Episode: 4496
Title: HPR4496: Stroopwafel
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4496/hpr4496.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-11-22 15:04:54

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4496 from Monday the 27th of October 2025.
Today's show is entitled True Puyful.
It is hosted by Lee and is about 29 minutes long.
It carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Lee, Ellsbeth and Ken Fallon meet in the Utrecht province in the Netherlands.
Hi, this is Lee, I'm joined today by Ken Fallon and Ellsbeth and we are in a market
town in Holland and the name of the town is Amersport.
We're at a cafe.
We have some waffles and we have some respectively lattes and cappuccino.
Although technically I think Amersport is in Utrecht, but it could be one.
And Utrecht is not in Holland.
Yeah, sorry.
We are in the Netherlands.
It's locally we call in the Netherlands Holland.
And so do the Dutch tourist board.
So yeah, if they're happy enough with it.
And also the football team is hot Holland.
So yeah.
Yeah.
So to give a bit of context, I'm staying over here in Holland, Ellsbeth is here too.
Sorry, in the Netherlands.
We're staying near Utrecht.
We've spent a day in Utrecht.
We've gone to a museum in Utrecht called The Spiel Clock, which is about mechanical
musical instruments and I wed it out with the arms and arms.
No bother.
No, no, no, no.
Not an initial dilemma.
OK.
We have to lower the bars so other people will be gone.
Well, I can do better than that.
Yeah.
That's home.
Yeah.
We went on a canal tour around Utrecht and now we've met up with Ken today.
We've been to Amersport Camp, which was a holding camp run by the Nazis during World
War II.
So we looked around that this morning and then this afternoon we've been in Central Amersport
and we've been to the Mondrian exhibition, the Mondrian Macouse, as it's called, and seen
lots of artwork there.
And this leaves us on a rainy afternoon.
I'm hiding my iPad under the table to stop it getting totally rained on.
And we're just having a nice time here.
That's nice here.
The Amersport itself is one of the few cities to survive the war.
The noise here behind me is the markets that has been dismantled.
So there's still quite a lot of the old city remaining.
So what do you want to talk about?
That's a good question.
Life, universe, life, universe, everything.
What was the best in the game?
The noise you're hearing is dismantling the markets.
So around the Netherlands most of the towns have a central market area for one day only during the week.
Probably more often in bigger cities.
They put out metal frames with tarpulions like these rolled out and then because the Netherlands is the Netherlands, it's windy.
So they tied them down with ropes to the streets and that hanging here heard was then removing that.
And currently there's a flower shop in this town.
And we're eating stru poffles.
Stru poffles, yes.
Stru poffles.
A syrupy honeycomb.
Think of them like the wafer that you have around the night-screen cone.
You take two of them, you make them flat.
And in between you put in sort of golden syrupy type maple syrupy type.
In other words, come here.
Yeah, get more of them up.
So I'll say a little bit about the spill museum yesterday.
This is in Utrecht's central, quite close to the train station, Utrecht Central.
And it's got all kinds of mechanical musical performances.
And this is like a bit like music boxes or crocs.
You know, the crocs with chime in a certain musical pan.
But basically you've got some instruments that are like ping, ping, ping.
Some instruments that blow, have a bellows and blow through an organ.
And you have some instruments that have like moving animation,
like a bird flapping its wings, that sort of thing.
The most impressive one that we all, me and Elsberg saw,
was an old and large, as big as a room out and style musical pan.
That was actually wide up to a midi controller.
So we're playing modern tunes for an instrument that's at least 100 years old,
which is pretty damn cool.
So I've been to that museum a few times myself.
Both the kids were as nice.
But you might also have seen it on, if you follow Wintergarden on the YouTube's,
he was inspired to do the music Marvel Machine by a business to that museum.
And for a period of time, the Marvel Machine was on loan to that museum.
So it's well worth the visit.
It was absolutely fascinating.
Think of all the, if your female, think of all the little boxes that you would have had
with the little ballerinas that twirl around.
I think that as well.
What's up?
I think it was girls.
Everybody in it.
So they're absolutely fascinating.
There's like hundreds to explore.
And just the mechanics, like they talk about starting with the bells,
like the earliest music machines were done with bells, which is basically,
you have a little metal tong type thing that hits the bell,
that does it in order, and it makes the music.
But then they switch to like these wooden flutes that the air,
they use bellows to blow in and change the tones.
And you could have longer notes because of the wooden flutes that the air blows through.
It was just absolutely fascinating.
And the whole history of the telecork machines,
and leisurely went to punch card systems.
And those punch card systems were used by Lady Ada.
Not Lady Ada, but Lady Ada.
I do not like Lady Ada Lovelace.
Thank you.
And it was the first female computer programmer just a young girl.
And that was a direct line from that sort of stuff to programming for punch cards.
The first programmable machines, which were weaved in the textile industry.
And from that, of course, we have the modern industrial computer revolution.
So, what about the digital?
It was a music brought to you what you're doing today.
Yes, that's in capitalism.
Music in capitalism, there you go.
Well, that museum is absolutely fantastic.
There was quite often, at events still,
at the original organ-paying machines,
that they'll wheel around the shops and the streets and the go up and down the streets.
But they're invariably ruined by somebody with a can attaining that's shaking it.
Okay, the rain has gotten the better of us, so we're now in the car.
The central part of the city is really still very nice.
And then next to us is where they gather like anti-tank.
Did I ever release that shop?
Anti-tank, something about anti-tank.
I remember one, I have recorded this, an episode where I walk around the heat and stuff,
talk about the anti-tank bunkers for World War II,
which didn't work.
It kind of rings a bell.
I don't know if I ever released that show or not.
And then recently they found that they did a lidar,
there was a Dutch contingent that went over to fight with Napoleon in Moscow.
That didn't involve.
Apparently one of my great grandfather of my father-in-law survived that.
And then it's way back.
Which could have been totally not published, but you never know.
He went to Russia.
Yeah, he went to the Russian army.
No, no.
In the French army.
And for the Russians.
And then it's survived.
But yeah, recently there was an evening tour there.
They did a lidar scan of the area.
And they found what was a, you know, like a dugout position.
And they had no previous example of it before.
So they had seen the documented books.
But they had no example of it, because it's by default just made out of it.
You know, it's a whole of the ground.
But this one was particularly well preserved.
When we were taking the canal, the boat ride.
They were showing us where there were some medieval fortresses.
Like the remnants of a medieval fortress from the Roman times.
Yeah.
Oh, that's, yeah, that's correct, yeah.
Around Focht, where my sister, not Focht, was in Binnik.
There was also a concentration camp.
Where my, one of my family ended up, didn't turn out well.
But anyway, they had a Roman fourth there as well.
That was also part of the waterline.
Did you come across the waterline as well in your...
Yeah.
...by Tof.
So it's like that this defense system in the Netherlands
where they would flood the folders.
And in the places where they wouldn't flood, they put forts.
So they had three different line waterlines.
Three different levels of defense.
And they've used it, I think four times.
And two times it worked.
And the other two times, not so much,
she's helped the enemy.
One time it froze over.
And the enemy just walked on top of the water.
Thank you for putting this perfectly straight road.
So we were coming in there.
This scene thing here, there's a big yellow sign.
I presume we were recording.
Yeah.
Yellow sign pointed to see.
I always thought that was one of the coolest things about the way the Netherlands works,
is if there's a detour instead of saying detour or follow blood,
you're left on your own.
Yeah.
To say detour or follow four Amsterdam follow C,
or usually it's a country for Amsterdam.
If it's...
If it's detour, they'll say you or something.
It's the way you're going.
So they follow the signs and then eventually you come up to a place where the last sign is.
And there's an extra sign.
And from there, you're back to where you would have been.
Actually, we were...
U.S. cycling back.
I was walking back from Maan to the resort yesterday.
There were like ambulances and police cars.
Yeah.
Did you see what that was?
We didn't know what it was.
We were just trying to be respectful.
It just happened.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I figured it was a road crash.
More than anything else.
Yeah.
I was trying out the road.
But the sirens in Netherlands are like proper lean or lean or type sirens.
In the...
In the...
Like certainly in London they're like...
You know, like police...
And right next to police stations, they get them all the time.
And the...
The fire...
The police and the fire department...
And the hospital ambulances are different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
The two sirens, yeah.
Which I was told was a bit weird.
Like, why do I actually need to know...
What emergency services?
Yeah.
I suppose it's so you know whether you're expecting a huge fire truck to come around the corner
or a speedy police car.
I think the thing is, get out of the way.
Yeah.
I might go the right way.
Apparently I don't know how to drive.
It's 50.
We're going 42 am using...
Android.
Or some Android.
Which has really improved recently.
The UI has gotten a lot better.
We had a lot of shows in the past.
By Popeye.
Popeye.
We did a lot of shows in that that he got me into it in the first place.
But they have this really cool thing, right?
You know where you go with...
You go from here to somewhere.
And it's reasonably straightforward.
But then coming back, if you're in the middle of the sticks,
there can be 14 different ways that you come back
and they send you a completely different route.
So with this, you can go one of the options
that take the previous route back.
So it'll just go...
If you come down to A1 and A2,
it'll send you back first to A2 and then A1.
No, not really.
It's cool.
It's useful.
So what's nice is when you're driving to...
to Morn from Leutrex.
You're going along the motorway.
And on your left is the train.
You can see this same train line going along.
And when you're on the train, you can see the motorway.
And what's cool is when you're on the train,
you can usually...
You go faster...
Yeah, you go faster than your cars.
Yeah.
So we will be heading off.
I'm going to need you here somehow.
You know, my wife drives a...
These are all special arts.
And I normally go on the train.
What do you see?
We'll get there eventually.
The Netherlands is not that big.
Turn back if people start to leave in Germany.
Yeah.
Oh, I know in German it's like in C8.
Yeah?
I need to get a little bit there.
I don't know even y'all.
I ve heard it there.
Well, I keep saying danker,
rather than danker,
because I can't think of anything.
So I know each day we need each day we need each hour.
I used to try and make it a habit of learning how to say hello to five.
Thank you and we're so happy with this many languages that are possible.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I tried to learn two beers, please,
and with many languages that I don't know possibly can.
It's fine, babe.
I learned what the word for chicken is,
because you're...
after that time where it was,
tricked into eating frogs' legs and snails.
Oh, all right.
It was fine.
I mean, I've been to France like I was chitling,
so I had no idea what chitling is.
They're the private part of the chicken.
Yeah.
If you're hungry enough, you do anything.
Yeah.
The American South chitlins are...
just the inner zone.
Oh, the inner zone.
Right.
Yeah.
So it's...
A delicacy at some places, is it?
It's definitely a cultural thing.
Yeah.
Well...
Not something I love.
Yeah, no.
Everyone is a fan of Haggiss in Scotland.
Yeah.
Which...
I didn't mind that.
Oh, Scotch.
Whiskers.
Haggiss, I had no problem with this bug that I got.
If I didn't know what it was, I probably
wouldn't have a problem with it.
It's...
But if somebody said this is Haggiss, try it.
My internal brain would probably be like,
I know what's in there.
I don't know if I would have tried it.
I'd still try it any time.
So is this going to be an episode?
Um, yeah, after trying...
Trying to...
Yeah, trying to get some continuity out of it.
Good look at that.
It doesn't have to be continuity.
It can be a stream of thoughts.
Well, um, was there anything?
What's weird is, yeah.
What I always found interesting when I moved here 20 years ago,
that all the signs are the same.
So...
And in country in the world, all the street signs are the same.
And I thought that was an amazing stroke of...
of coordination from the world.
Yeah, they're the world.
Actually, the signs from here to the UK are so similar,
but from here or the UK to America is quite a difference.
That's what I was thinking.
Why?
If you go to Mexico, that's the same thing.
There are the same signs.
All South America, even Soviet Russia, right?
Yeah.
Not Soviet Russia, but yeah, at the time.
Yeah.
Why was America not using international signs?
And it turns out that...
Exactly.
So much so, the UK were the ones who came up with the signs in the first place.
Yeah.
It was...
And the attempt by the Americans to internationalize the signs
that cause all the road signs to be the same.
Except...
It did work.
It wasn't adopted in America.
It's still decided not to do it adopted.
Oh, yeah.
We had to have our own unique...
Hurrah, Americana.
Nah, we won't go into that, but it's just an interesting observation.
It's something I noticed coming back from the US as a teenager
is just how drastically different everything was.
And also quite similar things.
Here we have in the UK and Ireland, we have 10-10 large triangles
written on the roads, but here they have smaller ones.
They're about a quarter or 60 centimeters triangles painted.
And they call them shark teeth.
So you're not allowed to cross over those or you have to yield right away.
And all of these...
We're sitting at a junction here where there's traffic lights.
And the traffic lights are numbered in groups of 5.1 and 5.4.
So all the fives are the same circuit from what I can gather.
And as we're crossing over, the pin markings obviously on the road
are such that if the traffic lights go out,
the normal rules still apply.
And in some places out in the boonies, they'll turn off the traffic lights at night
and they'll just let you follow the normal rules of the road.
That's actually fine.
It is indeed.
And you know why they have the...
All alerts are triangles so that if you're driving in the snow,
even if they're covered up, you know that the shape of a triangle is a warning.
Whereas they...
I don't know what you call that.
They stop signs with the hexagons.
I don't know is it hexagons?
Anyway, whatever it is, let's say hexagons are warning stop signs.
You absolutely must do that.
And the weird thing here is if something is forbidden,
it's the picture of the forbidden thing with a red circle around it.
And in Ireland, it's a red circle with a red stripe through it.
So...
By the way, all listeners are expecting now to be able to drive in any country in the world
from this direction.
Yes, absolutely.
Any faith is to do so.
It's your own fault.
We have described it perfectly.
It just never been added at the end of this episode.
If you do not accept results, but if you've already lost a lifetime,
you're losing a private role risk.
And we're going straight here.
I think it took a wrong turn.
But what was that?
It's a wrong turn.
The most important word you can learn when you come to the Netherlands is gazelle,
which means nice, cozy, how was the theater?
It was gazelle.
How was it with your granny?
It was gazelle.
How was the football match?
It was gazelle.
Yeah.
How was the gazelle?
Yeah.
Like the gazelle.
What about the K-A?
The gazelle.
The gazelle.
The gazelle.
And the other one is the Catholic spirit, which I can never say.
And that's congratulations.
A birthday, which is the main social events here.
If you want a social circle, you go to other people's birthdays
and you invite them to yours.
That's how you grow your social circle.
Not that I do that, because I don't like your reminder of my age.
But there you go.
gazelle.
And I've facilitated.
But for some reason, that's absolutely fine.
gazelle is fine.
It is gorgeous here.
It's my, I love this time here.
It's coming into autumn or fall, as you call it.
Even though he's pacing down the road on the right.
We have quick complaining.
The sun.
The sun.
The sun.
The sun.
The sun is shining from the west, and it's beautiful.
This year, right, is a nature bridge, right?
Yeah.
Okay.
So the idea is that when you put in a road, it divides the main system.
Yeah.
So they spend billions of putting those bridges in.
So that's awesome.
It is awesome, except for the fact that it doesn't work.
And on that side, stay on that side.
And animals on that side.
They don't like the bridge.
They don't like the road and then input across the bridge.
Yeah.
So they're now studying to see if they can approve the last problem.
It's a big hit.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a disappointment for a lot of people.
The main, the main remaining ecosystem joiner is railway tracks in urban areas like London.
The railway tracks have got a continuous stretches of green, all the way down them.
So the wildlife could migrate up and down that way.
It maintains the ecosystems a bit.
And yet another reason to be going by public transport.
Yeah.
Yeah.
However, for some reason, these seem to be stuck in the movies.
But it's a nice place where you are.
The park is absolutely gorgeous.
And it's quiet because there's not 10 people there.
Funnacle cows get kind of cramps.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, we were saying earlier how, if you come to this country,
you need to have cramps because they're like,
we're the best ones in the best delicacy.
You know, one of the best foods to have here.
Me and Nelsberg have had some yesterday a Crete Palsy new trek.
And that was just brilliant.
Lecker.
Lecker.
Almost a chisella.
The meckers.
Yeah.
Who else?
For sure.
Or as I say, Mad Max, they were absolutely mediocre.
Have you seen that?
They were better than me here.
They were mediocre.
Well, you know, Mad Max, mediocre is the superlative.
Bullets.
Ziced.
Where have I heard ziced before?
It was dryberg ziced.
Was the station where you went to?
Oh, yes.
Yeah.
Then I hide the cycles.
Goodness knows where he's going to get them home.
Goodness knows how he got them to us.
How did he get to bicycles to us?
He talked to someone until someone actually walked over here with him.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He has that kind of vibe.
He could get somebody to...
Okay.
It's like the hitchhike.
The hitchhike is actually...
Normally, it's a fairly normal thing for it to be able to start.
I often cycle with another bike.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, I just have to start it as a bit of a problem, but then keep going.
How he got someone to go all the way to the Eropark.
Then he should be in sales.
He really should be.
And to me, I just know that that diamond.
So it's like a wrecked square in a diamond form.
So yellow with a white signer on it.
And partly, it means that this road is the priority.
Normally, all roads...
If that wasn't there, then this boring here coming out on the right is a small road.
They were the priority.
I should give a way to traffic coming from the right.
Including bikes.
Interesting.
Not, yes.
And then this red one, there's a circle sign with a red outside.
It's in full with blue with a cross.
And that means no parking on all sides of the street.
This is what you learn when your kid goes to drive in less than school.
So that's what that means.
I've been ignoring that for years.
Yeah, we tried to hire a car in Rotterdam.
And we almost got...
We were clear that we could do under a U.S. license.
And we're just up to the part of the deposit.
And I would try to buy some money, but it was after 3 o'clock in the afternoon
that my bank wouldn't honor that until the next day.
So...
And we decided it just wasn't worth it.
Yeah.
Normally in the Netherlands, you can get away with public transport.
Or they have also with the public transport.
They've got bikes that you can hire at the station.
Oh, that's where are they?
Are they doing yellow?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So they're public transport.
So the public transport bikes.
And you get some cars that you can do with them.
So you're...
You know, you're normal card.
You get the heart of them like for a euro for a day or something like that.
But you're what it is.
So when you get them, you can just...
You can probably just drop them back at the station when you're in.
So that's super handy.
And they also in some places have over taxis as well.
So not so much now with the Uber coming in.
But before you could, if you were landing in the middle of the stick somewhere,
then you'd hire an over taxi to come.
And maybe four people would be waiting.
And then you'd do a run to drop the first guy off of one place
and then go from there to the next house.
And if you were lucky, you were the first house.
If you weren't...
You were...
You were waiting till I...
Yeah, exactly.
But if there was some stipulation that it should be no more than an hour
or no more than a half hour extra on your journey.
Right.
Oh, really good.
So I was reading whether you should...
If you're walking down country lane, should you walk on the left or the right?
And first, I figured the left because then you might be in it.
You might be facing oncoming traffic.
So that they could see you.
But then I read that apparently it's wherever you're most visible.
Yeah.
It's not necessarily always on the left.
Is that here in this one?
Yeah, in Holland.
Yeah.
In Holland.
Yeah.
It's always on facing oncoming traffic.
Yeah.
I thought the rule was always facing oncoming traffic.
But then again, I didn't know what an urban cheermer I saw.
You should not be getting advice from me as to us to the rules of the rule.
That would be a good episode though.
What are the rules of the rule?
Your jurisdiction.
That would be a good one to prompt other people to recall.
Okay.
With that, we're back at the result.
Thanks to Elspeth and Ken.
Goodbye from the Netherlands.
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