Comments by "Lynott Parris" (@DenUitvreter) on "IWrocker" channel.

  1. The weird thing is that we have to pay 2000 euro at least to get a driver's licence to then share the road with Americans who got their licence for not crashing driving across a car park. That goes for expats too, American driver's licences should simply not be recognized by our governments.
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  2. The language issue in this is mostly that countries have different names in other languages so if asks for the letters in the country names or city names you have to think of the English name and ignore the ones in your first language.
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  3. The beauty of the metric system is not in the origin of the meter but in the fact that a cubic meter is equal to a 1000 liter, and a thousand litre of water weighs 1000Kg. It's not how to meter relates to the earth but to other measurements. If you heat up 1 litre of water 1 degree, you have another measurement for the required energy.
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  4. 0.37 Alpine A110 1.36 NSU Prinz (orange) and Renault 8 Gordini (blue) 2.26 Affa GTV and Alfa 75 3.41 Fiat Ritmo (Abarth, probably) 5.20 MG B 6.06 Lancia Fulvia, looks super old and small (The V4 sounds lovely) 6.32 Renault 5 Suggestion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zedjnP4jZQ8 About the twin engined DAF trucks in the Paris Dakar rally.
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  5. The other landlocked Latin American country must be Paraguay.
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  6. The Citroen DS, the single greatest step forward in automotive innovation since the invention of the wheel. I like this museum, this collection is obviously a tribute to all the designers and engineers that rethought the car, that thought outside the box and therefore sometimes came up with a tear drop, or with a box.
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  7. What the British miss here (as usual) is that the Netherlands is much more unlike Britain than they assume and has been for centuries. The Netherland is and has been much more equal and egalitarian, peasants have been discussing water management with nobles and merchant for ages. A lot of the British politeness is about not being inclusive, to identify people as lower class because they don't understand the complicated social rules and polite ways of conversation. The British middle and lower class have adapted to the upper class complex rules, the Dutch upper class was sidelined by the merchants, often from humble beginnings and the peasants. Don't forget the Pilgrim Fathers didn't flee England directly, first they went to the Dutch Republic with it's religious tolerance but they fled the religious freedom there, they were worried about the influence of the Dutch sexual morale on their children (this was nothing wild, just that sexual joy was fine within marriage and public display of affection was allowed for courples and fiancees). The British and the Americans are the exception here, they are the prudes. Germany, France, Scandinavia, are much more like the Dutch than like the British and the Americans.
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  8. In the Netherlands the visitors of the Formula 1 GP come by bicycle and train. Peace between bikes and cars broke out a long time ago and that's a matter of culture that's essential to the infrastructure working.
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  9. It must be named after Maria of Burgundy, the Duchess of Burgundy. The Duchy of Burgundy ruled over a large part of the Low Lands (today's Belgium and Netherlands) for about a century and this was a bloom time. Maria was the last one and gave the cities a lot of freedoms and privileges, was popular back then and is remembered fondly.
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  10. Schumacher was known for making lots of tiny corrections with the steering wheel, Vettel is known for being particularly sensitive with a planted rear, so with the pedal. So no matter how much (more) of a Vettel fan I am, probably Schumacher would just wrestle the 2020 a bit more, and be 0.3 faster than Vettel. Schumacher is best driver of all time, Vettel is up there with the other great names.
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  11. I think in Europe you're not really a customer but a guest, and you got to let the host treat you well. It's a bit rude to tell him how to do his job exactly. They already came up with recipes to please you, besides a few known personal preferences like rare or very rare, or allergies, who are you to overrule the host?
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  12. Basically the 2CV is the perfect car because it can't be improved upon. If you'd try to make it better it would lose it's simplicity and get too heavy. It only works in this window of weight, minimalism and simplicity.
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  13. We have the same here with the word for debt and guilt in the Netherlands. I doesn't necessarily imply that debt is bad, but it certainly instills the message that you have something to do, to make up for it.
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  14. Louis de Funes was a great comedic actor, very mimical, very physical, often playing a hot tempered authority figure like the police commander. But France had and has very much it's own movie industry, and the movies are very French and a certain familiarity with Frenchness helps enjoying them. The biggest fan I knew here in the Netherlands was a friends dad, tears of laugther when there was a de Funes movie on tv allthough he had seen it before. That family went to France for vacation every year. He was restauring a Citroen DS, he got his son a 2CV to repair at 16, so it could be finished at 18. That was the first car I drove. Anyway, it's not that uncommon for Europeans to love France or be amused by the French, but it's also not to everybody's liking.
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  15. Stefan Bellof might have been a bigger talent than Senna, but he had a fatal crash in sportscar racing in 1985.
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  16. In the Netherlands we had this guy who made his Manta into a one-seater so he could have both elbows out of the window. Lots of the Manta jokes were about the elbow out of the window as part of the social stereotype.
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  17. These small Polski Fiats look small but can actually transport a whole 3 generation family, I've seen them do it behind the iron curtain.
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  18. In terms of pure ball control, he and Maradona quite a bit above the other big stars football has ever known.
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  19. 5.19 I think that is Ronaldinho and he was insanely good, especially when it comes to pure ball control which is of course only a part of being a good player. He and Maradona are just wired differently between their super quick brains and legs, they operate in a different time from regular humans, they have always more of it. He takes all the speed out of the descending ball with the slightest movement of his big toe to have it dead on his feet for the next move, and than does an akka through the legs. That's so hard to do, the first touch is the hardest part of football and most about pure talent. Most very good highly payed technically good players need a yard to get such a high ball under control, he needs 1cm. The akka is beyond most good players too, no matter how much they practice, it takes both super quick feet and a great velvet touch. Through the legs is seen as an humiliation not to be tolerated by defenders even in practice, so that is very hard to do too.
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  20. TVR is bonkers, and that's great if you are too. A friend of mine bought a Griffith V8 because he knew he wouldn't make it to 35 if he kept riding motorcycles. As many as their older designs the Griffith looks like a sophisticated stylish little cabriolet, it's not, it's bonkers. Dont let their hubris to build their own brilliant but flawed straigh-6 and this double 6 fool you, this TreVoR guy was building low budget supercars from a shed, with tubes, fiber glass, Rover engines, Opel Vectra rear light units turned upside down and made highly unusual designs out of it. TVR was probably the first to use LED lights because that was much easier and cheaper with a shed build. Bonkers by concept.
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  21. To be honest, as a Dutchman I always hardly registered that people basically don't cycle in foreign countries. Now it's picking up in Germany and France too and that I register, but I got there by car usually. I remember missing my bicycle as a kid with my parents on foreign vacation, but never wondered where and how to cycle there.
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  22. I don't care for hypercars much, but I admire Koenigsegg for their technological innovation. Their direct drive hybrids with a torque converter and free valve turbo, that's just incredible out of the box thinking and extremely innovative. It's technology begging to trickle down in "affordable cars".
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  23. Citroen's most high end car was the SM, with the Maserati V6. It was a real Gran Turismo, not particularly fast allthough by far the fastest FWD of it's day and many days later, but a full four seater to cross the continent fast and in comfort. It was in the Porsche 911 price range, which was still a small light sportscar back then and not supercar class, but very popular with the rich and famous, sheiks and shahs because it was very special, far better at what it did good than any competitor. There was a rally special of the BX, but that had little to do with the regular BX. It made quick small hatchbacks too but Citroen excelled at handling in comfortable cars, and handling on very bad roads, not at handling for maximum speed, in that it was just one of many.
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  24. As Dutch civil servants of the ministry of Traffic and Waterworks tend to brag: The Netherlands is already completed, "Nederland is al af." There were already plans to dam off that North Sea bay in the 17th century. But it was also the access to many port cities including that of Amsterdam, the trade hub of Europe back then. The food shortage of WW1 in which the Netherlands were neutral made the government give the go ahead. Also Rotterdam was now the main port with it's direct North Sea access in the West. The Great Depression helped, lots of unemployed who had to be paid support otherwise anyway. It was finished 2 years ahead of schedual. The reclaiming of land was mostly done post WWII. I was ready and inhabitable in the late 60's and in the early 70's the first towns emerged, planned of course. The new province, Flevoland has now almost half a million inhabitants and one city of over 200K people, Almere. That is in the top 10 of Dutch cities by size. The Afsluitdijk is actually one of the less impressive waterworks technically, it's huge but also just a dam. De Oosterscheldekering (where the head wind cycling championships are), the Maeslantkering and many others are more inventive and sophisticated.
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  25. The Gulf Stream from the Carribean is what keeps Europe relatively warm for it's latitude, the Mediterranean is a stabilizing temperatures too. But it keeps surprising me how much more Northern Europe is too. I live in the North of the Netherlands, when I fly full West the first American state I would cross would be Alaska. The billionaires living in a rather nice climate in Monaco, who could have thought? Number of days with rain is only one indicator of how rainy it is, half an hour of drizzle on a nice day, we can live with that. It's the weeks with rain all day all the days that are bad and that is often the case in Britain, the Netherlands and parts of Belgium. The Mediterranean is more like a lake concerning the weather. The ocean with it's currents has for example much more influence on the Basque country (South-West France and Northern Spain) where it's exceptionally rainy for the latitude, the Gulf of Biscaye is famous for that.
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  26. The land of the thousand frozen lakes and sauna fires.
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  27. A busy walking and cycling city with fresh snow is lovely for the sounds alone. The snow absorbs all the noise and it's a lovely kind of quiet that makes you feel like you can understand conversations 200 meters away, and when there is also ice skating on the canals it's even more wonder winterland. Cycling in the snow is really not that difficult, it is slippery but doesn't take you buy surprise. Black ice and frozen up snow are a different matter though, that could seriously slow you down. Cycling in sunny Amsterdam would be fun to react too, lots of improvisations, negotiating and quite a few different vehicles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqQSwQLDIK8
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  28. In the Netherlands we used to joke that the dog rack was a structural part of the chassis giving it it's famous strength.
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  29. I don't have a musical ear myself but I understood that 5 and 10 cylinders sound this great because of the assymetry in the cylinder bank, 3 vs 2, producing a two tone exhaust note.
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  30. In the Netherlands you used to have to take the zebra if you were within 40 meters. But nobody cared of course, we're not Germans. This came together with changes in the liabitlity laws, both civil and criminal, to protect vulnerable traffic users. That basically results in the difference that a car or bicycle has to stop when someone is about to cross the zebra, but without a zebra the car driver has to avoid accidents or danger. So pedestrians forcing a car to stop on purpose crossing the street without using a zebra hardly ever happens. It happens but by accident, not paying attention.
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  31. It's got it's origin in rugby, you have to get through the line of the opponent rather than just play the ball over it. Rugbyers can only throw the ball sideways, footballers can only pass sideways basically. But that's more difficult to see because in football the defensive line is only 4 players usually and the attacking line 2 or 3 players. But both sports are about gaining territory by moving your front line up and forcing the defensive line back. People who want to get rid of off side don't respect the having to move up towards the goal of the opponent over that massive field part of the game. That's why it's called of side, you moved into the other side's turf. One team is on the back foot and gets pushed towards their own goal, the other teams comes closer and therefore towards shorting distance, without off side you lose that aspect of the beautiful game.
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  32. In the Netherlands we have a lot of decorative bricklaying too, but those are variations in the masonry in brick laying for structure. Check out the Amsterdamse School for example. They broke bricks in different shapes and made arches and ridges out of it, or even entire bas-relief sculptures.
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  33. I cycle two hours East they speak German, I cycle two hours West they speak Frisian.
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  34. It's a Mercedes W108, probably a 280 SE. Sweden has a relatively huge American car subculture, but also lots of Volvos and Saabs of course. Appearently they have less of a rust problem with old cars over there because of the cold winters. Saab would be interesting to check out, it's engineers were a bit like Citroen's, 'we just know better'. Two-strokes, V4's, the first turbo, lots of safety features, simply different from all others.
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  35. They also never were fully potty trained I guess, as in pee now because we will be on the move the next hours.
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  36.  @doposud  I had the outdoor/hikers and mounteneers version of the 3310, the 5210, that literally bounced back if it fell.
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  37. Here in Groningen in the North of the Netherlands we have traffic lights that prioritize cyclists when those detect rain.
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  38. Orange is a principality in Southern France. William of Orange, AKA William the Silent and not to be confused with William III or Orange who took the throne of Britain over a century later, was as a German noble steward (stadtholder) to the king of Spain for the Netherlands. Then he led the rebellion against that same king because the Dutch, protestant and catholic, wanted religious tolerance instead of the Spanish Inquisition. The colour derived from his name became the symbol of the revolt that would eventually be an 80-year war with Spain and Portugal before they also recognized the Dutch Republic's independence. The stadtholder, steward without a king now, became the leader together with the grand pensionary, not a noble and formerly the position of lawyer to the parliament of the Holland province. Nation states were not a thing yet, Europe was divided in monarchies and even the Dutch didn't know how to go about independent government at first and took 7 years between the declaration of independenc and naming themselves the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. All the symbolism and flags were royal too, so they had to come up with all that nationalist stuff themselves and the colour orange worked great. So that's also why the Dutch have the oldest tricolour and the oldest national anthem. Even the carrots got bred orange to boost national spirit. Later it became a symbol for the Orangists, the pro stadtholder and more national unity republicans, who were opposed by the "Statists" republicans, who didn't want a stadtholder and very autonomous provinces with power in the provincial parliaments (i.e. the parliament of Holland bossing). The Orangists won. The position of stadtholder was only heriditary in the sense that almost only men from the noble Orange-Nassau family were appointed stadtholder by the provinces parliaments or there was no stadtholder appointed at all. The stadtholder would be the commander of the army and in charge of foreign policy. Most of them delivered for the Dutch, some spectacularly well. They are related, but the current Dutch royal family is the product of the Napoleontic occupation and defeat, and the British wanting a buffer monarchy between itself and republican France. So it is a dynasty going back to the 1500's, but not a royal dynasty. They don't deliver for the Dutch anymore either.
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  39. The American accent is a bit special I guess because it is already the product of accents from people with a different native language. It's also the only accent Dutch people take back home when they lived there for decades and speak Dutch with an American accent. I don't hear that in Dutch people who lived elsewhere for decades. Europe didn't used to be this multilingual. 30 years ago it was mostly the Dutch, Flemish and the Scandinavians who were this multilingual, and that was special to the people in France, Italy, Spain and even few Germans were fluent in English.
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  40. "Pregnancy is not a medical condition".
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  41. Also people in Vienna are known by other Austrians for not being friendly, approachable and not smiling ever. While Austrians are known by most Europeans as not the most friendly and approachable in general.
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  42. It requires well build windows. I guess for many American houses that would be an upgrade in quality besides the extra feature, which isn't cheap either. So for Germans and other Western-Europeans it's only like 50% more expensive than a regular window, whil for Americans that would be 300% for example. That's probably why they haven't seen it before.
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  43.  @pistonburner6448  In the mountains? The BX is a very light car that came into it's own with the 1.9, with it's great brakes and it's predictable handling I think it's very realistic. If you put a racing driver into a 6 cylinder BMW it would be faster, but you don't need to be a specially skilled driver to drive the BX close to it's limits.
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  44. In the Netherlands the catholics are the biggest religion, it has always been close with the protestants but they outbred them, these days many are not church going anymore but stay catholic, while lots of the protestant have quit their church entirely.
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  45.  @Robalogot He was actually quite a poor free kick taker, he needed about 20 of them for a single goal. This one was a great one but the camera angle made it more legendary and made Roberto Carlos far more legendary as a free kick taker than deserved.
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  46.  @omlg4svector No, he's one of the closest but his class is a bit less about ultimate ball control.
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  47. You can skip the hardest countries and try the next country until your correct answers map out the place a bit and then do the hard ones.
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  48. That was my take too. All that mind reading and complex beating around the bush is something you have to be raised with to truly master, so the upper class can identify the peasants by their manners easily and exclude them. Anyone can learn straigth forward rules of politeness, so they lack that purpose, the complexity of communication is wanted. The British tend to overlook how classist they are and have been, and how equal the Netherlands has been for centuries. They ar looking for the common ground, protestantism, but that's actually not a common ground, and they feel to see the immense difference in the historical structure of the societies.
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  49. Of course this is a selection of the most ignorant answers, but it's still worrying.
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  50. Same here in the Netherlands, they haven't counted the many who rent a room in a different city at 18 or 19 to go study.
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