h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Whole books have been written about sundays in Dutch Literature. Songs have been written and sung, like Frans Halsema's 'Zondagmiddag Buitenveldert. Sunday's boredom. Mmm, a chocolate egg. Milky, yummie!
Nothing is quite as like a Dutch sunday. They are like the Dutch skies.

In the east of Groningen you can go mad with the sky. The landscape is so flat and monotonous that it seems the sky jumps and screams at you. YOU, that tiny figure walking a small path beside the endless straight canals that cut rigorously a barrier between endless rigid square fields. There is hardly a tree in sight. (smak, smak, I've now got a white one.) Flat fields with potatoes or sugarbeet. In spring the fields are yellow with rapeseed. Above is always this crazy sky; mad blue, or lead grey with towering white clouds.
The wind? There is no escape from the wind. Mmm, I take another chocolate egg, pure. My dad likes the milky ones, so I can have all the pure ones I like.

Dutch Sundays are like the landscape of east Groningen.
In the Catholic south people go Frühschoppen. An old custom dating back when the males went to the pub after church. The women went home to cook sunday dinner. Nowadays people just skip the church and go in the morning directly to the pub to stagger home blindly drunk in the afternoon, too late for dinner.
In the protestant villages the pubs are closed. Sunday's are like the texts of modern Dutch pop-songs, vague and incoherent. No one knows what they're on about. It's just random noise without a clue.
Strange, somethings never change. And if they do, it seems for the worse. Or it might just be me?
OOh, an egg filled with caramel!

I seem to remember something about Groningen being a University town - full of students and fairly concervative - which struck me as strange since students aren't generally.

Someone in my family spent time in the town - visiting friends and I vaguely remember the feedback - although I could of course have gotten it all backwards.

Wracking my brain to try to think of an African-born Dutch woman singer that I loved - but just cant think of her name . . . have been trying to get a copy of her CD for years but its just not available in SA . . . goodness its irritating when the grey cells file stuff in irretrevable locations!

Kpow
Kosh

very....deep?

andit's the ones on the left ya gotta worry about...

I remebered! Nadieh - or at least I think that's how its spelt. Hope this Sunday is playing out with more amusement.



Kosh

Could be your right, Kosh. As far as I know the north is rather left orientated. The town of Finsterwolde in the east near the German Border had the only communist mayor in the Netherlands, a woman . It's a very poor region. Mainly agriculture with a few big farmers and in the past a lot of people working on a daily basis ( dagloners) The Dutch Communist party ceased to exist somewhere at the end of the eighties, beginning nineties. Unemployment is still high up north. The city Groningen is a university city, but the students come from everywhere. I visited the city only a couple of times. I cannot tell whether the students or the professors at the University of Groningen are right wing.
Damn, at the mo I am in Brugge, Belgium at a internet cafe; The bloody keyboard is not QUERTY!!! I have to learn anew how to type .... The mouse is a disaster. I do not know Nadieh, is it not Rosa King?

Xantippi, deep? Whatdoyeah mean? I was just bored senseless on Easter Monday and I was reminiscing my walks through the fields around my mums place in Finsterwolde. She moved there after retirement.

I suspect Xantippi just had the overwhelming desire to see its name indelligbly posted on a page . . . .

Belgium just makes me think of chocolate!! Oooooooo! Which reminds me . . I'm sure I hid some from myself somewhere in that cupbaord over there . . just for moments like this!

KPOW

Kosh

*glares*
don't assume you know what i desire
*glares*

andit's the ones on the left ya gotta worry about...

Ah yes, the chocolate. Côte d'Or and LEONIDAS bonbons!!! Especially the white ones with the hazelnut paste and a WHOLE Hazelnut.
The coffee is great.

Côte d'Or!!! Ok - now there you have it! All the world's best treats rolled into one little elephant!! OOooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

Yumyumyum!



Kosh

Ah Kosh, you're a connaisseur! It's funny in connection with Buddhism, don't you think?
Every time I'm low on money and I am obliged to keep my meals frugal, I start having these visions and fantasies of sumptuous meals with deserts like cassata or profiteroles. These fantasies make me go wild with desire and I start craving to finish it of with coffee and Poire Williams and a good tasty sigaret. Then I visualize bonbons of Leonidas or hazelnut chocolate bar of Cote d'Or. I start yelling at myself: stop, stop! Don't desire!
Blasted Marx with his 'religion is opium of the poor'. At such a moment I cannot decide who or what I despise most, Marx or Buddhism.

Now you see - me? - I would rather have a Cote d'Or on Monday - and not eat for the rest of the week! My own personal brand of minimalism - rather little bits of bliss than yards of the mundane!

Know what you mean tho - frugal states really serve to sharpen desire - at least it helps clarify where true bliss lies. I recently had a time where luxuries weren't on the cards - followed by being able to afford whatever I wanted and the good things were sooooo much sweeter than if Id had access to them all along!

Have a splendid weekend!

Kosh

Thank you, Kosh. You have a good weekend as well.

By the way, Nadieh is a dutch singer. She came to Holland from the Cape Verdian Islands as a four year old. She thought herself music and won in the eighties won amongst others an award in Japan for best singer She died in 1996 after being seriously ill.

http://www.nadieh-foundation.nl/index.htm

Some of the texts are in english, under 'biography' for instance.

did you know?

the late bbc dj John Peel loved "Platenworm", a record store in Groningen. it thought it was closing down, but their website says the back in June!

the Mayor of Groningen is "PvdA", which could be compared to Labour, but they are in the opposition in parlenent.

What about the university? Is the university of Groningen politically orientatated towards the right? Or are the ideals of the liberals inherent to the act of studying and being a professor?

I do not know
....there is always politics in university, but to say if it is "lefty" or "righty" or "nutrual" that will be different in each department.

I think there is more clash of heads if there is change in proffesor. being a professor is still a status symbol.

Yes, it is. I couldn't say what the reputation of the university of Utrecht is, where I worked in the eighties. It depends on the faculty, students of law being more inclined towards the principles of liberalism then those who study arts, literature, anthropology or pedagogy ....

I am not activily taking part in univerity world.

I see a lot of students walking around, but only thing I see it that have less respect for (road) laws and elderly people (they will not stand up in a bus unless you ask friendly).

Then and again, the old ladies are not very friendly prodding everyone in the crowd with the umbrella's they carry under their arms in order to get into the bus first. The Dutch never learned how to cue, not even in shops.

call old fashioned...ladies first!

are you going into town get "een oranje gevoel"*?


* an orange peel

NOOOOOO!!!!! You cannot drag me into the city with a million PK.

I used to go when the Vrijmarkt was still a phenomenon relatively unknown to the majority of the Dutch populace. I moved house in 1986 and got some nice deals on some paintings I bought to cover the walls with. I payed a tenner for an etching of Pol Dom, the illustrator of The Kameleon series, which about now is worth about 750 euri.

No, I usually take the train to get as far from the city as possible and find a forrest where I can chill out.