004_smart

[DE] Are you a kind of driver who find parallel parking pain in the ass? Well, complain no more, smart car is the solution to your problem. With its length at 2.5 m., you can park your car nose-in anywhere. It is possible to park 2 or 3 smart cars in a normal sized parking lot. Imagine, all American cities where planning is driven by the culture of automobile would have looked different from what they are now if smart cars were widely used in the past. Check out smart car’s official website at www.smart.com

003_colourful bikes

[NL] The most popular mode of transportation in the Netherlands is bicycle. Everybody owns at least one bicycle. I had one as well when I was living there. Riding bicycle is a part of local cultures. The Dutch even have a joke on the German about bicycle. “Give me back my bike!” they say. Rumour has it that the German soldiers stole bicycles from the Dutch to ride back home after the WW II. Bike stealing is no.1 crime in Holland. Sometimes when you see a colourful bike, it doesn’t mean the owner try to be funky but to change the look of the stolen bike. If you hang around a city square long enough and it's your lucky day, you might be able to buy a bike from a junky as cheap as 5 euros or even less. (I once wrote an article called ‘I want to ride my bicycle…’ long time ago at http://udcu.tripod.com/chai03.html. Check it out.)

002_cultural cocktail

[BE] We all know that one of the strongest points of the European Union is its great variety of cultures. Different languages are spoken even within the same country, for example Belgium; people from the northern part mostly speak Dutch while their country fellows on the lower part of the nation prefer French. The majority of people in Europe can speak more than two languages. This makes transnational culture, economy, labour, technology and whatever effortless. (Singapore is also a multilingual nation, see 003_multi-cultural society at http://urban-o-mania.blogspot.com)

001_koninginnedag

[NL] Koninginnedag is Queen’s day in the Netherlands. On 30 April of every year, Dutch people will dress up in orange and get out of their house to celebrate this national holiday outdoor. It is an interesting phenomenon to see Dutch urban landscapes filled up with orange colour everywhere. The colour is a symbol of the nation, which stems from the royal family name – The Family Nassau, House of Orange. A similar spectacle could be found when the Dutch national football team hits the stadium. Learn more about koninginnedag at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koninginnedag