Oh, those guys." Here's Radar Love (My favorite of the 2) And Twilight Zone The band members include (very Dutch names); George Kooymans, Rinus Gerritsen, Barry Hay, and Cesar Zuiderwijk. They're still performing today with the hopes of releasing a new album soon. Obviously, they're

This morning I was researching a new article I want to post soon and stumbled across another (dare I say better) Dutch blog. http://stuffdutchpeoplelike.com/ Read their about page, very witty. It's written by someone not native to Holland but who lived there for 7 years (Slightly Jealous) and geared towards a more humorus view. I have never visited. I only read articles and watch documentaries on the country. Makes this little blog we do sound weak and uninformed.... http://blogs.transparent.com/dutch/ This is the one I've been reading. More geared toward learning the language but also very imformative. I've linked you to these because (obviously) I'm not allowed to straight copy from their blogs (even if I wanted to) without contacting them for permission and even then, I can only use 10% of what they wrote. Moral of the story. We'll keep plugging away here on All Things Holland but if you want honest to goodness firsthand knowledge check out these other

Remember around a month ago when the news story hit about Ray the Forest Boy who randomly showed up one day in Berlin, Germany? Well I forgot to post this but it has been found out who Ray the 'Forest Boy' actually is. 20 yr old Robin van Helsum of Hengelo Netherlands (100 miles east of Amsterdam). What allowed the police to finally determine who 'Ray' was? His stepmother. She recognized his picture on the news. He went missing 9 months ago. Now that he has been exposed as a hoax and not the Forest Boy who had been living in the woods for 5 years; Robin may face stiff fines and penalties for the extra police time and work put into his case which could cost as much as $40,000. 'Ray' originally walked into Berlin claiming he had been walking for 5 days after spending 5 years living out of a tent in the 'wild' where he had buried his father. One Berlin police officer said that there were things right from the start that did not match to his story. Lik

No post for a few days. This time I have a legitimate reason. No electricity.... So I was going through my old emails last week and stumbled upon a story someone sent me back in 08. I read it at the time and thought nothing of it. Turns out the man who did this feat was Dutch! Check out a news story on it. They can wrap it up better than I. Dordrecth, in Western Netherlands. Johan Huibers completed his 3 year $1.6 million dollar project. According to him, he had a dream about this. I wonder if he cheated and used modern day construction tools. Tourist Attraction. Sidenote: 25 days till the Olympics!