Love all around the world

Yesterday it was Valentine's Day: an international day of love. For some people it was a day full of love and joy, for others it was a day like any other day. For me it was a day to look up some untypical love traditions from all around the world.

Love and shame go hand in hand in Scotland

You might be familiar with a traditional Scottish wedding. The groom wears a kilt, under which he may or may not wear underpants. There is one other far more interesting Scottish wedding tradition, involving the bride. A few days before the wedding, the bride gets kidnapped by friends and family. They will make her black and throw all kinds of dirty things (rotten eggs, raw fish, syrup...) over her. When they are finished, they put her on display so all the people from the village can see her. You can imagine that this is quite a humiliating experience, but that's exactly the purpose of this tradition: if the bride can live through this humiliation, she can face any problem life throws at her during her marriage.

You may think that this is an old tradition, but in some villages this tradition still takes place today.

Sharing a wife with your brother in Nepal

Sharing a wife with your brother, Who would want to do that? In some villages in the Himalaya it is a common practice. It's very difficult to earn a living as a farmer in an unfertile area like (parts of) the Himalaya. The farmer needs to do a lot of work in order to make enough money for one family. And because there is so much work that needs to be done, the man doesn't have time to go to the market and sell products. That's where the brother comes into the picture. In this triangle-relationship we have one man working on the land, his brother selling the products and their wife to manage the household and take care of the children.

A love-hut in Cambodia

Many teenage girls think that their parents are a bit narrow-minded when it comes to love and relationships. Girls from the Kreung-tribe in Cambodia never have such a problem. In this tribe, fathers will construct a love hut for their daughters when they reach the age that they start to be interested in boys. In this hut a girl can receive young men, to find out if he is the one for her. They try out a few boys and then in the end they get married to their Mr. Right. It may sound crazy to us, but reportedly girls from this tribe are very happy with this practice and say that it makes them more independent at a young age. And even though many people would not approve teenage girls to be sexually active at such a young age, both the number of sexual harrassents and divorce rates are lower than in many western countries.

Addicted to Valentine's Day in South Korea

In South Korea they love Valentine's Day. Therefore they decided to have a special edition of Valentine's Day every month. It starts on 14 January, when people buy their boy/girlfriend a diary to write down all the lovely memories that will be created in the coming year. On 14 February girls will give a present to the boys, and one month later boys will give a present to the girls. In April it's time for the singles to do something: traditionally they eat noodles with black sauce to feel sad about their loveless life, but nowadays many singles celebrate their independence on this day. This continues every month until we reach Hugs Day on 14 December and start all over again in January.

People say that it were marketeers who invented all these additional editions of Valentine's Day. It may be true that this tradition mainly started as a commercial invention, but nevertheless it's a cute tradition.

The songs that didn't make the cut for ISC#6...

I hope you all enjoyed the latest edition of ISC. From the people who voted (and even some who didn't vote) I got many positive responses about finding a great song they liked. As you can imagine, there are many other songs that weren't part of the contest for some reason. Here are some examples.

Softengine - Yellow House (Finland)

This is my absolute favorite song of 2014. I first heard about Softengine in Eurovision, where they reached the final with their great song Something Better. I liked the song, but I immediately knew it was not going to be my favorite by this band. I heard so much unfulfilled potential in their song that I couldn't wait to hear other songs by these young lads. Yellow House was my clear favorite, which is why I will share it with you today.



Klapa Cambi - Jidra Mog Vapora (Croatia)

An amazing song from the Balkan. This song would have been in my contest without a doubt, if it wasn't for that other even more amazing Croatian song about the girl named Zorica. The song is more traditional and sang by a choir, so it's certainly not the kind of music I normally share via my blog. But it is a good song, so why not give it a try?



Leslie & Ivyrise - Je Te Donne (France)

Another song that would have been very likely to be in any other contest if it wasn't for another great entry from the same country. The following song may be a bit too much of a pop-song for some people, but one cannot deny that it's a catchy and cheerful tune.



Andrea Demirovic - Odlazim (Montenegro)

Espcially for people who love movies like Step Up or dancing in general, it might be nice to watch the following video. I don't especially like dancing or dance-movies, but even for me this is a beautiful video. And a good song as well.



Kabul Dreams - Chill Morghak (Afghanistan)

I bet the following song is not at all what you would expect from an Afghan song. But also in muslim countries there are young men who like rock music. These guys sound so talented, I hope to hear more from them some day.

Results of ISC#6

After almost two weeks of voting, it's time to announce the results of ISC#6. You can watch the voting process via this link.

Congratulations to the winner!

International Song Contest #6

Welcome to edition 6 of the International Song Contest: a contest in which I share music from all over the world with you. I wish you lots of fun listening to the songs (hope that you find something you like). And if you have the time and energy for it I would really appreciate it if you could vote for your favourite songs in Eurovision style via the form below. Since there are usually not many voters in this contest, your vote WILL make a difference for the results of the contest, which I will publish after the voting is over.

Voting rules:
- Voting goes via the traditional Eurovision-system, see below.
- You can vote for your own country, as long as you promise to vote honestly.
- You can vote until 1 February 3:00pm CET.
- Voting tip: personally I find it easy to rate the songs I like 1-5* while listening to the recap video and rank them afterwards based on this rating

After the voting has ended I will publish the results on my blog and make a fancy animation of the voting process, to give the viewer the feeling that he or she is watching the results of the real Eurovision song contest.

Recap video:

List of participants:

1.	Netherlands	Rigby	Earth Meets Water
2.	Australia	Bobby Andonov	War Is Love
3.	France	Fréro Delavega	Le Chant Des Sirènes
4.	Italy	Violetta Zironi	Dimmi Che Non Passa
5.	Namibia	Shishani	Raining Words
6.	Albania	Miriam Cani ft. Alban Skenderaj	Ende Ka Shprese
7.	Hungary	Paddy & The Rats	Pilgrim On The Road
8.	Germany	Nica & Joe	Build A Palace
9.	Switzerland	Eliane	Venus And Mars
10.	Russia	Sofiya Fedorova	Muzika Lyubvi
11.	Malta	Airport Impressions	Berlin
12.	Colombia	Fanny Lu	Fanfarrón
13.	Croatia	Mejaši	Zorica
14.	Finland	Sturm und Drang	Molly The Murderer
15.	Denmark	Tim Schou	Supernova
16.	Estonia	Traffic	Für Elise
17.	Norway	Silya & The Sailors	Extraordinary
18.	USA	The Civil Wars	Kingdom Come
19.	Czech Republic	Jaro Smejkal	Never Mind
20.	Malaysia	Putri Norizah	Hi Sayang
21.	South Africa	Riana Nel	Glass
22.	Moldova	Ionel Istrati	Eu Numai, Numai

You can click on the song title to watch the video on YouTube.

Voting section

Voting is closed.

Funniest Dutch commercials ever

Today I watched the annual award show for the best Dutch commercial of 2014. In the Netherlands we are quite creative when it comes to thinking of good, interesting or funny commercials. And I'm a kind and giving person, so I won't keep all the fun just for myself. So today I will share some of my personal all-time favorite Dutch commercials.

5. Pearle Optician - Shouldn't you get glasses?

Not much to write about this one: it speaks for itself. Since it's all in Dutch, let me translate what they are saying a bit.
Man in the truck: "Shouldn't you get glasses?"
Other man: "Why? Do you know how much that costs, man?"
Voice-over: "Look. That's why Pearle has the Budget Selection. (...)"

4. Centraal Beheer Achmea - Prison guard

Insurance company Achmea has been known for coming up with creative commercials every year that end with "Even Apeldoorn bellen...", which can be roughly translated to English as "Just call us...". Every commercial starts off relaxed, but then somehow the main character of the commercial ends up in a situation where things go wrong. And then all you need to do to make things right is to call your insurance company.
In the following commercial we see a prison guard who wants to impress his colleague on his first day, but again: things go wrong. Not sure how much Achmea can help in this particular situation, but if the guy has a health insurance with Achmea, at least he doesn't need to worry about the hospital bill...

3. KPN - Generation KPN

Watch and see how the current generation plays hide and seek...

2. Heineken - Walking fridge

This commercial puts a smile on my face every time I see it. I can watch it 10 times in a row: the smile is always there. It may be internationally famous, but it's originally a Dutch commercial (I can tell by the house owner's accent) so I can still put it here. Enjoy!

1. Cup a soup - Sjors

I present to you: Sjors, my childhood hero. I used his quote "Hij is weer heerlijk, Coby" ("It's delicious again, Coby" - which he is saying to the lady in the cafetaria next to the soup machine) from this commercial for several years whenever my mother (who is not named Coby) had cooked a delicious meal. It drove her crazy, by the way.

About the commercial: when the new brand Cup a soup entered the market, they wanted all offices to buy a Cup a soup machine. They tried to achieve this by introducing the character of Sjors: the big shot manager who is achieving many great things all because he has a cup of soup every day at four o'clock.
Watch and see what happens when people interrupt Sjors while he is having his "moment" at 4 o'clock...

Dutch music

At the moment I'm busy selecting songs for the next edition of my International Song Contest. Usually I don't select Dutch songs, but the past year or two Dutch artists have been making very good music, so certainly this time there will be a Dutch song in the contest again. Since most of the readers of this blog are not Dutch, I will now share some good songs by Dutch artists. And actually all of them have a story behind them, so be sure to read the description as well.

Dotan - Home

This song has been like an anthem for the Netherlands in 2014. It was a big hit during the World Cup and also one radio station made a remix of this song and radio commentaries from the game after each game of the Dutch national team. However, shortly after the World Cup ended the song got a completely different meaning. It became connected to the crash of flight MH-17: the plane full of Dutch people that was shot out of the sky by Russian separatists in Eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. Because of all the emotions that are connected to this song, it is the highest newcomer in the Dutch top 2000 of the best songs ever made, at rank 82.

Mr. Probz - Nothing Really Matters

Mr. Probz used to be one of the many wannabe-hiphoppers that I dislike so much. He was involved with the wrong kind of people during his youth (which explains his nickname Mr. Probz: Probz is short for all the problems he had) and never really achieved a real breakthrough as a rapper. In 2013 he surprised everybody with his beautiful song "Waves" and after Robin Schulz made a remix of this song Mr. Probz became internationally famous. "Nothing Really Matters" is his latest single and with this song Mr. Probz has been on top of the Dutch charts for 6 weeks.

Niels Geusebroek - Take Your Time Girl

The following song was performed live on the radio for the first time and dedicated to the unborn child of the news-reader of the radio station. In the background throughout the entire song you will hear the heartbeat of this baby. And the song is pretty good as well!

Chef'Special - In Your Arms

The final song I want to share with you today may seem like a sad love song at first ear. However, if you listen more carefully you will find out that there is a deeper meaning to this song. The song is written for the father of the singer, who died a couple of years earlier. As this song is the first big hit of the band Chef'Special, the singer once mentioned that it's kind of strange to him that the death of his father made the band's so successful in the end. But he knows that his father would have been proud to be part of the success and that he will be watching him from a cloud.

I hope you liked these songs. A merry Christmas to you all!

My trip to Jordan

Last month I went on a trip to Jordan. "Jordan?", you are asking. Yes, Jordan. Despite all the dangers in the islamic world right now, Jordan is still a very safe country to go to. And it has two top attractions to offer: Petra, one of the 7 new world wonders, and the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth. I arrived in Aqaba via a low-cost flight from Amsterdam. Aqaba is a city in the south of Jordan, next to the Red Sea. My initial plan was to go straight to Petra on the same day, but a taxi driver and his friends convinced me that there were no more buses that day and so I spent the night in Aqaba and left to Petra early in the next morning.

Petra

To describe Petra in words is difficult. It is better to just show you some pictures:

At the end of the day, as you can see on the last picture, I climbed up a hill to get a lot at the "Treasury" from above. The viewing point was a bit hard to find and at when I finally found the right spot, I was invited by two bedouin guys to have some tea with them, while enjoying the great view. This was a nice preparation for that night, as I was going Couchsurfing again and my host was Ghassab: a bedouin who lives in a cave in the Petra-area. Unfortunately it was too dark to go to the cave and sleep there when I got out of Petra (you don't want your jeep to get stuck in the desert sand at night), but I could stay with his family in a bedouin village called Umm Sayhoun. A bedouin house doesn't have a lot of furniture. You both sit and sleep on cushions on the floor. Some bedouins who have no cave and own just a house even construct tents in their garden, where they would sleep most days of the year. I guess that if being a bedouin is in your blood, you don't feel comfortable living in a regular house.

The next morning I explored Wadi Musa (the village next to Petra) a bit and at around noon I went to the bus station to catch a minibus to Amman. In Jordan, like in many other non-western countries, there are many minibuses that don't follow a fixed timetable. They just leave whenever the bus is full enough (or whenever the driver feels like it). In this case, filling up the bus was a bit of a problem. There were around 10 people in the bus, but it was not enough for the driver to depart. After waiting for more than two hours, four young men even asked their money back and left the bus. This caused a bit of a stir and the locals in the bus started arguing with the driver. In the end they couldn't convince him to leave. I decided two hours had been enough for me as well and also got my money back. I would walk around in Wadi Musa some more and take the more expensive "tourist bus" in the afternoon instead. This was a good choice: on that bus I met two other travellers from Singapore and USA and the American guy had the same plans as I had for the next day: to go to the Dead Sea.

Dead Sea

I stayed in touch with Michael, the American guy, via Whatsapp and together we got a taxi that would take us on a touristic trip the next day. First we visited a church in Madaba (not so interesting), then we went to Mount Nebo (the place where Moses first saw the "promised land" Israel, quite interesting) and finally to the Dead Sea. The Dead Sea is the lowest point on earth. It used to be a big sea, but due to the desert sun all the water melted and there is only very little water left. This water is very salty (it tasted horrible, like a saltier version of salt), so humans cannot sink in this water and will always float.
Michael had booked a room at an expensive holiday resort with a private beach. Normally all places (including the public beach) charge over 20 euros as an entrance fee for the Dead Sea, but since Michael said I was with him I got in for free. Being social and meeting other travellers abroad really pays off. Moreover, I also had somebody to enjoy the day with and take pictures of me while floating in the Dead Sea:

It was a great experience that I wouldn't want to have missed for the world.

Amman

Michael invited me to stay the night in his hotel room, but I had to decline, since I had agreed a Couchsurfing host in Amman already. My host, Ramzi, was living in a far-away neighborhood though, so it was quite difficult to get there. But after one taxi, some walking (and meeting a nice universiy professor alongside the road who in the end even invited me to his home in Ajloun) and another taxi I found the right place and met my host. And the next day I even went back "home" with just two minibuses (tip: ask locals to write down the places you need to go in Arabic and then just show those signs to people who don't speak English, so they can still guide you in the right direction and tell you when to get off the minibus). Ramzi already had a second guest, an Australian backpacker who had been hitchhiking from Romania all the way to Jordan and who was going to do volunteer work in the desert the coming month. So if you already think I am an adventurous traveller, then this example shows that there are people who are way more adventurous than I am. :)

Here is a picture from Amman:

Back to Aqaba

After one full day in Amman (more than enough to see everything in the city) it was time to go back to Aqaba. I had done everything on my list, so I was planning to just go and buy some souvenirs, find a Pizza Hut to take my traditional picture in front of it (I already have more than 5 pictures now of myself in front of Pizza Hut's all over the world) and enjoy some quiet time. On the bus I met an Austrian man though, who told me he wanted to go scuba diving in the Red Sea the next day. I got excited and decided to join him. After making plans on Whatsapp (this app makes traveling so much easier!) we went to a diving resort the next day. Unfortunately I found out during the course that I wasn't comfortable enough under water to go through with the actual diving part, but in the end I still had a nice day because the resort and the area around it were quite beautiful. This is the view I had on my last day in Jordan:

It was quite an intense week, but I'm happy that I managed to see and do so many things. Jordan is certainly a country that is worth a visit. Just watch out not to let all those evil taxi drivers and other people in the tourist business take advantage of you. Those people are the only bad thing I can write about Jordan, actually.

Stories I wasn't able to include in my story

It's not easy to write a blog that's easy to read and still include all the fun memories. So here are three stories that I wanted to include in the main story, but couldn't. You can see this as a "bonus track" or something. :)

- In Wadi Rum I couldn't find the tourist bus easily. I wasn't sure whether it would leave from the bus station in Wadi Rum or at the gates of Petra. So I asked four people and got four different answers... Welcome to travelling in Jordan!
- In a hotel I got acquainted with a Spanish man. He didn't speak English that well, so at first I thought I misunderstood him when he said he had been travelling for 5 years. But I didn't. He told me the full story of how he got into an accident that made him unfit to work. Suddenly he found himself as a 35 years old man without a job or a future and he could only walk with a stick. The man (I never even asked his name) got depressed in the first few months, but then he decided he should make the best out of this. So he sold all of his stuff and started his journey around the world.
I found his story very inspirational. Most people in his situation would have stayed at home feeling miserable or angry at the world, but he actually told me that his life was better now than it was before his accident.
- I planned to buy most of my souvenirs and take my "Pizza Hut-picture" in Aqaba on the last day. As mentioned above, my plans changed. Luckily the Austrian guy knew exactly where to find the Pizza Hut in Aqaba, so he took me there before we went to the diving place. I also told him I wanted to buy some souvenirs, so we stopped at a small shop close to the center. The owner, an approximately 65 years old man, told us he was just about to go to the weekly Friday afternoon prayer several times, but he also said (again, several times) that he was an honest man and would offer us a good price. And he actually did. So I bought all of my souvenirs in his shop. With each item I bought I got a present from this man. With the first present I got a fridge magnet, then with the second a bracelet for my sister (when he found out that the gift was for her) and finally he gave me a free keychain with the flag of Jordan.
After he sold us all these items he was suddenly not in a hurry any more to get to the mosque, because he started showing us a photo album with all kinds of pictures of "famous" people he met in the 1970s... This friendly man was a very nice memory for me, and I even went back to his shop the next day just to say hi and ask about taxi prices to the airport.