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Totallympics Open International Song Contest 2020


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5 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Lunch break - Part 1


And with Slovakia's votes and a bit of a counting issue, we have reached the end of the morning. Canada is still in the lead, with especially Serbia and Malta following close and France having made a very notable move upwards since we had ourselves a coffee or hot chocolate break. Only one nation is left that has yet to get a point...while they wait, we're going on to the first part of lunch!


Dutch lunch is generally really not very complicated and often the base is quite similar to breakfast. A lot of people simply eat bread during lunch, and that is indeed one of our choices here. The trick is in the topping, which can be something common like cheese or some sort of a meat product, but the black gold of Dutch lunches is nothing less than hagelslag, basically a kind of chocolate sprinkles. In the Netherlands they're not only used as decoration for one thing or another, here one fills a slice of bread with hagelslag and enjoys the pure goodness, which of course comes in a wide variety of chocolate tastes - hint: dark is the best!

 

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A slice of bread with hagelslag, the only right way to cover one's bread with it is to top it off with so much there's barely any bread visible anymore


Apart from regular bread, we'll be serving a few other kinds of bread to have a bit of variety. There is the delicious 'suikerbrood', translated to 'sugar bread', which is a rather unhealthy but tasty bread people often eat on special ocassions...or just whenever one feels like it. There's small pieces of crystalized sugar inside of it, giving it a nice and sweet crunch. During Christmas there's the 'kerststol' or 'kerstbrood' ('Christmas bread'), which has raisins in it and is filled with a sort of almond paste, which one can smear across the bread. The exact same bread is sold around Easter, when it's called 'paasbrood' ('Easter bread') - the lack of creativity is more than made up for by the taste.

 

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A 'kerststol', the most common thing to top it off with is either powdered sugar or butter


The musical note for the first part of lunch comes from the city of Nijmegen and the Frank Boeijen Groep, led by Frank Boeijen, famous in the Netherlands. The song is called Kronenburg Park, named after a park in Nijmegen which decades ago was known for it's open prostitution. Boeijen was driving past the park with some friends one night, and saw a woman standing in the light of the headlights. Much to his shock and sadness, he recognized her as a former classmate, who had become a prostitute addicted to heroine. The song is aimed at her, basically telling her to "Leave that world, stop it...at least the heroine." He also gives her a bit of advice that sometimes might still be good today: "And don't ask for directions, because everyone has lost the way."

 

Hagelslag!!! ???? Can't wait for my breakfasts and lunches with hagelslag from December to February! ?

Bread with so much hagelslag that you barely can see the bread under it and basically make your bread become a spoon full of this delicious thing!

 

And just a small but important remarking: milk hagelslag is better than dark hagelslag! Sweeter! ??❤️

@heywoodu boxes ready already for my very first day there, please! ?? Love you!

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Lunch break - Part 2

 

The second part of our lunch is more straightforward, but definitely not more healthy: kibbeling! If you ever find yourself in the Netherlands, you absolutely do have to try this fried fish, which one can eat as snack or as meal, it really depends on your apetite. Kibbeling used to be made from Atlantic cod, nowadays it's made from all kinds of whitefish, which is cut up in small pieces, battered and then fried, before being served - usually with a garlic or tartar sauce.

 

kibbeling.jpg

In most places, kibbeling will be served in a little snack box like this...take care, the inside is generally rather hot after being fried!

 

One of the greats of Dutch cabaret will present our next musical item: Wim Sonneveld, star of the mid-20th century. His song 'Het Dorp' ('The Village') wasn't immediately a hit, but it grew into one of the most popular Dutch songs ever, nowadays still reaching high ranks in the annual 'Top 2000', with the 2000 best songs in history according to tens of thousands of voters.


In the song, Sonneveld sings about how the village he grew up in used to be; a simpler life, the farms and the cattle, the high trees along the path of his father's house, "I was a child and didn't know better than that it'd never end". He goes on saying people were apparently living wrong, the village has been modernized and look how rich life has become: people living in their concrete boxes, with extra big windows so everyone can see your new sofa and big TV.


It's not meant in a way to say "things were better back then", it's just a bit of personal nostalgia from the singer, something many people can identify with when their home towns change throughout the years.

 

If you'd like to help our fellow Totallympics member Bruna Moura get to the 2026 Winter Olympics, after her car crash on the way to the 2022 Olympics, every tiny bit of help would be greatly appreciated! Full story and how to help can be found here!

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9 minutes ago, Werloc said:

Did we sign some sort of mutual agreement to not give points to each other somewhere down the line? :p

 

I don't think I remember points from Slovakia ever and I checked my all time table and I gave Slovakia points three times, but the last one was 2015 :lol:

I am pretty sure I voted some times for Lithuania :d

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2 minutes ago, heywoodu said:

Lunch break - Part 2

 

The second part of our lunch is more straightforward, but definitely not more healthy: kibbeling! If you ever find yourself in the Netherlands, you absolutely do have to try this fried fish, which one can eat as snack or as meal, it really depends on your apetite. Kibbeling used to be made from Atlantic cod, nowadays it's made from all kinds of whitefish, which is cut up in small pieces, battered and then fried, before being served - usually with a garlic or tartar sauce.

 

kibbeling.jpg

In most places, kibbeling will be served in a little snack box like this...take care, the inside is generally rather hot after being fried!

 

One of the greats of Dutch cabaret will present our next musical item: Wim Sonneveld, star of the mid-20th century. His song 'Het Dorp' ('The Village') wasn't immediately a hit, but it grew into one of the most popular Dutch songs ever, nowadays still reaching high ranks in the annual 'Top 2000', with the 2000 best songs in history according to tens of thousands of voters.


In the song, Sonneveld sings about how the village he grew up in used to be; a simpler life, the farms and the cattle, the high trees along the path of his father's house, "I was a child and didn't know better than that it'd never end". He goes on saying people were apparently living wrong, the village has been modernized and look how rich life has become: people living in their concrete boxes, with extra big windows so everyone can see your new sofa and big TV.


It's not meant in a way to say "things were better back then", it's just a bit of personal nostalgia from the singer, something many people can identify with when their home towns change throughout the years.

 

Kibbeling from the shop in Nunspeet. I agree when you say that the sauce there is the best ??

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Lunch break is over, templates are fixed at least until the next break. @Dragon, please help us get underway with the afternoon and post the British votes :)

If you'd like to help our fellow Totallympics member Bruna Moura get to the 2026 Winter Olympics, after her car crash on the way to the 2022 Olympics, every tiny bit of help would be greatly appreciated! Full story and how to help can be found here!

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