The Happier the Hotelier, The Happier the Guest
One of the reasons I like to visit Vienna in summertime is the quality of the street artists performing there. A real gem of destination marketing by this guy.
He’s able to sit still for hours, but can move:
When someone wants to make a photo.
Or when his partner comes along…
Doutzen is probably one of our best export products. As a top fashion model she’s been the face of L’Oreal and Victoria’s Secret – Uhm maybe more than just a face…recently.
In January, 2011 the 25 years young lady has given birth to a healthy young daughter and just 8 weeks thereafter the media proudly announced her belly was back in form…
Yesterday it was announced (also by herself on Twitter) she has landed a Feature Film role for a project of Eye Works, Nova Zembla. It will tell a story about Dutch navigator Willem Barentz who attempted several times to discover a North East passage to India above Siberia. One of his attempts ended in his ship stuck in a field of icebergs which caused the crew to stay at the Nova Zebla Island during the winter of 1596.
I predict that Doutzen’s warm voice and personality will cause the ice to melt.
As I said earlier: The Netherlands is worth a trip solely to enjoy the beauty of its women! A (Michelin Guide) three star country in that respect.
First a little language exercise: I needed a proper title for the post and tried Google Translate to get a proper English translation for the Dutch word “onderbroek” (litterally “underpants”). I got the following results with Google: 1) panties, 2) underpants, 3) briefs, 4) knickers, 5) pants and 6) drawers….Off course I could check out the Urban dictionary for each of these words, but instead tried a Google Images search for them. Then it became clear soon: Briefs it should be…
The Hague has his own comics subculture in the form of a series of comic strip books around “Haagsche Harry” You see him in the first photo here above. He uses the local dialect to comment on what is happening in and around The Hague. Since The Hague is the center of Dutch Government, he doesn’t refrain from commenting Dutch politicians and even sometimes with mild humor comments on the Dutch Royal Family.
Recently 9 students at the The Hague ROC business school adopted the idea to introduce Green Yellow Briefs. Green and Yellow are the colors of the City of The Hague. Actually the briefs are white because of the costs involved to create them in Green and Yellow would be a bit too high. However they do have a Haagsche Harry badge in green and yellow applied to the front and “Ut Groen Geile Broekkie” – or Green Yellow Briefs – written over the back.
Yesterday the briefs were officially introduced by the initiators, Marnix Rueb who created Haagsche Harry and the self proclaimed Night Mayor of The Hague, nicknamed Haagsche Bom.
Sources (mainly in Dutch):
Recently I’ve hosted a brainstorm meetup for Absolutely The Hague! that I started together with others to put my home city The Hague more on the map. Sometimes we abbreviate the name between ourselves as ATH. We started it at WordPress.com, but will soon move it to a self hosted WordPress site.
As the host I wasn’t able to take photos of this “historic event”. Therefore I use here a photo of the stork, featured in the hall of my Haagsche Suites that “Stork Frans” came photographing in the meantime for his collection of over 800 Stork photos. Frans is now in the process of finalizing a photo book of the Stork and The Hague which also will contain a “Stork Walk” in The Hague with map and photos.
While I was writing this post Henry Soenarko beat me with a great post about the meetup at Absolutely The Hague Meets Hofstijl, which he syndicated here. Thanks again Henry!
Nevertheless I’ll complete this post to introduce various people to you. We were with 10 The Hague Passionati together:
I believe it worked well, but leave judgments to others:-)
Some Facts and figures about Absolutely The Hague thusfar:
I’ve said this earlier: The Netherlands is worth a trip solely to enjoy the beauty of its woman! Some may add: “and/or the beauty of its men” 🙂
However, now this Dutchman can proudly show you his own beautiful offshoot: His first granddaughter.
Her mother and press agent, my DD#2 (Dear Daughter number 2), is very adamant that the publishing rights of Photos of our little princess, certainly Holland’s next top model, are strictly under her control to which I should adhere. So this proud grand dad has been sitting on his hands for more than a week before he could share this beauty with you:-)
For completeness sake I have to admit that this is an Anglo Dutch co-production.