[lesmore49]

When I worked for Eatons one of the other managers was driving a 1975 300d Mercedes I saw him at the sears he landed at just before they closed the location in 2008... it had over 1 million miles on it at that point ... and was still chugging along. it was his pride and joy he bought it used the first car he bought when he arrived from India in 83 ... it saw more of north America than I did literally by many miles .... I would not be surprised to find out he still had it running last time I saw it it looked like it came off the showroom floor ... preventative maintenance works wonders

---------- Post added 25th Feb 2021 at 14:44 ----------



My mechanic drives an 85 or so Mercedes, his shop specializes in European cars ( first time i took in my previous car he had a 62 e type coupe on the hoist he was restoring for a client and a 63 rag top etype just pulling out of the shop. meanwhile on another hoist there was a 2012 bmw 6 series
great mechanic very fair and teaches at a local school to boot

Some garage owner/mechanics keep their eye open for a really good vehicle that has had by the book maintenance and owned by a customer. When it comes up for sale, they snap it up. There is a Canadian car show on TV and the mechanic (Toronto based) has I think about a 20 odd year old Chevy Tahoe 4WD with an LS V8. He has indicated he has quite a number of 100,000 miles on it. He uses it as a shop truck and I think his own personal vehicle. Apparently it is very reliable, very practical and he says the LS V8 is bulletproof.

Believe he bought it used.

[lesmore49]

My mechanic works at The Big Shed, building tankers and freighters.

He never charges too much, only fixes stuff that needs fixed, never upsells things I don’t need, and everything thing he fixes is done right.

I never need an appointment, and the waiting room is awesome.

The kind of mechanic you want. Are you going to be able to use him when you retire ?

[MarkJerling]

Yes, well, I don't have to worry about that as I speak neither of them It's tricky enough to identify which one I'm reading (or hearing).

The easiest to spot are the ij->y and ijk->ik, and the missing letters, as in post->pos and vrouw->vrou. And the double negatives, I guess.

Indeed. The most obvious ones are "Ik ben" = "Ek is" and anything with an "ij" vs a "y".

But, then Afrikaans loves inventing words for new things while the Dutch are far better at borrowing when needed, so "Rekenaar" in Afrikaans is simply "Computer" in Dutch.

[tim60]

is this the Jaguar restored series 1 deal they are selling for 250000 pounds or so

Apparently it is all the Jaguars that they will make.

[MarkJerling]

Then there is the Oshkosh company that makes heavy duty severe service vehicles, like snow plows, military stuff, etc. I checked and this company is based in Oshkosh , Wisconsin, although they may have other branches in other parts of the USA, maybe world. I don't know.

Oshkosh has been based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin since forever (or thereabouts)
They make many commonly used military vehicles and, coincidentally, I saw one just yesterday, which was somewhat interesting in that I was not aware that there were any of the new J-LTV's here!

You Tube

You Tube

This is the vehicle that is replacing the Humvee.

When I was a kid, most of the South African Railways and Harbours trucks were Oshkosh trucks.

[robtcorl]

My mechanic works at The Big Shed, building tankers and freighters.

He never charges too much, only fixes stuff that needs fixed, never upsells things I don’t need, and everything thing he fixes is done right.

I never need an appointment, and the waiting room is awesome.

And, I'm sure, he gets to sleep with the lady of the house.

[Fries]

Written Dutch is pretty straight forward to understand, I think, at least as long as it's kept simple like in the above article. Spoken Dutch is a tad more challenging

Learning Dutch (informally) in the Netherlands is quite hard, btw. People will switch to English the moment they realise suspect you're a foreigner. I've had people come up to me on the train station to translate the announcements just because they saw me concentrate to catch what was being said. A friendly bunch, but they won't let you learn their language

I can read Norwegian pretty well; enough to have an understanding but to understand spoken Norwegian I really have to be in the country for a longer time and even then it never reaches that level of understanding. What does not help is that there are rather a lot of regional dialects.

The fact that we are rather quick to switch to English is the result of four things: 1. Dutch is a small language so in order to make our self understood outside our small country we are used to switch to English or German and French. Although English is by far the most popular choice when we choose a foreign language to learn. 2. Education! Our education system is not world class but good enough to enable us to learn a foreign language. 3. We are a trading nation and thus are dependent to a rather large extend on our ability to communicate with foreigners and have been for a long time. For example the village where I grew up we learned that we used to have special mooring rights for our ships trading eels at the Londen Tower Bridge that we earned because of our help with the big fire of 1666. It is very debatable if that is correct but it does illustrate my point to some extend. 4. We have been an independent nation for some time. Your fight for freedom has been fought a long time ago. We have had more power than we deserved trough having large colonies and the (slave) trade associated with that. This and our past policy to welcome foreigners prosecuted in their own country like jews from southern Europe or the Protestants from France ensured that our culture has been influenced from lots of sources. Because of that for a long time we had a rather relaxed feeling of national pride with football as a notable exception. Because of that we don't have a problem 'abandoning' our language in order to communicate. (Did you know that my province was the first to recognize the US:Frisia Leads the Way in Recognizing U.S. Independence - History Is Fun?)

In contrast Norway is a young nation with very old bones and expressing your culture and language is still a relative new thing. Norway is a very patriotic nation and even as a regular visitor there is considerable pressure on and appreciation for foreigners to learn the language. But I could be wrong. Sorry for the longwinded answer!

Luckily we had Dutch at school. Afrikaans is, after all, just kitchen Dutch so Afrikaans Higher Grade at school used to include a fair bit of proper Dutch, including Dutch prescribed reading books.
I read it as easily as I read Afrikaans or English. I do find it harder to speak it and mix up some words, mainly due to lack of use. A week in the Netherlands, and I sound almost like a local! (If a bit like a poorly educated country bumpkin, which is not necessarily a bad thing.)

Yep, the Afrikaners are a bit like long lost cousins. We established a post in South Africa to supply our ships on their way to and from Indonesia:Dutch Cape Colony - Wikipedia
It has been a rather complicated relationship though...

[rod_grant]

The easiest to spot are the ij->y and ijk->ik, and the missing letters, as in post->pos and vrouw->vrou. And the double negatives, I guess.

It's all double-Dutch to me.

[MarkJerling]

Yep, the Afrikaners are a bit like long lost cousins. We established a post in South Africa to supply our ships on their way to and from Indonesia:Dutch Cape Colony - Wikipedia
It has been a rather complicated relationship though...

Indeed. My great-great-great-great-grandfather worked for the VOC (The Dutch East India Co) from 11 September 1772 until 20 August 1776. He arrived at the Cape on 18 February 1773, on the ship Beemster Welvaren.

[Racer X 69]

The kind of mechanic you want. Are you going to be able to use him when you retire ?

If he will still be available!

And, I'm sure, he gets to sleep with the lady of the house.

So long as she is giving him an elbow in the ribs.

[lesmore49]

Indeed. My great-great-great-great-grandfather worked for the VOC (The Dutch East India Co) from 11 September 1772 until 20 August 1776. He arrived at the Cape on 18 February 1773, on the ship Beemster Welvaren.

I'm not completely sure, but I may have some long lost Dutch ancestors who went by the name of Koeck ...or something like that. They were very early settlers of New York colony, but even before, when it was known as Nieuw Amsterdam. This would be in the 1600's, starting in the very early 1600's.

I believe they may have lived in the Sleepy Hollow area, which despite it's renown in literature, was a real area/town.

Founding and History of the New York Colony.

My wife just discovered this in the last month or so and over the next while, I'll be checking into it, more thoroughly...so a lot of things need to be followed up and confirmed, as I pore through old records.

Also over the past couple of years, we determined that some of my early English relatives who came over to the American colonies were English Puritans, who were commercial mariners , who had commercial ties in Holland. One of my ancestral grandparents, who was English, may have been born in Leyden, Holland, in the early 1600's.

Just shows to go, that you never know.

[Racer X 69]

Oshkosh has been based in Oshkosh, Wisconsin since forever (or thereabouts)
They make many commonly used military vehicles and, coincidentally, I saw one just yesterday, which was somewhat interesting in that I was not aware that there were any of the new J-LTV's here!

Oshkosh JLTV ? Totally BADASS - YouTube

This is the vehicle that is replacing the Humvee.

When I was a kid, most of the South African Railways and Harbours trucks were Oshkosh trucks.

From NAS Whidbey in 2018.

[lesmore49]

If he will still be available!





So long as she is giving him an elbow in the ribs.

:cheesy:

We had a mechanic that worked out of his house, in my old neighborhood. Did great work, although took about a week to do what could of been done in a day. But no big deal, as he was cheaper and oft times did a better job.

[MarkJerling]

I'm not completely sure, but I may have some long lost Dutch ancestors who went by the name of Koeck ...or something like that. They were very early settlers of New York colony, but even before, when it was known as Nieuw Amsterdam. This would be in the 1600's, starting in the very early 1600's.

I believe they may have lived in the Sleepy Hollow area, which despite it's renown in literature, was a real area/town.

Founding and History of the New York Colony.

My wife just discovered this in the last month or so and over the next while, I'll be checking into it, more thoroughly...so a lot of things need to be followed up and confirmed, as I pore through old records.

Also over the past couple of years, we determined that some of my early English relatives who came over to the American colonies were English Puritans, who were commercial mariners , who had commercial ties in Holland. One of my ancestral grandparents, who was English, may have been born in Leyden, Holland, in the early 1600's.

Just shows to go, that you never know.

Cool! From the department of useless information:

Broadway, Broad Street, Old Slip and William Street, as well as Wall Street, also The Battery have their origins at Dutch settlement times. The Battery was the site of the Dutch fort, Wall Street was where the town wall was, separating it from the rest of Manhattan Island, Broadway was the wide street leading from the fort to the gateway in the wall and Broad Street and Old Slip and William Street were the other roads from that era that exists to this day.

[Serkevan]

In Germany I've had any of three attitudes to my German being... less than stellar. Particularly when I had just arrived.

-In Berlin, it's common to be met with an immediate "is English better?"
-Sometimes (not often at all, luckily, and mostly in Dresden) if I ask if they could repeat that, they double down on speaking fast with a hard accent, and sound super annoyed that I'm not a native speaker
-Most often, they realize if I'm struggling and switch to using simpler expressions, which does the trick most of the time.