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In the second episode of The Amazing Race (U.S.) Season 38, teams train-travelled from the NETHERLANDS 🇳🇱 through GERMANY 🇩🇪 and into the CZECH REPUBLIC 🇨🇿. Several teams got off at the wrong train stop in Berlin. They exited the train at Spandau instead of the Gesundbrunnen stop that they needed. After arriving in Prague, teams quickly proceeded to the Žižkov TV Tower to tackle the height-defying “Who Wants a Breath of Fresh Air?” Roadblock challenge. One member of each team had to carefully walk on a scary, narrow plank over 100 feet above the city below and grab a clue at the plank’s end. They were harnessed for safety, but of course it is still scary to be at that height and having to walk a narrow surface.
Amazing Race did not mention this, though: completed in 1992, the tower was unfortunately and haphazardly placed in a part of a historic Jewish cemetery in Prague. One competitor said something like “oh no, not above the cemetery” because his plank was high above the cemetery directly below. The Žižkov Tower has been ridiculed by residents of Prague for being so modern in a historic section of the grand city. Fun Fact: David Ćerný sculpted multiple crawling baby statues that were attached to the tower. Strangely though, these metal babies have a barcode punched on their faces instead of the usual eyes, mouth, and nose!
The next challenge was the Detour task. In one of the two detours, teams gathered four dozen (48) colorful Bohemian glass goblets — then moved the goblets carefully and gave them to three different vendors. In the other detour, teams found Czech city crests on restaurant chairs and learned the pronunciations of each crest’s respective city. Teams then marveled at a statue of renowned painter Josef Mánes and found their Pit Stop clue. They arrived at ŽofÃn Palace and found host Phil Keoghan waiting for them at the Pit Stop. Jag and Jas arrived first again and therefore received a trip to SRI LANKA 🇱🇰. Angela and Lexi arrived last and were eliminated from the competition. The next episode will be Wednesday, October 8th at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS and soon streaming on Paramount+.
Season 38 of The Amazing Race (U.S. Edition) rolled off to a good start; teams enjoyed playing a NETHERLANDS 🇳🇱 version of bowling! One teammate was positioned on a sled, and the other teammate pushed him/her into the ten bowling pins. Some teams earned a strike right away, while others took many attempts before knocking all the pins down. Kyland and Taylor earned an Express Pass for completing the task first. They were also given a pass to give to another team, so they chose Jag and Jas. Other teams were puzzled given that Jag and Jas were known as strong competitors on CBS’ Big Brother show and therefore wouldn’t necessarily need help in this competition — indeed, they finished first in this leg of The Amazing Race!
I found it interesting that teams completed the first task before meeting with show host Phil Keoghan. Usually teams would meet Phil first, then after “ready, set, go” they would run (or drive, or fly, etc.) to the first challenge. Enzo and Jack were the last team to accomplish a strike, so Phil gave them a Hazard card. This rarely seen feature was last used in Season 19 (2011) and gives the team a penalty, sort of like a Speed Bump. Enzo and Jack had to complete two penalties: eat a herring (some folks wouldn’t mind it but it is an acquired taste, after all) and ride an interesting clog bike that was hard to steer. I was very intrigued by the clog bike… part of it is a big yellow wooden clog shoe. What’s more Holland than that 😃? Jack was seated in the clog, while Enzo struggled to steer the clunky bike.
Teams drove to the Port of Volendam; some teams easily found it, while others took practically hours before arriving at the correct place. They rode a tandem bike to the canal-facing Edam Cheese Market where they had to stack Beemster cheese spheres on a platform that both teammates carried. As he often does, Phil gives us a factoid. However, this one might not be totally surprising if you know anything about Holland or Amsterdam: people of the Netherlands are #1 in the world when it comes to bike riding. I sometimes wonder how globally ranked facts are figured out — “how would you know for sure?” — but this one makes total sense. After cheese-stacking, teams visited Van der Wilt Gerberas, a massive greenhouse with possibly hundreds of thousands of gerbera daisies! Out of 42 different varieties, teams had to choose the correct nine colors and arranged 36 flowers (four per color) in a pattern. Finding the correct color out of many subtle color variations would be difficult enough, but the greenhouse facility actually turned on huge shades that blocked the sun. Teams literally had to wear a head lamp — as if they were searching for gold instead of flowers! Jag and Jas completed this challenge relatively quickly and arrived first at the Pit Stop: Museum Square. They earned $2,500 each and proved once again they are winning competitors like they were as Big Brother contestants. Jack and Enzo were the last to arrive out of 13 teams and could not proceed to the next episode.
The next episode will be Wednesday, October 1st at 9:30 p.m. Eastern Time on CBS and soon streaming on Paramount+.
I searched the interwebs and happened to find a wonderful resource that would be great for coloring fun all while getting a geography education. A digital image collection provided by the Florida Center for Instructional Technology (FCIT) — part of the College of Education at the University of South Florida — ClipArt ETC houses over 200 black and white world flags (↗) that could be used as printable coloring pages. If you know about all the world's countries, you might notice some countries' flags are missing — including AFGHANISTAN, HAITI, KAZAKHSTAN, LIECHTENSTEIN, LUXEMBOURG*, MALTA, and ZAMBIA. Nevertheless, lots of coloring fun can be had since the website's images are easy to copy/paste into a document and print. For educational, classroom, and non-profit uses, ClipArt ETC grants you "permission to use a maximum of fifty (50) clipart items in any non-commercial, educational project (report, presentation, display, website, etc.)" although there are some reasonable restrictions. More information about the free (and commercial) licensure options can be found on the ClipArt ETC website (↗). If you are a teacher, you could let your students choose a flag to color and instruct them to create a poster or PowerPoint presentation involving the flag's country. Enjoy, and kudos to FCIT for a wonderful website!
* The NETHERLANDS' flag can be used as a substitute due to three-stripe similarity.
According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the NETHERLANDS’ population in the year 2020 is about 110,000 lower than the population of which country (hint: in northwestern South America)? The correct answer is listed further below! Also, feel free to let me know if you would like a new post about any topic and any place(s) in the world!
A — SINGAPORE
B — ECUADOR
C — GRENADA
D — BELIZE
ANSWER
B — Ecuador
Citizens in the THE NETHERLANDS celebrated King's Day (Koningsdag) on April 27th. Starting in 2014, Queen's Day was shifted to King's Day due to Queen Beatrix's voluntary abdication of the throne. Queen's Day was on April 30th, while King's Day is celebrated on the same day as King Willem-Alexander's birthday. King's Day is also celebrated in The Netherlands' overseas territories, including Aruba, the Caribbean Netherlands, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten.
According to MIT's Observatory of Economic Complexity (atlas.media.mit.edu), the following items are major exports of The NETHERLANDS: aluminum, animal food, apples and pears, beverages (beer, flavored water, fruit juice, liquor, etc.), broadcasting equipment, bulbs and roots, cases and luggage, cheese, chocolate, citrus fruit, cleaning products, coal tar oil, cocoa butter, coffee, computers, concentrated milk, copper products, crude and refined petroleum, cucumbers, cut flowers, donated blood, edible preparations, ethers, ferroalloys, flavored water, footwear, frozen vegetables, fruit juice, furniture, games, gold, hydrocarbons, industrial fatty materials, industrial printers, integrated circuits, iron products, live plants, machinery, malt extract, meat, medical instruments, medical supplies, nickel, office machine parts, onions, orthopedic devices, paper containers, petroleum gas, pharmaceuticals, photo lab equipment, plastic products, platinum, polyacetals, polymers, potatoes, rolled tobacco, rubber tires, sowing seeds, soybean meal, steel, stuffed animals, telephones, toilet paper, tomatoes, tufted carpet, x-ray equipment, and yarn. According to the International Monetary Fund (data.imf.org), countries and territories buying and importing most of those exports (February 2017 statistics) include Germany (top importer), Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the United States, Spain, Poland, Sweden, China, Czech Republic, Singapore, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Russia, South Korea, Turkey, Finland, and Norway.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for Curaçao in the Caribbean Sea lists 5 critically endangered species and 10 endangered species. Elkhorn Coral, Goliath Grouper fish, Hawksbill Turtles, Staghorn Corals, and Wide Sawfish are critically endangered in Curaçao. The Dutch island territory's ten endangered species are the American Eel, Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, Black-Capped Petrel, Boulder Star Tree, Green Turtle, Guaiac Tree, Hammerhead Shark, Millepora striata coral, Montastraea faveolata coral, and Nassau Grouper fish.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for The Caribbean Netherlands (Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius) in the Caribbean Sea lists 1 extinct species (Saint Kitts Rice Rat), 5 critically endangered species, and 14 endangered species. Here are the Caribbean Netherlands' endangered species: Elkhorn Coral, Goliath Grouper fish, Hawksbill Turtle, Staghorn Coral, and Wide Sawfish. Endangered species: American Eel, Atlantic Bluefin Tuna, Black-Capped Petrel bird, Boulder Star Coral, Green Turtle, Gauiac Tree, Hammerhead Shark, Leeward Island Racer snake, Millepora striata coral, Monastraea faveolata coral, Nassau Grouper fish, Nectandra kkrugii tree, Saba Racer snake, and West Indian Iguana.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for Aruba in the Caribbean Sea lists 2 critically endangered species and 6 endangered species. Aruba's two critically endangered species are the Goliath Grouper fish and Wide Sawfish. American Eels, Black-Capped Petrels, Hammerhead Sharks, Melocactus stramineus cacti, Nassau Grouper fish, and Scalloped Hammerhead Sharks are endangered in Aruba.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ for The NETHERLANDS (Holland) in Western Europe lists one extinct species (Houting fish), eight critically endangered species, and eight endangered species. The Netherlands' critically endangered species are as follows: Balearic Shearwater bird, Baltic Sturgeon, Blue Skate, European Eel, European Mink, Slender-Billed Curlew, Sociable Plover bird, and Spengler's Freshwater Mussel. Altantic Bluefin Tuna, Common Rorqual baleen whales, Great Knot birds, Halibut fish, Steppe Eagles, Thick-Shelled River Mussels, White-Headed Ducks, and Yellow-Breasted Buntings are endangered in the Netherlands. Since the aforementioned species are listed for plenty of other countries, the IUCN may need to list more localized species that are endangered.
Several countries in Asia, Europe, and Oceania have the word land in their names. I nickname them the "Land Countries," which are listed right here: FINLAND, ICELAND, IRELAND, MARSHALL ISLANDS, The NETHERLANDS, NEW ZEALAND, POLAND, SOLOMON ISLANDS, SWAZILAND, SWITZERLAND, and THAILAND. Somaliland in northeast Africa is another entity with land in its name. However, it is an autonomous region in SOMALIA fighting for its independence, not a recognized country currently.
You may have noticed that there are multiple examples of Caribbean Sea islands that have the word 'saint' in their names. The three island countries that fit this description are SAINT KITTS and NEVIS (capital: Basseterre), SAINT LUCIA (capital: Castries), and SAINT VINCENT and the GRENADINES (capital: Kingstown). Other island entities that are not countries are Saint Barthélemy (capital: Gustavia), also known as Saint Barts, and Saint Martin. Saint Barts is a collectivity belonging to France, while the island of Saint Martin is shared by France and the Netherlands. Saint Martin's northern section (Saint-Martin) belongs to France while the southern section belongs to the Netherlands (Sint Maarten, a constituent 'country' that was part of the no-longer-existing entity called the Netherlands Antilles).
There are other islands with 'saint' in their names and are part of larger entities. For example, the three largest islands of the United States Virgin Islands are Saint Croix, Saint John, and Saint Thomas. To learn more about the islands and island countries in this post, click on their names (the ones that are dark blue) to bring up their posts!
Another Link: Caribbean Sea label in the Posts by Topic sidebar widget
I recently read about a geographical oddity featured in Ken Jennings' Maphead novel. Baarle-Hertog, a town in BELGIUM that I have never heard of before, is actually a Belgian exclave located inside the Netherlands. In other words, it is a town belonging to Belgium — but is surrounded on all sides by Dutch land! Not only that, Jennings exclaims that the town is broken up into at least 26 separate parcels of land belonging to Belgium, while there are smaller parcels of land belonging to the Netherlands inside and outside those Belgian territories. Homes and businesses are even divided between both countries! The Baarle-Hertog map is from Bing Maps.
Click on the map to enlarge it in a lightbox window.
The capital of ARUBA, the westernmost island in the Netherlands Antilles in the Caribbean Sea, is Oranjestad. Learn more about Aruba by visiting my Aruba post!
The Benelux Countries, also known as the Low Countries, is the cluster of three European nations that are close neighbors with each other, forming the Benelux Economic Union. They are BELGIUM, LUXEMBOURG, and the NETHERLANDS. The capitals of those countries, respectively, are Brussels, Luxembourg, and Amsterdam.
Curaçao is a Caribbean island that is formerly part of the NETHERLANDS ANTILLES, which was dissolved (as shown in the Netherlands Antilles post's update). Therefore, Curaçao is now a constituent country that is part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which also has the constituent countries of Aruba, Sint Maarten, and of course, Netherlands. Curaçao is pronounced 'cure-a-sow'. Curacao — without the cedilla on the lowercase C — is an acceptable spelling of this island territory. Curaçao's capital is Willemstad.
The NETHERLANDS ANTILLES is an area in the Caribbean Sea containing two groups of islands: Curaçao and Bonaire and the islands of Sint Eustatius, Saba, and Sint Maarten. Aruba was formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles, but achieved independence. According to this Wikipedia page, the Netherlands Antilles will undergo the process of dissolution on October 2010. The islands will still be part of the Netherlands (kind of like how Montserrat is an overseas territory of the United Kingdom), but the islands of Curaçao and Sint Maarten may form their own entity. The Netherlands Antilles' capital is Willemstad; the capital is located on Curaçao and has a whopping 125,000 inhabitants. The currency is the Netherlands Antillean Guilder; the ISO 4217 currency code is ANG.
UPDATE (October 13, 2010): The islands in the Netherlands Antilles are now more independent then they were before October. Starting on October 10, the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are now considered constituent countries. What is a constituent country, you may ask? Well, it is a country that is part of a larger entity (according to Wikipedia constituent countries page). In this case, Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten are part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (which is also comprised of the country Netherlands in Europe). Meanwhile, the BES Islands (Bonaire, Saba, and Sint Eustatius) are known as special municipalities, according to Wikipedia's BES Islands page.
ARUBA, being the westernmost island in the Lesser Antilles island group, broke away from the Netherlands Antilles (a former 'autonomous country' belonging to the Netherlands) in 1986 and became a constituent country in October 2010 - right when the Netherlands Antilles dissolved. Bonaire and Curaçao, formerly part of the Netherlands Antilles just like Aruba, are located east of Aruba. The island lies immediately north of Venezuela and, more specifically, the upside down golf club-shaped Paraguaná Peninsula. The capital is Oranjestad, which has 33,000 inhabitants. Arubans use the Aruban Florin for their currency. Its ISO 4217 currency code is AWG.
Learn more about the now-defunct Netherlands Antilles (link to my post)!
Commonly known as Holland, the NETHERLANDS (Dutch: Nederland), a Benelux Country (Low Country), is located in Western Europe. It borders the North Sea and the countries Belgium (located south) and Germany (east). The Netherlands is particularly famous worldwide for its windmills, levees and dikes, tulips, dairy products, and those wooden shoes, of course! According to Encyclopædia Britannica, the Netherlands’ population in the year 2020 is about 17,427,000 and is ranked 69th among populations of the whole world’s countries, dependencies, and territories. The main capital of The Netherlands is Amsterdam, although The Hague (also named Den Haag or 's-Gravenhage) is where the monarchial, supreme court, and parliament systems are located. Other most-populated cities include Almere, Breda, Eindhoven, Groningen, Heerlen, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. Since 2002, the Euro is Netherlands' currency. Dutch people formerly used the Dutch Guilder as their currency, and the Guilder's ISO 4217 currency code was NLG.
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