Dutch stuff
Just in case someone still didn’t know, in about 20 days I’m departing… to the Netherlands \o/\o/\o/ - all details here. Specifically speaking, I’m going to Utrecht, a beautiful and reasonably big city near Amsterdam… This video might show much more than I’m able to describe :)
And now for some Dutch stuff: first of all, the Netherlands are home to several symphonic/gothic metal bands, and my favorite is Epica. There goes a picture of Simone Simons, Epica’s beautiful and very talented lead singer:
We also have a lot of dutch Computer Science celebrities. The great Prof. Dijkstra is a proud dutchman, but unfortunately he left us in 2002 - R.I.P Prof. Dijkstra… Andrew Tanenbaum also lives is a happy dutch researcher, he is still alive and lives in Amsterdam, where he is a lecturer at the Vrije Universiteit
Another dutch tradition: milk and dairy products. Gouda cheese is certainly TEH BEST IN TEH WORLD :P and there’s an actual city named “Gouda” in South Holland, where young ladies in wooden shoes carry the cheese and sell them in the main square, FOR REALZ.
Football is a true passion for the dutch, and they specially love their national team, the “Oranje”. An example of this lively love are these supporters:
Also something that very few people actually know is that “Holland” is a monarchy. No coincidence that the real name of the country is “Kingdom of the Netherlands” (Koninkrijk der Nederlanden). So here is Queen Beatrix, sovereign of The Kingdom of the Netherlands, on the annual opening of parliament (Prinsjesdag 2010):
And last, but not least, what makes me really excited about the Netherlands, above all, is the sheer happiness of the dutch people. Specially in summer, it seems that they are always smiling… The music festival “Muziekfeest op het plein” is a good example of this sheer happiness. Here’s the song “Harmonika Tijd”, from the “Palemiger Spatzen”: