Cuisine And So Forth

Because I thought you might be interested.

The Dutch typical food is:

a) cigarettes. LOTS.
b) Bread
c) Cheese
d) more specifically, Bread and Cheese
e) weird citrus-flavoured yogurt milk drinks. Seriously. It sounds disgusting.  You do not put citrus in dairy products.  It's just wrong.
f) fish, particularly raw herring
g) well, I can tell you that "broodje" (brode-yuh) means "sandwich," whereas "brood" means "bread / roll." Also, they have no Maple Syrup, nor Cottage Cheese, nor Sour Cream, nor Mexican Margaritas. Their bread here, in the supermarkten (supermarkets) consist of 5 ingredients, whereas bread back home consists of 37. This is due to a lack of processing, excessive preservatives, and general chemicals and corporate ick. Consequently, it's easier to sift through the ingredients for veganness :)
h) SOOOO MANY STROOPWAFELS (strope-vafels).  EVERYWHERE!  Like Michael Jackson.
i) Indonesian food. Because they were/are colonisers.  But were colonisers of Indonesia, more specifically.

My Dutch teacher (as in, of the language) informs us that there's no "national Dutch cuisine", just certain dishes...herring...and stroopwafels.  So, that's all I have to give.  Like my love, as the Backstreet Boys would say.

The nice caretaker of our building is doing an amazing job.  He just replaced our kitchen chairs, is giving us a new sofa (in our particular little apartment lounge), all new mattresses (so we can have 2 now!), is going to replace our floors, AND had people paint each floor / hall!  We have an awesome blauw, which means "blue" for you non-Dutch-speakers.

Also, on Sunday we had "Car-Free Sunday" here in Amsterdam!  This was celebrated by at least three (maybe four) events in the city streets: ParkArt; a Sunday Albert Cuypmarkt; a runner marathon along Prins Hendrikkade (the main street running along the Amsterdam city-water edge) complete with security guards, confetti, balloons, announcers, identifiably European carnival music (it just sounded European, like Amelie-ish), and frigging huuuunnnnnndreds of people, and an announcers' stand, and gates to block the runners off from the bystanders; and then, I also saw a gigantic swarm of serious bikers, all with their fancy helmets and racing spandex shorts and fingerless gloves and so forth.  Their little train went on foreeeeever, and I was trying to get by them!  Impossible.

ParkArt was a semi-outdoor, semi-inside-an-empty-parking-garage-and-thus-possibly-"underground" (?) art market/festival/celebration thing, with DJs and food and graffiti-art and Pollock-ish (ish) art, and records and shirts and hair-wrapping and children and funny children's toys and a "garden guerilla" stand.  My RAs sent us an e-mail telling us about it, saying it's a day when "Young artists and others are selling and buying art + other crafts on the street and in parking lots."  Way less cool than my description.  It was going to last until 10pm and have a like dance party or some such at the end.  All sorts of funkiness and spray paint.

I ended up not going to the special Sunday Albert Cuypmarkt ("cowp") that they were holding, because I stayed at ParkArt until 5pm, which is when the Cuypmarkt closes down.  (Well, it's usually not open at all on Sundays, so technically I had no idea when it would close on this particular day).  Friends of the squatters I know were having a special bike workshop there, in order to help people fix their own bikes, as part of sustainability.  I was encouraged to go there, because my front bike fender went free-styling (as well as my front light) when the nut and bolt holding them both to the main handle-bars stem fell out.  I went to the hardware store on my way back (walking!!! :( ) from school today and found convenient little packages of nuts/bolts, and of washers (and guessed TOTALLY the right size! plus the nice cashier helped me), so I'm all good and it's no problem that I missed the market.  But I have a feeling the atmosphere would have been awesome and I'm a little sad I didn't see the seed exchange the squat garden was holding there, and that I helped them prepare for the Saturday before.





In case you were interested in the nitty-gritty details (from Facebook):

ParkArt

The Creative Sunday Market

Host:	Langgewagt
Type:	Other - Festival
Network:	Global
Price:	free

Date:	Sunday, 20 September 2009
Time:	13:00 - 22:00
Location:	Spuistraat 219 / Wijdesteeg
Town/City:	Amsterdam, Netherlands

Email:

info@parkart.nl

A street and a parking garage full of arts and crafts, design, fashion, authentic food, drinks, performances, dj’s, books, accessories and surprises

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www.parkart.nl

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Market stands:
Ot & Otje’s art and design objects and clothing, Prints & The Revolution’s silkscreen prints by different artists; Anahi Ayala Cevat’s small paintings of all kinds of materials; Supershirt’s design shirts Hanazuki’s self produced items by creatives all over the world; Razk’s clothing; Roel Endendijk’s friendship bracelets; Denise Rosenboom’s surprising paintings and objects; Alessandra Rigello’s jewelry of recycled materials; Hamersopmaat’s simple bags and easy going products; Kindermassive’s collage art works; Rododenron’s graphics and photoproducts by different designers; PopStitch’s cute monsters, wallets and other sweet stuff; Edith-made-it’s cartoons, illustrations and graphic design; Dancing Astronaut’s Asian underground t-shirts and accessories; Basserk’s label t-shirts and lp’s; Erik Bruijs’ paintings; Marta Boino Eliseu’s jewelry; Guerilla gardening; Beter & Leuk’s t-shirts; Concerto’s lp’s, cd’s and more; Power vs Power’s music and t-shirts; Gijs Kast’s bohnhase books, silkscreenprints and t-shirts; Stiksel’s bags and accessories; Studio’s Karoshi’s t-shirts; Wendy van Santen’s photography; Ted & Saus’ dolls and clothing; Hetzer & Mike’s, formerly known as Straatpasta, artworks; Brown Clothes’ fashion design; Marijke Neppelenbroek’s jewelry design; Daan Dirven’s paintings; De Slang’s EatArt/ChocArt and Scared SnakeShot; Michel Willemsen’s paintings; Marieke van Veen’s art objects and vintage clothing; DOM-vs-Fierce Ruling Diva’s treasure chest relics vs vinyl &vintage; Loom Design’s product design and serving spoons; Irene Krajina’s t-shirt design; Rushhour’s vinyl; Xander Poelman’s drawing reproductions; Hanz’ artoonist paintings; Aukjes Atelier’s clothing, bags and jewelry; Ben-G’s stock sale

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Installations and activities:
Daan’s Business’ coffee installation; Haas & Hahn’s ‘Cheiro de Gaz’ video installation; Alberto de Michele’s video installation; Studio Sophisti’s multitouch table for virtual graffiti; Janisland’s pop up mushrooms; Marije’s children’s recycled carbuilding; Studio-K’s haircut

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DJs:
Quartier Mustache's retro records "CousCousClub"; Aardvarck "Rednose District"; DJ Mr. Ghilazghi's reggae "Winston"; Edo Salgado "Elevator People"; Samidi's lots of bass "BassRiot"; Lustige lola & Weltschmerz' electro-clash "OT301"; Silvester's hiphop & funk "GroundUp"; GoatBoy's funny beat & bass "Heppie de Peppie"

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Performances:
Maurice Seleky's spoken word; Sjmapocalypse Soon's music improvisation; The Beatzers' ska; En Mono's live looping; Eva de Pleva & Dj Dolly’s Club Pipi at the toilet

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Foods and Drinks:
Wat de pot schaft’s self-made ice cream; Spincake’s pancakes; Lekker traiteur’s French- Japanese sushi;
La Cocinera’s home-made pumpkin soup; ParkArt’s beer, wine, coffee, tea, juice and soda

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Pictures of / from the event, door mij.

Also, I still love Joseph Stiglitz and want to be him.



Off to hall dinner!  xoxo