Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Urk Cops Beer

(yapsalot)

My fascination with the city of Urk is growing. I feel it may be my destiny to go there someday and see it for myself.

Here's a translation of a story in today's Telegraaf. (Dutch)

I find it raises so many more questions than it answers...

"The police station of Urk has been full of beer crates for some time. So sayeth mayor Jaap Kroon of the fishing village on Tuesday.

A security firm is carrying out extra patrols around the dikes of Urk to keep an eye on youth drinking.

Kroon says that in the summertime the Urkish (Dutch: Urker) youth drink more than is good for them on the dikes around the village. That's why the police have already taken so much beer into custody recently.

"The police station has never yet been so full of impounded crates of beer," he claimed.

The mayor wants to take even more measures, but doesn't know what is legally permissible. Extra police are one possibility as far as he's concerned.

The many crates of beer at the bureau will be destroyed in any case, says a police spokesman. "We won't drink it ourselves," he said.


(thomas hawk)

Yeah, sure.



(yapsalot)

For the linguists, an interesting poem hanging on the side of the boat of the person who posts as "Yapsalot" on Flickr.

"Laat haters haat
en nijders nijden
wat God mij gunt
moet ieder lijden."

I have no idea what "Nijden" is, but I'm guessing it's either some kind of trivial repair you do to a ship _ or an old fashioned word similar to "hate", related to "nijdig," which means "angry and irritable."

So:

Let haters hate
and the envious envy
Everyone must suffer
What God grants me

Dutchies: is that the right idea?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

That poem is probably found alot in the dutch Bible belt.

and yeah, nijden translates into envy.

Anonymous said...

During my flying days i had lots of fun buzzing the Urker churchtower on sundays. It made me closer to the Lord then they were. The jealous zealots (nice, could be a bandname) didnt like that and called the controltower on me.

Derek said...

Reminds me of how the R.A.'s at our college dorms would confiscate cases of beer from residents' parties and... uh... turn them over to the university Housing Administration.

Of course, by "turn them over to the Housing Administration," I mean they would dispose of the empty cans into recycling bins behind the dorms, where a company hired by the Housing Administration would pick them up.

Anonymous said...

well Derek, atleast they recycled.

Toby Sterling said...

@Cracken _ Thanks. I thought I might break a tradition and actually spell your 'handle' correctly for once.

Anonymous said...

You talking about my handle, Toby??

as in Kraken?

because if so, then yes, i know it's Kraken, but that's not my handle, mine is correctly spelled Cracken.