In a blow to those who believe the English invented the thick pea soup, preparing a split pea broth has been recognised as a part of the Netherlands' immaterial cultural heritage. Cooking erwtensoep, affectionately known as ‘snert’, will be recognised as a treasured national pastime during the world championships in Groningen on Friday. The director of the Dutch intangible heritage recognition body Leo Adriaanse told the NOS broadcaster that the thick stew had ancient roots but was still alive and bubbling in modern Holland. ‘Many recipes have been passed down through families and new versions are always being added,’ he reportedly said. ‘This wide variation in recipes alone illustrates the dynamic of this living piece of heritage.’ At the world championships in Groningen the root vegetable and pulse soup was due to be served with a traditional silver spoon, the snertslaif. It is the 25th edition of the festival, which also celebrates another icon of Dutch haute cuisine, the potato hash-based stamppot. Both are generally eaten with meat such as smoked sausage, ham or bacon. The Dutch immaterial heritage list includes baking the Dalfenser Mop, a type of biscuit, building midwinter horns and the Sinterklaas celebration welcoming ‘Saint Nicholas and the black Petes’. To be accepted onto the list, practitioners of an activity need to write a forward-looking ‘care plan’ and take a course. The most prestigious pastimes are proposed to a Unesco list of international intangible cultural heritage.  More >

The temperature could head up to a spring-like 17 degrees in the south of the Netherlands on Friday, weather forecasters say. The weekend too is set to be sunny and warm for the time of year, with temperatures in the low teens and no or little cloud. By the middle of next week, there is more chance of rain, but the dry weather will return towards next weekend. Indeed, there is an 80% chance of dry, sunny weather with above average temperatures lasting well into the second half of the month, the KNMI weather bureau said on Friday.   More >

The tranquiliser and painkiller ketamine is becoming increasingly popular under clubbers in the Netherlands, according to the latest national drugs monitor published by the Trimbos institute. Although just 1.1% adults say they have used ketamine at some point in their lives, 17.3% of clubbers say they have done so, and 12.3% said they had used it at least once in the previous year, the research showed. Ketamine does not fall under the Dutch opium laws and it is not a criminal offence to possess or use it. In 2009, ketamine was involved in almost 3% of cases referred for medical help, but that had risen to over 8% by 2017, the institute said. And more ketamine samples were handed in for testing at the nationwide network of test locations used by clubbers to make sure they know what drugs they are taking, Trimbos said. The institute said ecstasy remains the clubbers' drug of choice but is not increasing in popularity. There has also been no increase in in cannabis use. In total, 7.2% of the adult population use cannabis at least once a year. Youngsters are most likely to do so - 25% of 18 to 24-year-olds smoked marijuana or hashish in 2017. However, adults aged 30 to 39 are the most likely to be 'problematic' users, Trimbos said.  More >

Sketcher of selfies and etcher of Instagram stories – the first ever comprehensive display of Rembrandt’s work at the Rijksmuseum shows the 'rebel' 17th century artist in a new light. The display, Alle Rembrandts, opens on Friday and runs until 10th June, and is predicted to be a blockbuster. For the first time, the museum in Amsterdam is showing all of its 22 paintings, 60 drawings and the best prints of its 300 etchings by the Leiden-born artist Rembrandt van Rijn. Many of these fragile pieces – which are displayed in a dramatic half-light– have been in storage waiting for the exhibition and will afterwards go back to recover. Taco Dibbits, general director of the Rijksmuseum, predicts the exhibition showing Rembrandt’s keen observation of daily life as well as his power as a grandiose storyteller would strike a chord with the modern public. ‘The Rijksmuseum has the world’s largest and most representative oversight of Rembrandt’s work, and for the first time we are showing everything in the house,’ said Dibbits at a press viewing. ‘When you walk into this exhibition, you walk into Rembrandt’s life – Rembrandt the rebel, who does not follow the rules of art, who isn’t about beauty but about the raw reality. He draws all of us in our beauty, our ugliness, our imperfections, joy and grief.’ He said that he was personally most struck by the often tiny etches and drawings of Rembrandt, showing his bedroom, his wife Saskia in pregnancy and terminal sickness and – most of all – himself. Selfies ‘He draws himself like no other artist,’ said Dibbits, ‘with more selfies – if I could call them that – than you can imagine. He often “photographs” himself, and he was the first artist to put himself, his friends, and family, the landscape, even a shell, into an etching.’ Erik Hinterding, curator of the exhibition, said it aimed to display the engaging, personal quality of his work from quick sketches of funny faces to the human faces painted into imagined Biblical scenes. ‘He was a sort of Instagrammer,’ he said. ‘He made kind of snapshots of what was happening at home, with his wife Saskia [sick] in bed: no artist before him had let us into his bedroom, and it really touches you. It’s so personal.’ The exhibition is organised in two halves: the first, focusing on Rembrandt’s observations of people and everyday life from his father and mother to a random man, woman and child urinating in public. The second shows how he dramatised these real faces into grand scenes from the Bible and large-scale paintings. Skirt His sketches and etchings – works needled into a copper plate, treated with acid and then printed – are often tiny. Some show him pulling faces, visages lined with wrinkles or salacious images – a man looking up a woman’s skirt, or a woman sitting naked with a man’s hat on the table beside her. According to Dibbits, this mixture of observation of the ordinary plus extraordinary ability is what makes Rembrandt’s art so ‘recognisable’. ‘Rembrandt is for everyone – it’s for the world.’ The display is part of a series of exhibitions across the Netherlands in honour of the artist, 350 years after his death. The Rijksmuseum has also published its first biography, aiming to tell a fact-based tale of the life of the ‘rebel’ and miller’s son alongside his works. Visitors can listen to an audio explanation of the new show in four languages via the museum's app as well as through conventional devices. 2019 is the Year of Rembrandt: here is where to catch his works  More >