Nederhaar

I've previously given my twopennith about Dutch fashion trends, now it's time to heap scorn and disapproval upon that other renowned dutch visual characteristic: the hair. 

Now, for those of you not familiar with the concept of Nederhaar, consider yourself lucky. This means that you have never experienced the Bar Drip. This common occurrence in the Netherlands is as follows: a young dutch gentleman who, owing to the temperature of the room, an overuse of gel in his hair and some excellent northern European genes, is now towering over you dripping small globules of supermarket own-brand wet look hair product onto the bar at an alarming rate. To find a comparable consumption of wet-look hair gel, you would have to turn up on the set of a 1990s boyband video. 

Now, 'to each his own', I hear you cry in a bored voice, no doubt induced by the inane purpose of this post, but this nation-wide trend is currently manifesting itself on top of my head. A trip to the hairdressers here seems to result in the dreaded Nederhaar, regardless of what you actually ask the hairdresser for. I'm going to go wash away the wet-look gel in the shower, along with my self-respect.

Modebloggare

The Deerfield Leather Messenger bag from Ralph Lauren has caught my eye big time. My current bag is off a similar vein, but a Topman knock-off. Still for the £30 I paid for mine against the RRP of £1 040 for this beauty, I shouldn't complain.

'Sky and Sand' by Paul Kalkbrenner is this evening's choice of chilled out tune. Kalkbrenner is a German dj and this is taken from his Berlin Calling - The Soundtrack album. Berlin Calling is a film about a dj touring the world who takes one disco biscuit too many and ends up in an institution.


 A lot more chilled out than the rest of the album, think minimal tech, "Sky and Sand" is a tune that would fit perfectly a summer evening cycling to a friend's barbeque.

Shameless promotion

Like the Twitter whore I am, I have decided to do a #followfriday. For those of you not in the know, a follow friday is where you recommend to your followers people they might like to follow. I thought I'd take the social media overload to the next level and do a follow friday of blogs you might like. 


1.) Alpine Penguin is one boy's adventures in Switzerland. It has pictures of cake. What more do you need to know?
2.) Ohhh Wienna! is the story of a friend of mine living in Vienna. She is very funny and takes good photos
3.) Brit In Het Buitenland comes live from Brussels, capital of Europe. Updates are few and far between...
4.) Rhian's Blog direct from Sweden, up there in the darkness and the cold. 
5.)72 Stroopwafels is where to go if you want constant new material to read, this may have something to do with the blogger's employment status


As we say here in Holland: geniet ervan!

Brussels

A quick sojourn to Brussels was the order of the weekend. We spent the day walking around looking at the sights and drinking beer.

We then carried the beer drinking through into the night in a bar, where I tried and failed to remember any of my luxembourgish, when met with 4 real-life Luxembourgers.

Fietscultuur

It's not that the Dutch love their bikes, they don't think of them like that, they're merely an extension of their bodies. This is probably the reason why I love the Dutch so much

Come visit me and I shall take you here

Discovered this place at the weekend when Nic and Richard came to visit. I quote, Nic: "that was the best cake I've ever had"; Richard: "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, can we do round 2 guys?"

Bagel, bagel, bagel, I made you out of dough...

Dutch is a rather resourceful language: just take an english noun (think tennis, football or bagel) and add '-en' and you've got yourself a brand new verb!

Reflections

This was the sight that greeted me whilst cycling along the canal on a sunny Sunday afternoon. I just had to dismount and snap it

The Celebrity Mango

The Celebrity Mango is the cocktail of 2011. Ingredients: 7 shots of rum per glass, one mango per glass, way too much sugar per glass and a healthy swig of tropical fruit juice and a splash of ice. Needless to say, you will get drunk merely by being in the same room as this drink...

Tafeltennissen bij De Nassau

The De Nassau table tennis competition was a heated, pitched, furied battle between 10 teams. "De Gym Meisjes" (the gym girls) on the left were formidable opposition, knocking us off the top spot we'd held since the inception of the competition way back in November. Still, coming in in second place isn't half bad!