Funny Dutch Emails

As you all know, the professors and staff here at Kasteel Well are mostly Dutch. Every now and then we receive mass emails from one or more of the staff members here and the language barrier between them and us always provides for hilarity. Here are two emails. The first is from a few weeks ago from Chester Lee. He is the Assistant Director of the castle program and teaches a class called Inter-cultural Communications. One day they had a guest lecturer who was a prostitute and this was the bio Chester Lee wrote about her...

Petra was born in Canada. She spent a year in the Canadian Armed Forces and has held a series of low-wage jobs while studying, worked in the elementary school system for almost 10 years, worked as an independent sex worker and Professional Dominant for 9 years, earned a BA in fine arts degree, earned a BA in Criminology and Law, almost completed a Sociology MA, had a male partner who used to hit her and a couple that used to love her, had a couple of great female partners too, is an activist, loves dogs, was lead singer in an all-girl band for 6 years, bought a house and then sold a house. Most recently she has relocated to the Netherlands to experience the joys of immigration.

Notice how that is all one sentence. The next email is from Huber, the grounds keeper...

Dear Students,


From now onwards our work-out room is ready for use. It's located at the top of the stairway going to the classrooms in the VB. It will be open at all times, but be aware that classes are going on in the room below; please don't make any noise that would disturb these classes.

For hygienical reasons you are obliged to use a towel ( you need to bring one) on all equipment. If you have any problems with operating the equipment I am most happy to help you, don't hesitate to call(ext 217)
Please put back all equipment after you're done.

pump up your mussels!!!

Huber

If you could see Hubert, you would realize how funny that last statement is. Even if you don't know him at all, just picture a Dutch man with gray hair saying "Pump up your mussels." Finally the last one was received last night from Rob Duckers who...I'm not really sure what his title is, but he is pretty high up in the rankings...

Dear Students,

As you all undoubtedly will have noticed, last Monday morning, the fire-alarm went off. The reason for this was that someone left their grilled-cheese-sandwich unattended in the toasting-machines and left it there to burn, causing the alarm to go off. Unfortunately, this is already the second time this semester that this has happened.

This morning, we got a call from the fire-department, warning us that such - in a sense false - alarms could seriously jeopardize our fire-safety-certificate. If the fire-department refuses to further certify our alarm-system due to multiple false alarms, it means that we will have to go through great expense to install another fire detection system, plus our insurance premiums go up, for no good reason. That is why it is of the utmost importance to avoid these kinds of unnecessary alarms.

Therefore, NEVER leave your sandwich unattended it the toasting machines, but get them out before they burn. If we get one more false alarm, we’ll have no other choice but to take the machines out of the dining hall and not have people use them. So please act responsibly.

I count on the cooperation of you all. Thank you in advance.

Rob Dückers

It is a very serious subject, but just the fact that there was an email sent to 80 students about a grilled cheese sandwich makes me laugh a lot. But here's the kicker...The person who burned the grilled cheese was Blake and it wasn't a grilled cheese, it was a piece of toast. Dutch people are silly. Oh well, I live in a castle.