In Zijtaart they are under the spell of the bottle cap. Surrounded by one and a half million caps of lemonade and beer bottles, forty to fifty enthusiastic villagers took part in the crown capping championship on Friday evening. It was a foretaste of a real record attempt, in July, to make the longest ribbon of caps.
On Friday it was all about speed, says Twan van de Meerakker. “Five tables were completely filled with caps, and then it was a matter of threading a ribbon of four meters as quickly as possible. Then there was another round, eight meters long. Manita van den Akker, a lady from the village, was finally the fastest.”
To get into the Guinness Book of Records, a cap cord of at least 940 meters is needed, but the inhabitants of Zijtaart aim for six kilometers. “There are 222 bottle caps in one meter, so we need a lot of them,” says Twan.
“We shook a lot, they came in buckets at a time.”
How the hell do they get one and a half million caps? “A lot of kicking”, Twan laughs. “We asked restaurants to collect them for us, and a call on Facebook also yielded a lot. They came in buckets at a time.”
His own contribution is only modest. “I think I’ve drunk about ten bottles.”
Twan is convinced that they will break the record. “We participate for fun, but it’s a fun way to put the village on the map. And if we succeed, there will certainly be another cork from the bottle to celebrate.”