Comments by "TheSuperappelflap" (@TheSuperappelflap) on "fern" channel.

  1. Being Dutch, I have always quite liked German since I had it in school. I guess our language gets made fun of for sounding silly and German gets made fun of for sounding angry. Its very fun to swear in. Stub your toe and shout "verdammt noch mal!", makes you feel better. Some German literature is also very good and much of it is lost in translation.
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  2. She didn't understand the job description.
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  3.  @VenusEvan_1885  der tod oder die gladiolen :)
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  4. In theory, that is the case. In practice you can now drive from Rotterdam to the Hague through one big suburb. In fact you can then drive on to Zoetermeer through more suburbs. Rijswijk, Ypenburg. I went for a 20km bike ride recently along this route and didnt see any farmland. Just one park and a golf course. There are tons of houses being built. Barely any greenhouses or grassland left. Cities like Zoetermeer, Gouda, Alphen etc in the green area between the cities are ever expanding. And along the highways, new business parks and massive distribution centers are being built at a crazy pace. In a few decades there wont be any green left, especially with the government now threatening to change the law so they can force farmers to sell their land. Ostensibly this is because of the environment, but its obvious they are just going to selll the land they seize to housing project developers. Thats where the money is.
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  5.  @connorcrowley1  Thats because Amsterdam is, after Rotterdam, the most car-centric city in the country. In any other city far less people will own cars. First of all, you cant drive anywhere, and secondly, you cant park anywhere on the street and parking garages are very expensive. In Amsterdam for some reason you can still drive your car along the canals in many areas in the city center. Most other cities removed cars from the city centers decades ago. If you want to talk about urbanism, dont take Amsterdam as an example for the Netherlands. Its not typical. Take a city like Utrecht or Groningen, or The Hague. Amsterdam is the least safe city to bike anywhere. Its bike infrastructure is bad, unsafe, and 40 years behind modern design guidelines. Plus, there are hordes of stoned tourists everywhere so good luck getting through anywhere. Also, Amsterdam is a giant tourist trap. Dutch people dont live there. Expats and air bnb guests live there. So anything that happens in Amsterdam, has nothing to do with the rest of the country. Manhattan generates wealth because its a metropolis with the largest financial sector of any city in the world. Wall street. We dont have anything like that in the Netherlands, the closest comparable city would be London. Therefore comparing Manhattan to anywhere in the Netherlands is also useless. Street space allocation is not independent of density. Cities that ban cars can be 20-30% denser than cities that allow cars, because there is no need for wide roads and parking space, thus clearing space that can be used for more housing.
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  6. Actually, most of the pollution in the Netherlands comes from abroad. If we completely banned all industry and fossil fuels, the pollution that is blown over and rained down from Germany, France and the UK would still put us above safe levels.
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