Empty Dutch cities and towns and beaches

[pieter]

[karl]

Pieter

As shown by the drone, those streets are certanily very void of people. The empty streets plus the parked bicycles lend to the scene a ghostly feeling..

It would be interesting if once this situation is over, to film the same scene occupied with people, then compare the two..

Karl

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

[pieter]

The university city Groningen in the Low Saxon North-East of the Netherlands

[pieter]

[Jaga]

Pieter, how people really deal with the social distancing in Arnhem? Is it possible to go to the park or store? I think that the number of cases is finally going down. Here in Idaho there is a plan of gradual opening up the businesses and economy. All stores are open but we would probably not go back to work until 2-3 weeks from now.

[pieter]

Jaga,

Everywhere there are strict measures, guards in supermarkets, taped lines with 1,5 meter, people staying at home, people going to supermarkets for their groceries and people walking and cycling with safe distance, because they need exercise. Because I have a crucial job (press/media) I see more people than the average person. In Arnhem the situation is like Idaho. Supermarkets, some horeca (only take away with safe distance), restaurants who deliver dinners at home, and little and medium big companies and freelancers stuggling extremely hard to surive. Filling in papers for governent support, thinking about the future, thinking about a 'Social distancing' economy of the near future. Parents became part time teachers for their children at home and schools have online lessons for pupils and students online lectures, politicians (local councilors) als communicate online). I keep making video content.

Interviews like tnese:


Local councillors cook for homeless people


I follow the city council (Muncipality) page for online gatherings and I watch the ones that take place: arnhem.notubiz.nl/

And I sometimes make video\s about these online gatherings


Cheers,
Pieter

[kaima]

Yesterday (Saturday) I drove the 360 km from Homer, Alaska to Anchorage and enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way, from the active but snow covered volcanoes across Cook Inlet hinting at obscurity in the naturally hazy air (normally they are crystal clear!) to passing through the bustling town of Soldotna (the McDonalds was tied up with 6 cars and trucks waiting in the take out lane; there was no indoor service) so I bought my not-so-excellent coffee from the gas station where I tanked up for the remaining 2/3 of the drive.

The next stretch of highway to the mountains always struck me as ho-hum, somehow not 'wilderness to my taste', with the scattering of businessses here and there along the road, something of a blight on the otherwise pure wilderness.

My enthusiasm returns once back in the beautiful Kenai Mountains, and there are two humps to go over, most often not a challenge with the modern roads so straight and broad. My vague memories of 1970's drives to Seward (bypassed on this drive) is of a challenging, twisting mountain road climbing and descending around winding curves, alternating between sunny and shadow, with the latter always threatening patches of ice in three seasons to catch the unwary driver. Today we go through the winters with excellent snow service, not that it was not good back then; perhaps I don't drive the mountains as often as I did back then. But the roads this last winter have carried me 4 or 5 times through with just some ice requiring attention, rarely needing to settle under 60 mph or 100 kmh. Blowing snow? Perhaps I encountered it twice over a ten mile stretch.

This trip in springtime catches the last of the recreational snow and beginning of exposed hiking trails, and the mountain parking lots at major and minor recreational areas were mostly bully packed with vehicles disgorging people into the great wildernesses to enjoy. That was wonderful to see, wonderful to live in a state large enough to accept all these people and allow them to go, enjoy, and safely maintain the necessary social distancing needed for this health crisis. Car pooling may not exist, certainly not as it normally does, today, but the people are still enjoying a full recreation of life.

Traffic was non-existent except for the drive through 'metropolitan' Soldotna and for the last 50 miles along Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet, the last 50 mile / 80 km run into Anchorage proper. The rule has always been to not catch the rush out of Anchorage Friday night / early Saturday, or the rush to return to Anchorage in the afternoon and evening of Sunday. It still seems quite valid. Our geography is such that we have one road south and one road north as our sole road connections to the world. If I head west I cross 12 miles to the point of land at the edge of Anchorage, and Cook Inlet. There if I sailed out the inlet and due south I would eventually come to Hawaii, if I navigate properly. If I leave my flat in Anchorage and head east, I have half a mile / 1 km to the edge of the city, and after that mountains, glaciers and rivers for hundreds of miles until I cross the sole highway to the east. Then the next is just past the Canadian border, and after that the wildernesses and expanses of Canada. But then I don't have the resources or ambitions to attempt a hike due east from where I live.

It is a beautiful time and place to live, with all of the challenges facing the world today. It promises to be a wonderful summer, uncrowded by tourists competing to enjoy the wonders of this land. That latter is tragic, as many people here must live off the earnings from their summer work and enterprise. What will become of the tourist 'industry' and how our society will change, in Alaska and in the world, remain to be seen.

We certainly live in interesting times!

Kai

PS. Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet (of the Pacific Ocean) was unnamed when Captain Cook explored these regions looking for the elusive Northwest Passage around the Americas. As he sailed up the branch of the Inlet he realized it was another 'blind alley' with no exit, and thus he had to "Turn Again" as he departed.

[kaima]

Pieter,

This may be a lazy man's approach to research, but I don't know where to begin.

You have the House of Orange
There is the fruit 'oranges'.

What came first, the name of the House (or dynasty?) or the name of the color, or the name of the fruit?



This was inspired by the news:

Dutch students complete Atlantic crossing forced by virus
By ALEKSANDAR FURTULA
an hour ago




HARLINGEN, Netherlands (AP) — Greeted by relieved parents, pet dogs, flares and a cloud of orange smoke, a group of 25 Dutch high school students with very little sailing experience ended a trans-Atlantic voyage Sunday that was forced on them by coronavirus restrictions.

The children, ages 14 to 17, watched over by 12 experienced crew members and three teachers, were on an educational cruise of the Caribbean when the pandemic forced them to radically change their plans for returning home in March.

That gave one of the young sailors, 17-year-old Floor Hurkmans, one of the biggest lessons of her impromptu adventure.

“Being flexible, because everything is changing all the time,” she said as she set foot on dry land again. “The arrival time changed like 100 times. Being flexible is really important.”

Instead of flying back from Cuba as originally planned, the crew and students stocked up on supplies and warm clothes and set sail for the northern Dutch port of Harlingen, a five-week voyage of nearly 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles), on board the 60-meter (200-foot) top sail schooner Wylde Swan.

As they arrived home, the students hung up a self-made banner saying “Bucket List” with ticks in boxes for Atlantic Ocean crossing, mid-ocean swim and surviving the Bermuda triangle.

The teens hugged and chanted each other’s names as they walked off the ship and into the arms of their families, who drove their cars alongside the yacht one by one to adhere to social distancing rules imposed to rein in the spread of the virus that forced the students into their long trip home.

For Hurkmans, the impossibility of any kind of social distancing took some getting used to.

“At home you just have some moments for yourself, but here you have to be social all the time to everyone because you’re sleeping with them, you’re eating with them you’re just doing everything with them so you can’t really just relax,” she said.

Her mother, Renee Scholtemeijer, said she expects her daughter to miss life on the open sea once she encounters coronavirus containment measures in the Netherlands.

“I think that after two days she’ll want to go back on the boat, because life is very boring back at home,” she said. “There’s nothing to do, she can’t visit friends, so it’s very boring.”

The twin-masted Wylde Swan glided into Harlingen harbor late morning Sunday, its sails neatly stowed. Onlookers gathered on a sea wall to watch the arrival set off flares and a smoke grenade that sent an orange cloud drifting over the glassy water.

Masterskip, the company that organized the cruise, runs five educational voyages for about 150 students in all each year. Crossing the Atlantic is nothing new for the Wylde Swan, which has made the trip about 20 times.

The company’s director, Christophe Meijer, said the students were monitored for the coronavirus in March to ensure nobody was infected.

He said he was pleased the students had adapted to life on board and kept up their education on the long voyage.

“The children learned a lot about adaptivity, also about media attention, but also their normal school work,” he said. “So they are actually far ahead now of their Dutch school colleagues. They have made us very proud.”

____

Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.

apnews.com/1534addd5ef237377acd1b46ffa81e95

[pieter]

[kaima]

Apr 26, 2020 7:31:00 GMT -7 kaima said:

Pieter,

This may be a lazy man's approach to research, but I don't know where to begin.

You have the House of Orange
There is the fruit 'oranges'.

What came first, the name of the House (or dynasty?) or the name of the color, or the name of the fruit?



This was inspired by the news:

Dutch students complete Atlantic crossing forced by virus
By ALEKSANDAR FURTULA
an hour ago


____

Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report.

apnews.com/1534addd5ef237377acd1b46ffa81e95

To start to answer my own question, a quick google brought:

Surprisingly, the fruit came first, originating in China, and the English word 'orange' to describe the colour, followed thereafter. It's thought that the orange fruit originally came from China – the German word Apfelsine and the Dutch sinaasappel (Chinese apple) reflect this.Mar 9, 2018
The Surprising Origins of the Word Orange - Culture Trip
The Surprising Origins of the Word Orange - Culture Triptheculturetrip.com


and

www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2010/mar/31/origin-of-the-orange

Notes and queries
Which came first, orange the colour or orange the fruit? Why you couldn't ambush the 9th Legion at night; When Blur were better than Oasis

Is an orange called an orange because it's orange, or is orange orange because of the orange? Which came first, the fruit or the colour?

The fruit came first. The English word "orange" has made quite a journey to get here. The fruit originally came from China – the German word Apfelsine and the Dutch sinaasappel (Chinese apple) reflect this – but our word ultimately comes from the Old Persian "narang". Early Persian emperors collected exotic trees for their landscape gardens, which may well have included orange trees. Arabs later traded the fruit and spread the word all the way to Moorish Spain; the Spanish word for orange is "naranja". In Old French, the fruit became "orenge" and this was adopted into Middle English, eventually becoming our orange, fruit as well as colour.

Anna Alberda Ellis, Huddersfield

As the instance of "pume orenge" in a 13th-century Anglo-Norman manuscript indicates, orange was in fact first used as an adjective. Yet, the Persian word from which "orange" is derived did not refer to the colour of the fruit, but to the bitterness of its skin. Orange as a colour adjective dates from the early 16th century; therefore we can say that the orange is called orange because it is orange, as well as orange is orange because of the orange.

Wilfried Heinz, Tübingen, Germany

and

www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-4756,00.html

There is no single English word that rhymes with orange.

This research is driving me bananas!

A friend who worked in Cameroon told me that oranges there are green. As a result, somebody who asked for their house to be painted orange encountered perhaps predictable results.
R Tanner, St Monans Scotland

and the best:
What are you talking about? The colour of an orange is carrot.
Mark Lewney, Cardiff

[Jaga]

Kai,

the next time have a camera with you like the police cruise car so we can see some pictures. It sounds so pictoresque! Good to know you are safe and sound back home after a good trip

Apr 26, 2020 6:57:31 GMT -7 kaima said:

Yesterday (Saturday) I drove the 360 km from Homer, Alaska to Anchorage and enjoyed the beautiful scenery along the way, from the active but snow covered volcanoes across Cook Inlet hinting at obscurity in the naturally hazy air (normally they are crystal clear!) to passing through the bustling town of Soldotna (the McDonalds was tied up with 6 cars and trucks waiting in the take out lane; there was no indoor service) so I bought my not-so-excellent coffee from the gas station where I tanked up for the remaining 2/3 of the drive.

....

We certainly live in interesting times!

Kai

PS. Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet (of the Pacific Ocean) was unnamed when Captain Cook explored these regions looking for the elusive Northwest Passage around the Americas. As he sailed up the branch of the Inlet he realized it was another 'blind alley' with no exit, and thus he had to "Turn Again" as he departed.