A Few Days Like No Others in the centre of The Netherlands – at the Veluwe.
Our guests arrived at the 1930s villa that we hired for the weekend to participate in another episode of A Few Days Like No Others.
The Friday evening had a Dutch-East Indies theme, related to our visit on Saturday morning of Radio Kootwijk. We dressed up in Dutch- Indonesian style and Martijn prepared us a grand meal: de Indonesische rijsttafel. The Indonesian beers were a nice refreshing drink with it.
In the beginning of the 20th century, The Netherlands was a trading nation with overseas territories, including the Dutch Indies and Antilles. Communication depended on electric telegrams that were send via the cable connections of England and Germany. During the First World War this independence on foreign cable connections was a great disadvantage. Therefore, the government decided to build a long wave transmission station enabling permanent contact with the Dutch East Indies using radio telegraphs.
At the Veluwe they found an uninhabited terrain where there would be a minimum inference to the transmission traffic from the environment. Architect Luthmann was commisioned to build the transmitter building, the water tower and housing for the workers. With 150 laboureres from Amsterdam they started building Radio Kootwijk in 1918, which initially operated under the name Radio Assel. For more about Radio Kootwijk, see picture page Radio Kootwijk.
The connection with the Radio Station in Bandoeng, inspired our evening and menu.
Radio Bandoeng /radio Malabar 1923
Watch a video about the Radio Station in Bandoeng.
In the evening we watched ‘Komedie om geld’ a Dutch movie from 1936 by Max Ophüls. It was made to celebrate the 15-years existence of theatre Tuschinski and with a budget of 135.000 guilders the most expensive movie of its time. The film was a financial flop despite the positive responses from critics.
