Bernadette Jansen op de Haar's Blog
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May.20.2013
Angela Merkel, wearing a low-cut dress, sings a song of praise to the euro. In Germany they’re starting to talk about ‘Brustwarzen Gate’ (Nipple Gate).
President Alexander Lukashenko, who made his name with the quote ‘Better a dictator than gay’, sings a folksy song entitled: ‘Man of the People’....
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May.13.2013
If you live outside the Netherlands you probably haven’t heard of Dutch singer Patricia Paay, unless your name is David Bowie.
And now her biography has been published. I haven’t read it, but it’s hard to miss: there are new revelations every day. Yet another person who strenuously denies he has...
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May.03.2013
Beatrix opened up during the handover of the throne. Her face appeared to be far livelier than before. Willem-Alexander had not only become more dignified in his ermine cloak, but from this moment on his face represented the entire nation. He was ready for it, and Máxima was a magnificent Evita of...
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Apr.17.2013
Mao regularly swam in the Yangtze to prove that he was still perfectly fit. Putin rode a horse bare-chested and performed some judo throws, if necessary with the horse, and two weeks ago David Cameron rescued a sheep that had got stuck.
For a moment I thought it was a publicity stunt. It could have...
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Apr.08.2013
At the first jeweller’s the lady at the desk dropped her jaw. ‘No, this is not something we do!’ At the second jeweller’s they virtually ignored me. The third jeweller was prepared to cut the rings from my mother’s fingers.
And this jeweller was Mrs Walters, from Walters Jewellers in Koningstraat,...
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Mar.27.2013
The other Francis could talk to animals, but this one seems to have eaten a few. Until recently the Pope prepared his own meals, and everyone who does this knows it results in cooking too much food.
A rotund pope: that puts me at ease. He’s a modest man; when he was a cardinal he didn’t have a car...
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Mar.06.2013
So, looking like Quasimodo, I made my way in turn across Arnhem, Roosendaal, Antwerp, Brussels South, St Pancras and Paddington stations. Changing trains when you have gout is quite laborious. Especially when you are trying to get to the designated smoking area at the far end of the platform at...
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Feb.22.2013
This has been a week in which we have come to see a few things in a new light. According to Hilary Mantel, Kate is made of plastic. It also transpired that we’re eating quite a bit of horse, and in Amsterdam they have abolished the word ‘allochtoon’.
The same Kate who takes off her clothes at...
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Feb.15.2013
When a plane makes its descent over the Netherlands, the landscape is laid out like a painting by Mondrian, neatly divided up into rectangles. From up in the sky you can see that everything is well structured. Down on earth, too, everything feels highly organised; people like to be part of a group...
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Feb.06.2013
Last week even dyed-in-the-wool republicans joined the chorus of approval for Queen Beatrix and pledged their trust to Willem-Alexander (the Dutch Crown Prince). ‘And to Máxima (his wife),’ they added quickly.
In the past few days Her Majesty couldn’t put a foot wrong. It was just a ‘coincidence’...
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Jan.28.2013
I still feel like a young person, but of course I’m really middle-aged, and this middle-aged man found himself in the lingerie department of a large store looking for socks with grip: anti-slip socks.
It’s a bit uncomfortable being a fifty-year-old man surrounded by bras. I had the feeling that...
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Jan.17.2013
Sometimes I find myself longing to write a self-help book. The most wonderful challenge is to write a self-help book about something you don’t know a thing about, such as: How to Survive as a Princess. Tip 1: Don’t praise your portrait straight away, even if you did study history of art at St...
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Jan.09.2013
Someone recently asked me what defines Dutch literature. For a moment I found myself in a tight spot: I had to come clean.
I thought about a few sentences from Herman Koch’s novel Finally War (Eindelijk oorlog) that conjure up this feeling very well: For me, it begins on arrival at the station: the...
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Dec.11.2012
After a linesman in the Dutch amateur football league was kicked to death, and in London a nurse committed suicide because two Australian DJs played a bad joke on her, I was in desperate need of something frivolous. Luckily there was news from San Francisco.
During the past two years nudism has...
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Nov.30.2012
The Maya calendar ends on 21 December 2012. Is the end of the world really near? It reminds me of the millennium bug. But the Mayas are really worrying certain people, or in other words, these are the people who are getting ready to travel to Bugarach, a village in the south of France.
I’ve never...
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