Mind Cleanup – Summer edition

In Dutch we call this time of year “cucumber time”… I’m not sure if it’s also an expression in English though…

We use it as a way to express the time during summer when nothing really happens and newspapers and TV channels have very little news to report on but still manage to fill the pages and daytime TV with non-news about nothing-really-happening. I guess they call it that because  a cucumber may be a pretty large vegetable, but has hardly any nutritional value as it consists mostly of water. It doesn’t really have much taste either…

All though in all honesty it’s not true that nothing is happening, is it…? My goodness, so much is happening, it’s actually hard to take in… I feel so small and hopeless in the presence of the “real news” and shamefully admit I’m pretty much in cartoon-style-ostrich-mode. Not proud of it… Working on it… I promise (myself) a more substantial, thought provoking piece next time…

Anyway… September is knocking on the door, which means “the r will be back in the month” (another Dutch expression signalling the end of summer and the return of scarves and warm coats); and it was an Olympic summer!

          Olympics          

To be honest, us Dutchies were a bit disappointed by Team NL’s results at the Olympics. This feeling stems from the fact that we weren’t able to bring home precisely those medals that we thought we had the best shot at. Ergo, the matches that we were all watching, were actually the ones we weren’t able to cash in on.

Which ones were we counting on?

• Epke Zonderland
  (fell on his face)
• Dafne Schippers
  (she did take home silver, but she was so pissed off about it that it felt like she fell on her face too)
• Yuri van Gelder
  (was sent home for behaving like the bad boy we always knew he was)
• Ranomi Kromowidjojo
  (others were just faster)
• Jeroen Dubbeldam
  (crossed the finish line a heartbreaking o.02 seconds late)
• Hockey
  (if only they gave out points for ball possession (and pretty faces))
• Judo
  (don’t really know what happened there…)

Which ones did we unexpectedly win?

• Open water marathon swimming (GOLD)
• BMX cycling (SILVER)
• Cycling – indoor track (keirin) (GOLD)
• Boxing (SILVER)

There were also sports where we didn’t win a medal at all but were still ecstatic about anyhow; For example our gymnast team, who finished seventh and our ever-smiling runner Churandy Martina, who made it to the 200m final for the third Olympics in a row and was just proud and grateful for the gift he had received from the big almighty.

And finally, I guess we were all pretty proud of our royal family.

           Music           

As it’s been a pretty warm and sunny week, I feel some dreamy, slow summer songs are in place. I envision a hammock, a cold drink and the absence of to-do lists, and the following songs playing in the background:

JP Cooper

Daniel Gidlund

Axel Flovent

On a different note:

I can’t believe the amount of songs Rihanna is kicking into this world… and this one is so surprising! (and so recognizably co-written by the amazing SIA!!)

Speaking of soundtracks: Every song I’ve heard from the Suicide squad movie has gotten stuck in my head straight away. Worth a listen! Haven’t seen the movie yet though…

Interesting stuff others wrote

Vox

Trump is on the front page of every newspaper, tabloid and what not and for obvious reasons. I felt this article in Vox showed an interesting theory about his brainfarts, though. Some quotes from the article:

Donald Trump is not a conservative — it’s no secret that he came to Republican Party politics after decades as a Democrat. He’s a populist, and so are his core fans.

Trump still hasn’t really learned how to speak conservative. At best, he just repeats key phrases; at worst, he unleashes some mutated monstrosity, like a conservative talking point that had survived and evolved for generations underground.

The problem with treating Donald Trump as the conservative id, though, is that Trump isn’t a conservative. He’s not saying things he believes because he doesn’t know he’s not supposed to say them; he’s saying things he doesn’t believe because he thinks other people do.

Being Woke

Fellow blogger “Being woke” posted a blog on the Burkini ban, that was installed by the mayor of Cannes on the 12th of August, followed by… very little actually. No collective public outrage, very few critical opinion pieces and no sign-carrying feminists on the streets. As the blog painfully points out:

“This ban has not liberated anyone or stopped any kind of “Islamic” extremism. What it has done is stopped women enjoying a swim, provided further ammo for gendered islamophobia and and once again shown the political system does not ask the opinions of those it effects.”

Such ugly choices, being made in France… 😦

 Epilogue

Woah, my blog is really all over the place today…I apologize… which probably means I shouldn’t publish it yet… But I think I’m gonna anyway…

Please let me pretend it’s cucumber time one last time…

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Beware of the Chinaman (and his money)!

The other day I had a disagreement with one of my best friends, let’s refer to her as Annie, that lasted no more than ten minutes but has been bothering me ever since. I’m not sure if it’s fair to play the Frisian card, but after digesting my annoyance with her for a couple of days I am tended to do just that.

Don’t get me wrong, I love Friesland. I spent the greatest part of my teen years there and am always happy to go back. However, it is also a very unforgiving place. Not only is the wide emptiness of its landscape overwhelming to city slickers, but it’s harshness can also be felt in its people.

The blow up
I’m sure this disagreement I had with Annie will sound incredibly silly to many of you and you wouldn’t even be wrong. But bare with me, I’ll lift it to a more abstract level further on that might (or might not) make it sound less petty. If you’re not in the mood to read about a childish disagreement between two grown women, skip ahead to the analysis, down by the Snoopy cartoon. I totally would. 😉

Anyway, it started out with us chatting about soccer, and SC Heerenveen more specifically. They haven’t been doing so well lately and on top of that the club’s board of directors is struggling with internal conflicts and childish name calling.

While I was with Annie one of the members of the board, Mr Hettinga, resigned. In his announcement he said his position had been put up for discussion and he felt there was no longer enough support for him to be able to stay on. He also described threats he had received in recent days but he felt the final straw break the camel’s back when angry “fans” had come to express their anger at his home and threatened his family.

I must admit, Annie is way more into the daily hustle and bustle of the club and often has more inside information than I do. She told me he was ruining the club and that if he had had his way there would have been no more Heerenveen. She said his resignation only demonstrated he had no true heart for the club and that his complaints about his safety reaffirmed he was self centered and a coward on top of that . My reaction was, “What the hell were supporters doing at his house!?”.

So how had he been damaging the club? Was he stealing money? Was he involved in some gambling scam? Was he selling off our best players with no profit for the club?

No, the issue was that he had dared speak to a Chinese company, who had shown interest in investing in the club…

Annie sent me the links of several newspaper articles to back her story up, but the more she showed me, the more I disagreed with her.

I told her I was mostly disappointed in the fact that heerenveen fans were starting to behave like hooligans and that that was more damaging for the club than a guy discussing the possibilities for foreign investors.

She told me I didn’t know what I was talking about and that if Hettinga would have had his way there would have ended Heerenveen. She didn’t say “Heerenveen as we know it”. She was literally convinced the club would be wiped off the face of the planet…

I expressed my doubts about this. I told her that ruining the club was not in the interest of an investor. They want profit. I reminded her Heerenveen, like so many soccer clubs, had been struggling financially. Even though we may not like to see it that way the club is actually a business and if an investor offers to pump money into it, you would be irresponsible to NOT consider it.

When she noticed I didn’t share her hatred for mr Hettinga nor her fear for the Chinese, she made a quick attempt to change the subject. However, I wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.

And that’s when she exploded. She let all the sarcastic bile out of the bag and said something along the lines of “I guess you don’t care about the club anyway so why don’t you just hand in your membership card straight away and request a Cambuur membership card”. To understand how serious this remark is, you may want to read back the blog I wrote about the rivalry between these two clubs.

In short she was calling me a traitor…

Her reaction was so strong that it startled me. At the same time it made me giggle because it was so bloody ridiculous! I asked her, jokingly, if I should barricade my house now that I had dared disagree with her and her beloved newspaper (notorious for its crappy journalism, but I didn’t tell her that). She said maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea and might give some of those hooligans a call. We both laughed, but with clenched teeth…

Analysis
So…. What was this really about and why did I feel the urge to write about it here? After thinking on it for a while I decided you can boil it down to one word:

Xenophobia.

Such an ugly trait. Narrow minded and based on fear.

My friend Annie and I were raised very differently and we get along both despite and because of our differences. She is a farmer’s daughter and was the first one in her direct family to get on a plane. Her family were only OK with it because it was with me, and I understood the world. We have traveled long and far together, which is why it pains me to see I have not been able to rid her of this ridiculous fear of the unknown.

I have compared Frisians to hobbits before and I think the comparison still fits in this context. I believe it was Bilbo who wrote to his nephew:

It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.

Frisians have a similar attitude towards traveling. It’s mostly something you hear about from those black sheep in the family that dared wander beyond the border, where you can no longer see the town’s church tower. It’s endearing, in a way. But when it translates to wariness and mistrust of all things foreign, it becomes not only annoying but also dangerous. It makes a community close up like a clam or a fearful hedgehog with its spikes all out.

It impedes them from seeing beauty in new places. And even if they saw it, half of them would never dare admit it. It gives me a nasty taste in my mouth to think that my great friend can not overcome such pettiness and I guess I am disappointed I didn’t influence her as much as I thought I did.

And at the same time… It’s what I love about her. She’s strong willed and unapolagetic and I’m pretty sure next time we meet we’ll give each other a punch and a hug and continue on as we always did, because as the Chinese say:

Sail 2015

Today was the last day of the quinquennial (it means once every five years, I looked it up 😉 ) event SAIL in Amsterdam.

More than 40 impressive tall ships and several historical and monumental ships with interesting stories to tell entered in an awe inspiring parade and have been on display the last couple of days. Yesterday, the royal family arrived in their own sail boat, called the Groene Draeck (the green dragon) for the final day of the event.

I was lucky enough to be invited by some friends who happen to be journalists for a boating show and magazine and had a small boat for the week and some time to spend with friends in between. After a small tour over our capital’s canals, we entered the harbor area. Teije, one of the journalists in my company, knew a lot about the history and legacy of the boats and told me about them as we passed them by.

One of the shiniest boats around turned out to have quite a tainted past: the Chilean navy ship Esmeralda. As “one of the most controversial ship present”, not everyone was ready to welcome it into the harbor with open arms, according to Teije, as it has supposedly been used during Pinochet’s dictatorship to question and torture political prisoners. Despite the ugly reputation, she’s still quite a looker though:

And then there was the world’s largest sailing vessel made completely from wood, the Götheborg. It even smelled different, passing it by! An amazing piece of craftmanship, pun intended!

Another unique boat at the event, easy to overlook between all the shiny giants, was another wooden ship, the Nao Victoria. It was Teije’s personal favorite as it spoke to his boyish dreams of sailing around the world. This boat was a replica of the first ship to successfully circumnavigate the world in an expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan. The expedition began with five ships but the Victoria was the only ship to complete the voyage. Even Magellan didn’t make it back. I must admit I wasn’t able to take any decent pic of this one, as I didn’t get the right angle from the little boat I was in. So thanks to google, you do get a small impression:

And to finish things up, I thought I’d include the ship named after the city it all took place in this year, the city of Amsterdam:

Ahoy, everyone!

Thirty kms down the road

In last Saturday’s blog I briefly mentioned the rivalry between the soccer team from Leeuwarden, which is Cambuur and the team from Heerenveen, which is SC Heerenveen. I also mentioned it’s kind of complicated, but I’m going to try to explain it the best I can.

Background information
To understand some of the animosity between these two teams, you need to understand Friesland a bit. And don’t worry if you don’t totally get it, most Dutch people struggle with this province as well.

Friesland is a rural province. You know the famous Dutch cows? They’re from here. See a big black strong looking horse in a movie? It’s probably a Frisian.

People here tend to be slightly conservative. They have their own language and anthem (and this last thing is particularly important for this story) and get quite touchy about its status. Other Dutchies like making fun of them and can get to them quite easily just by calling Frisian a “dialect” instead of a language. Quite a large minority still walks on wooden shoes.

I hope you’re starting to get the picture here. They’re farmers; if not for real than surely in spirit. They’re simple people with small vocabularies, not particularly fond of strangers. Tractors are cool. A meal is not a meal without potatoes. Yes, kind of like hobbits, except the landscape is completely flat.

Heerenveen
Heerenveen is a town just barely more than a village. In the rest of the country it’s mainly known for its sport related activities. The have a sports Academy and lots of facilities for top sporters to train. The ice skating stadium here is loved by everyone with a heart for speed skating thanks to the amazing atmosphere and surprisingly good conditions for a low altitude track.

Frisianness shows its charming sides here. People are proud of their background and show this by wearing embarrassing home knitted sweaters with the Frisian flag on it. Sportmatches here are family events, where everyone knows eachother in a jiffy, if they didn’t already and Frisians and “Hollanders” mingle quite harmoniously.

Before every SC Heerenveen match, the Frisian anthem is played and sung loudly by all.

Leeuwarden
Leeuwarden is the capital of Friesland. It’s also a small town but with big city aspirations/pretensions. People from Leeuwarden don’t particularly like to be described as Frisians. Don’t ask me why, it’s beyond me, because they’re pretty much the same. Ok, maybe they don’t walk on wooden shoes, I’ll give them that…

Leeuwarders consider themselves to be open minded (they really aren’t). Sure, there’s a bigger chance a L’warder will attempt to speak some English when encountering a foreigner, but it’ll still be a pretty cold welcome, imho…

Anyhow, there’s a soccer club here in a neighborhood called Cambuur. The story goes that factory workers came to Friesland for some reason (to process milk? Really, no clue), and that they settled down in this neighborhood.

I’m not sure about what era this would have taken place or if any of this is true but what I do know is that Cambuur soccer club was founded and it’s fanbase ended up having an anti-frisian sentiment

SC Heerenveen and I

I was introduced to SC Heerenveen by one of my best friends. Her uncle worked at the stadium and knew most of the players on the team quite well. He would get tickets for the matches all the time and when his own kids couldn’t go, we would be invited. I have fond memories of these matches and my friend and I became die hard fans in the end, more than the rest of the family.

We started going to away games as much as to the ones at the home stadium and made new friends in the process. There was always an easy going atmosphere, with funny chants being invented on the spot without ever getting truly harmful or insulting to anyone (OK, maybe towards the referee once or twice) and always in good fun.

Our biggest and realest rival was FC Groningen, from the neighboring province, that had “Pride of the North” as their slogan. Obviously, we didn’t agree. The match against them was the match of the year and no matter what happened during the rest of the season, this one needed to be won in order for it to be an OK year. We would steal each others flags or decorate each other’s cars / buses in the rival’s colors and things like that. FC Groningen supporters were actually quite comparable to SC Heerenveen fans, in hindsight. A lot of ugly words, gestures and chants did go back and forth during these “Derbies of the North” but it was really all quite innocent.

Heerenveen and Cambuur

This is how it went for years, until Cambuur got promoted into the Dutch premier league after years of absence. This changed the whole ball game, literally. Cambuur doesn’t have fans, it has hooligans. Dads don’t take their kids to these games like they do in Heerenveen (and Groningen), let alone their wives and mothers. They’re all punks. For real.

Their presence in the premier league didn’t only change the game, it changed traffic too, as statements through bumper-stickers, caused middle fingers to be raised by complete strangers while waiting at a traffic light. My friend even had a guy make a throat slitting gesture to her once, just because she had a Heerenveen shawl in her car… It was weird.

To make matters worse, the current coach of Heerenveen used to be Cambuur’s coach. When the announcement was made he received threats and Cambuurders vowed they would block all roads to make sure he wouldn’t be able to leave town. Even now, some years later, it is a very delicate matter that drives the Cambuur camp into a blind rage from time to time.

The animosity is such that Leeuwarders / Cambuurders refuse to sing the anthem of Friesland as they consider it to be the anthem of Heerenveen, as it has always been sung at Heerenveen games. They even avoid the word Heerenveen all together and refer to the city and the club as DKV, which stands for Dertig Kilometer Verderop. This translates to: Thirty kilometers down the road… All I can do is roll my eyes and hope we beat them this season.

The first meeting will be on the 1st of November and the return game is on the 31st of January. All though I will not be wearing my shawl in public that day out of fear for my life from these yellow-blue lunatics, I will be crossing my fingers all the way…