At the last minute: the grossest news article from 2019.
We are dutifully typing the final words of 2019 in the editorial office when, unsuspecting, we open a forwarded link. Our lives will never be the same after seeing the oldest frikandel in the Netherlands. How gross is this!
Frikandel from the last century
On December 31, 1999, Roland from Breda decided to keep a frikandel out of the refrigerator. Why, I hear you ask? Well, he had an incredibly good reason for this: there was one left over. Roland’s New Year’s Eve dinner in 1999 consisted of fries and snacks. Delicious—nothing beats a tasty fries table on New Year’s Eve; on that point, we still see eye to eye with Roland. However, the frikandel was left over, and instead of throwing it away, Roland decided to keep it. He realized that this might be the last commercially produced frikandel of the ending millennium—and woe betide you if you throw that away.
Frikandel in a coffin
For the first few years, the frikandel hung in a Tupperware container on the wall, but when Roland moved—and his little housemate naturally moved with him—the frikandel got an upgrade: a small wooden coffin. It has been slowly rotting away here for years, and each time the snack comes out on top against the maggots and other critters. Tonight, the 20-year-old Dutch snack will once again enter a new decade, which is, to put it mildly, remarkable. “For twenty years, I’ve shared the joys and sorrows of life with my frikandel. Time flies. So much has happened. Deaths, births, moves, arguments, illnesses, parties, laughter, tears… and the frikandel hung there and watched it all go by. Strange thought, really,” says Roland. Indeed, Roland, strange thought.
Art?
The frikandel is definitely not leaving the house. “Unless someone pays € 8000 for it,” says Roland. Well, if a banana taped to a wall can be bought for thousands of euros, why not the world’s oldest frikandel?
Image: Roland Oomens
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