Leeuwarden – Motorists can expect some musical accompaniment when driving through the small Frisian village of Jelsum in the Netherlands.
"You are approaching a singing road," reads the sign beside the provincial N357 road in the north of the country.
What follows are a number of special grooves etched into the tarmac. If cars drive over these grooves at 60 kilometres per hour, the driver is greeted with the first bars of the Frisian anthem.
"It was intended as a funny campaign," said Gerrit Hofstra, spokesman for the province of Friesland, on Monday to the dpa. "And it also ensures road safety. That way motorists would have no problem taking their foot off the gas."
Additionally, the campaign fitted well with Friesland’s capital Leeuwarden being named this year’s European Capital of Culture, said Hofstra.
But not everyone is happy.
You have to like the Frisian anthem a lot to endure listening to it all day and night, said annoyed residents to Dutch television reporters. "That’s mental torture," said one woman.
No one expected these side effects, said spokesman Hofstra. The "singing road" will therefore be silenced this week.
DPA