Holland - ‘Singing’ Highway Ruins Peaceful Village (Video)

The Dutch northern province of Friesland has seen its regional city of Leeuwarden be selected as one of the ‘Cultural Capitals’ of Europe (meaning European tourists will likely flock to it in droves), and decided to invite some ‘artists’ to setup art installations around the city.

One of the ideas presented was a ‘musical highway’ which was abandoned one week after installment as it appeared to ruin the sleep of many in the village surrounding the road.

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The town council had decided to install especially designed parts on the highway which would play the Fries national anthem if you are driving over the road at exactly 60km per hour, in order to make sure people would slow down when driving past it.

It would be the first such road in Europe.

With great fanfare it was announced about a week ago, to the joy of those in cars driving over the highway, whom indeed did hear the Fries anthem being hummed out by their wheels.

Thus, the experiment did work, but drove everyone living around it completely nuts as the sound was much louder outside than inside of the cars.

One of the commentators said: “It’s a lot of fun, you know, once, twice, but not 24 hours per day, then you just go crazy.”

“I now sleep with the windows closed and can’t go outside anymore.”

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Furthermore, it appeared that a lot of youngsters used the highway in the evening to race on it, to check whether they could get different notes and sounds if they abandoned certain parts of the road with their cars and then would get on it again.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="nl" dir="ltr">Fries volkslied klinkt niet meer op lokale weg na klachten omwonenden: Friesland maakt korte metten met een proef op de N357, de nieuwe provinciale weg tussen Leeuwarden en Stiens. Als het verkeer ter hoogte van Jelsum over wegmarkering rijdt, zijn sinds… <a href="https://t.co/xU8sq7O2Ai">https://t.co/xU8sq7O2Ai</a></p>&mdash; We_volgen_terug (@We_volgen_terug) <a href="https://twitter.com/We_volgen_terug/status/983577304159809536?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 10, 2018</a></blockquote>

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In any case, a project of which the cost has not been disclosed, was abandoned about a week after its opening and Holland will have to look for new ways to promote the city of Leeuwarden.

Source:

https://www.vrt.be/vrtnws/nl/2018/04/09/op-friese-steenweg-n357-klinkt-het-volkslied-uit-de-wegmarkering/