Category: Netherlands

2008 Haagsche Koninginnenach – 2008 The Hague Queensnite: The Dutch Do Dance

The Dutch Don't Dance
The Dutch Don’t Dance, Photo © by Wouter Hogendorp and Canon

Recently I found this apt picture with apt title and color.

  1. The picture is apt because the wooden shoes or clogs stand as a sort of fake national symbol for The Netherlands, whereas hardly any Dutchman (or Cloggy as I am actually teasingly call my fellow countrymen) actually wears wooden shoes.
  2. The Title is as aptly untrue as the clog as national symbol as the Dutch do Dance, even on wooden shoes (later more on the subject of wooden shoe dancing).
  3. Actually the color is the only really apt element of this picture for today as orange is the Dutch national proud, not the national color because that is red white and blue, because it is the color of the House of Orange. Our Queen is a descendant from William of Orange who led the Dutch in their 80 years war against the Spanish. Tomorrow , 30th April is the official celebration of her 70th birthday this year and we will celebrate and dance!
Koninginnenach 2008 screensaver poster
The official 2008 Haagsche Koninginnenach Poster

But before the Dutch celebrate Koninginnedag or Queens day several cities celebrate the night before the day. In The Hague we celebrate Koninginnenach. It is a free pop festifal throughout the city. There are several Pop- and Jazz podia. In several theaters and bars there is life music and all is one big party.

On the 2008 Haagsche Koninginnenach you can actually hear the music of several groups performing tonight.

I will not get permission from my dear wife to enter the festivities with my cameras because I am just recovering from a flu alas. It is her good excuse to keep me from partying:-)

I had some luck that I found some photos on Flickr © by Fiona Bradley that give a view of the preparations for Koninginnenach. Thank you Fiona for being so quick.

Koninginnenach 2008 01
one of the pop podia
Koninginnenach 2008 02
Part of the The Hague Queens Day Fair

If you want to have a nice overview of Konininnenach pictures do a Koninginnenach search on any photo site.

Update:

And you should read the post about Dutch Orange Day in New Holland from antipode (from Down Under) James Clarke from the Australian I Travelnet Blog. Then you will understand why I am proud to be a Dutchman. And I am curious whether Nomadic Matt will report about his Amsterdam Queensday experience.

Update May 1, 2008: Nomadic Matt did indeed post about Koninginnedag, But the post has disappeared since….

Last edited by GJE on December 13, 2011 at 11:10 pm

Finding a Cool Hotel in Amsterdam – Nothing Zen! Part 7

Here we go again with my “Nothing Zen” series

A fellow TrendHunter, a very trend setting young lady from Down Under, younger than my 2 daughters (who, by the way, are two very trend setting young ladies themselves) is going to attend a conference at the VU university of Amsterdam in July and asks me whether I could recommend a Cool Hotel in Amsterdam.

My first reaction
Off course I first recommend her to stay in my own Haagsche Suites in The Hague, as commuting between The Hague and Amsterdam is usually only 45 minutes and my credo is always: “You should party in Amsterdam, but sleep in The Hague!”.

My second reaction
However, because her conference schedule is from 8.00 AM until Mid Night, she only needs a nearby comfy bed to crash and sleep in.

So my second suggestion to her is to look at the then one year open Qbic Hotel which is within walking distance. No other hotels are nearer by. Next near are some hotels at Schiphol Airport, but a bit noisy maybe.

My third reaction
As a local your knowledge of local hotels tend to be scarce. My only Amsterdam experience is a couple of nights stay at the Pulitzer Hotel, see my review at VibeAgent. Therefore this question is not so easy to answer. First I will give some off the cuff recommendations:

While talking about VibeAgent, fellow Vibe Agents recommended:

  • Renaissance Amsterdam Hotel
  • The Pulitzer Hotel
  • Bilderberg Hotel Jan Luyken
  • Hotel ‘t Jagershuis
  • Bed and Coffee
  • Amsterdam Marriott

Finding a very clever feature at VibeAgent
While looking in detail at VibeAgent, I discovered a very handy travel planning feature which is not so obvious. This is the map you get if you type in Amsterdam at their Hotel Search:

VibeAgent Amsterdam Search Page

The orange signs mean that the hotel has been reviewed by one or more of the VibeAgent members (who are called VibeAgents).
Here the order starts with the Pulitzer.
However, If you know the exact location where you have to be, you can drag the center of their map to your exact destination. Then their search results change while you move. Excellent thinking!

Vibeagent Search Results

Now the VU location is in the center of the map and suddenly you note a completely different list of hotels starting with the Novotel and the Holiday Inn.

VibeAgent has a long way to go with acquiring more content, but this is a very helpful tool to get names of hotels in a city you don’t know yet!

Fellow TrendHunters mentioned:

Hm TrendHunter should do a bit more homework. Maybe the lady in question and I should get together and do some more research.

Historic Hotels of the Benelux has 2 Amsterdam Hotels:

Some suggestions from the Weekend Hotel list for Amsterdam:

I believe there is no better site for finding a cool hotel in The Netherlands and Belgium than Weekendhotel. Search results of Weekendhotel should be matched with their List of Favorites which counts 38 hotels and B&B’s and even apartments in Amsterdam.

Maybe co author – and owner of the site- at Weekendhotel, Willem steps in with some suggestions as well, as I know he always looks at my Zen Series.

I intend to follow this up with my own list of favorite Amsterdam hotels after a bit more checking.

It still is very time consuming!

NYC: How to Save a Marcel Breuer Building

Whitney Museum of Armerican Art NYC

Titled Whitney Museum to Receive $131 Million Gift, Carol Vogel of The New York Times reports that Leonard A. Lauder, chairman of the Estée Lauder Companies and, according to Forbes magazine, with a net worth of $3.2 billion in 2007, said on Tuesday in a telephone interview that his art foundation would give the museum $131 million, the biggest donation in the Whitney’s 77-year history. Mr Lauder is also chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art.

One requirement of the gift is that it is not to sell its Marcel Breuer building on Madison Avenue for an extended period. Mr. Lauder as an architecture lover believes the Whitney and the Breuer building should not be separated.

The Whitney announced last year that it planned to open a satellite museum downtown in the meatpacking district of Manhattan, which stirred speculation that it might sell its Breuer building.

The gift includes $6 million to cover expenses until the donation is complete, which is expected to be by June 30, 2009. The money is a major infusion for the Whitney, which has been historically under-endowed. Its new endowment total of $195 million will still pale in comparison with those of institutions like the Museum of Modern Art, with an $850 million endowment. (Ronald S. Lauder, Leonard Lauder’s brother, is a trustee and former board chairman at MoMA.)

In November the Whitney announced that it had reached a conditional agreement with the city’s Economic Development Corporation to buy a city-owned site at Washington and West Streets, the same place where the Dia Art Foundation had planned to build a museum. (In October 2006 Dia said it had scrapped that idea and would seek a different site in the city.) The Whitney satellite is to be designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano.

Mr. Piano was also the architect for a proposed nine-story addition to the Breuer building that was abandoned in 2006.

The Piano scheme was the third time in more than a decade that the museum had commissioned a celebrity architect to design a major expansion, only to pull out.

Mr. Lauder’s gift is not the first major donation he has made to the Whitney. Since becoming its chairman in 1994, he has led the campaign for the new fifth-floor galleries in the Breuer building, which are devoted entirely to the permanent collection.

Six years ago he led a three-year initiative to acquire about $200 million worth of art by masters like Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock.

Mr. Lauder’s American Contemporary Art Foundation was responsible for the largest single group of art in that gift, including major works by Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Warhol and Pollock.

My Thoughts

This is a brilliant move to save a Breuer Building in a time frame where Breuer buildings seem a bit less loved than they used to be.

This is the solution when the US Ambassador to The Netherlands will leave his Marcel Breuer designed American Embassy in The Hague City Center after pressure from the The Hague Municipality because of the cumbersome safety measures put into place after 9/11:

Create a Whitney satellite in The Hague….

Happy Birthday Queen Beatrix!

Queen Beatrix 70
Queen Beatrix by Anton Corbijn

Today is our Queen’s 70th birthday. The official celebration will be 30 April, the date of her mother’s birthday, so declared in deference to Juliana by Beatrix when she was crowned Queen of the Netherlands.

According to Elsevier the official photos for this milestone were commissioned to famous pop photographer Anton Corbijn who recently bought a property around the corner from where I live and now even goes so far as to call himself a citizen of The Hague (Hagenaar).

I watched a TV documentary yesterday and concur with its title: Spoken of by many, but unbespoken: She steered our little country through various difficult periods and situations. I admire her.

Funny though that in the sixteenth century (between 1581 and 1795) part of The Netherlands formed the Dutch Republic of the Seven United Provinces and was a Democratic Republic and now it is a Constitutional Monarchy (since 1830). Dutch like to do things the other way around.

The Hague’ s Grand Old Lady Le Meridien Des Indes Sold to Pehac


Pehac, Pan-European Hotel Acquisition Company N.V., is a blank check company recently formed under the laws of the Netherlands as a public company with limited liability (naamloze vennootschap or N.V.) to serve as a vehicle for an acquisition of one or more operating businesses in the hotel industry in Europe. It is AEX listed since spring 2007.

According to a press release dated 16nd November 2007:

PEHAC announced today that it has signed a stock purchase agreement with sellers Lehwood Vienna GMBH, Starman Deutschland Holdings GMBH and Lehwood Netherlands Holdings B.V. to acquire a freehold interest in Le Meridien Grand Hotel Nuremberg and leasehold interests in six additional hotels, including Le Meridien Park Hotel Frankfurt, Le Royal Meridien Hamburg, Le Meridien Stuttgart, Le Meridien Munich, Le Meridien Vienna and Le Meridien Hotel Des Indes in The Hague. Further, PEHAC announced that it is in final negotiations regarding the proposed acquisition of a leasehold interest in Le Meridien Barcelona, a 229-room hotel, from Starman Hoteles Espana. Assuming the successful completion of each of these transactions, these hotels will continue to operate under a license and management agreement with Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc.

PEHAC believes that this combination of acquisitions offers a rare opportunity to acquire a platform of high-quality hotel properties in key-European cities, enabling it to pursue a successful buy- and build strategy.

The portfolio, excluding Le Meridien Barcelona, represents an aggregate of 1,819 hotel rooms and is expected, based on performance year-to-date, to generate approximately €102 million in revenues in 2007. Under the terms of the stock purchase agreement, the total purchase price, excluding Le Meridien Barcelona, will be € 49.25 million, and is expected to be closed in cash, without the use of debt financing. PEHAC will commit to spend an additional € 10 million for necessary capital expenditures, which amount is expected to be used primarily for the refurbishment of the freehold property in Nuremberg. Each of the other hotels subject to the stock purchase agreement as well as the Barcelona property have been extensively renovated in recent years.

Based on operating results in 2007 and estimates it believes to be reasonable for the coming year, PEHAC expects the portfolio of hotels, excluding Le Meridien Barcelona, to achieve approximately € 8.0 million in earnings before interest, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, in 2008.
Given the high-quality assets in the portfolio, and assuming the successful implementation of a pro-active asset, property and project management strategy and the continued implementation of Starwood’s respected management system and favorable market conditions, PEHAC believes that there is significant potential for further operating improvements for the portfolio.

Well…what will happen with the name now?