Monday, January 30, 2006

The Night of Bad Taste


The "International Filmfestival Rotterdam", is an important event for those who like arthouse movies. Each year in January some of the best movies produced in the year before are selected for the audience. Among the visitors are directors, producers, actors and other important people from the industry. The festival started out more than 25 years ago and has evolved into a big cultural thing. This should serve as a kind of introduction to what follows next. Today I was browsing the website of the festival. There I ran into the "Nacht van de Wansmaak" (Night of Bad Taste). That struck me as odd. There you have a big cultural event. All kinds of intelligent, fashionable people gathered together. And these people are going to watch "Night of Bad Taste"? Perhaps it is supposed to be camp. On the other hand. Bad taste is not such an uncommon thing in the Netherlands. Bad taste can be good fun indeed. At least; that is an opinion not uncommonly encountered around here. Furthermore I think it is really hospitable, to share this with our foreign guests.

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Our Little Secrets


What is essential about a secret? A secret is something you don't want to share with other people. Or a few people at most. Your trusted ones. Furthermore: secrets are usually about things you want to keep to yourself. Secrets are about things you've done, you're embarrassed about, or things that give you a bad feeling about yourself. And then there are the secrets you want everyone to know about. This of course, is my interpretation of what a secret is. But definitions abound, as, at least was demonstrated by the Dutch secret service AIVD (pronounce AhEeVayDay). Someone, we don't know who, that remains a secret, sold secret information to criminal organizations in Amsterdam. This was not an incident. In 2005 the same thing happened twice in other cases. Things are not at all well at the AIVD you might think. Not the home secretary Mr. Remkes. He tried to reassure everybody, by declaring nothing structural was wrong. Very likely this is an interpretation too, but one thing is certain: if you have a secret and you want everybody to know about it, informing the AIVD might be a good strategy. I don't think parliament is going to solve this by debating the AIVD. What you need to understand is that where secrets are involved, disclosure is inevitable. A secret that no-one knows about is a non-entity. And probably most important; telling a secret is an exciting thing to do. That's why most people cant refrain from doing it in these thrill-seeking ages.

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Winter Blues


In winter, sometimes i get to feel like a kind of caveman. You leave home, and its dark. You get back and its dark again. But do you think I'm going to complain about that? I'm not. I help myself by starting to think about Northern Sweden, about Archangel and about Murmansk. If you tend to get depressed about a little darkness, then these are places you should really try thinking about. People there seem to be living in total darkness for about four or five months. That's at least what I heard, or read somewhere. In any case. Just the thought that I'm not there, cheers me up. The trick is not to think about the people in Australia where everyone is out cold because of the heatwave. Australia is way to remote to even think about. That's what I say to myself. Then again... a sunny beach; a cold beer. I want that. I want that very much. But I tell myself not to think about it. Its torture and masochism. I'm not into that kind of thing. I just want to get out of the dark.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Energy Prices


This month energy companies are sending their customers the yearly bill. This year, again, Dutch consumers will be confronted with higher prices to pay for gas and electricity. Resentment about this is almost tangible. The energy market has been reformed. Governments and companies involved, promised it would be to the benefit of the consumer. So far, nothing of that has come true. After another year of increasing prices people are getting frustrated. You try to reduce on the energy you use and even then you end up paying more .Than you did the year before. Liberalizing the market was supposed to be a good thing. The main beneficiaries so far seem to be the energy companies.
The weather hasn't been that bad so far, but financially it already has turned out a rotten winter.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Garden Lovers



Who would have thought. The dutch turn out to be garden lovers. The professional organization announced last week, that the number of companies earning a living in the gardening business, has been rising almost 80%. It turned out to be news. Nobody seems to be really sure what has caused this. Financially, things are not at all well for the dutch (that is at least what we read in the papers). So how is it possible that we are able to spend more money on gardening and spend less on other things we probably need more? Questions eh? An expert tried to explain it, as the result from the desire to get nature in your own backyard. Also, home - and garden improvement shows on dutch TV, are drawing lots of viewers. These factors seem to have contributed to the current success of the gardening business. But that doesn't make it less puzzling. On the one hand dutch people are demanding more highways from their government. Nature suffers for that. And then people start spending money to see some leaves from their own back window. Everyone his or her own patch of green. That's what we're going for. It may not be logical, but it certainly is dutch.

Sunday, January 22, 2006

Sunday Fitness


A grey sunday; an overcast sky, as is often the case in winter. One is reminded of the "Hazy shade of winter", song by Simon and Garfunkel. Winters in the Netherlands nowadays are not half as severe as they used to be in the days of the 17th century. Ice skating is mostly done in halls on artificial ice. A lot of people sit in front of their tv set watching speedskating. The olypmic games are only two more weeks away. Expectations are rising, and 60 % of the population seems to think, dutch speedskaters are going to do very well. As they did four years ago when Jochem Uytdehaeghe snatched away some medals in the winter-games in Salt Lake city. But if the only way to enjoy speedskating is to watch someone else doing it, what else can you do, if you want a little outdoors exercise? Some people go running; some take a sunday stroll in the local green patch and some take their bike out of their garden shed and pedal a few kilometers. So, on my bike i visited the nearby National Park "Loonse en Drunense Duinen". Compared to the Mojave or the Gobi desert ( a little far-fetched i admit), it's nothing more than some grains of sand, scattered underneath the pine-trees. But you should try seeing it in dutch dimensions, which make it pretty big. Also a good place if you'r having the sunday-blues and feel like seeing someone else. Who needs skating anyway?

Saturday, January 21, 2006

War of the Grocers



Yesterday papers announced a new stage in the grocery wars. Thats how i have named what is happening in dutch food retail for the past two years. Most papers named it "supermarket wars", but that seems to suggest a kind of mythological dimension, which is altogether absent. After the introduction of the euro in 2002, prices had risen. With the economy slowing down and more and more people getting into dire financial straits dutch supermarkets were in for some heavy weather. The only way out for the suffering supermarkets, seemed to be in the form of substantial discounting. It has served the benefit of the dutch consumers wallet, but if this turns out to be a good thing for food retail still remains to be seen. The dutch could not easliy worry less. Spending money on good food has never been a top priority in most dutch households. Eating habits are not very demanding on food producers. Food is good when it's cheap, you might say. The Netherlands still are famous for their huge export numbers of vegetables like tomatoes and cucumbers, but not everybody is enthusiastic about their taste. "Water-bombs", they seem to be called in some sophisticaded french restaurants. It's not something the dutch really worry about. Their food prices still are decreasing. Party-time, no?

Something Fishy



Dutch skies need clouds. You don't often see a day without a cloud. The ones Hieronymus van Diest has painted here are among the most characteristic. You can see them almost any spring day, cycling in the "polder". Of course there were no bikes in the days of Van Diest. People moved around walking, in coaches, or on their horse, although the possession of a horse was limited to the happy very few. And then in the Netherlands, no small number of cities and villages were interconnected by waterways. Public transport depended for a large part on the "trekschuit" ( a boat pulled by horse, walking on the canal bank) . In Dordrecht, as you can see, fishing was an important way of making a living. Fish was a substantial part of the daily diet. Things have changed since then. Eating fish is considered to be healthy. But fishing is restricted, due to european guidelines, aimed at protecting a speedily diminishing fish population in the North Sea and Atlantic Ocean. As a result of that, people nowadays are eating canned tunafish and frozen cod. I wonder how the good people of Dordrecht would have felt about that.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Spring Clouds


This picture was taken early May 2005, at Westkapelle beach. Westkapelle is a small village on the Walcheren peninsula. It is in fact, as far as you can get. Beyond the village is the North Sea. Standing on the beach, the sense of space is overwhelming. The wind has blown the air free of humidity. That in itself would be reason enough to go there. In summer the village is visited by hosts of mostly german tourists. Outside the season, the village is quiet. There are occasional english visitors. They come in remembrance of the english army which landed on this beach in early winter 1944. There is a museum commemorating this historic event. Walcheren is part of the Zeeland province. History and beer are not bad reasons to visit this place. But the main reason that people keep coming back is probably something else; the enormous sense of space, almost out of time and most cerainly a rarity in contemporary Netherlands.