Marathon runner seen on the back with a blurry background of hundreds of other runners during the Rotterdam marathon in 2021

The Rotterdam Marathon in October

The fortieth edition of the Rotterdam marathon, on Sunday 24 October 2021, was a very special one. To start with, it was the first Rotterdam marathon in two and a half years. Quite a long interval for an annual event. But we all know what tiny brat of a virus was responsible for that. Autumn But also the season made this marathon unique. The event always takes place in the first half of April. This was the first and probably only time 17,000 runners ran these 42,195 meters in autumn. Seasonal Since many thousands of photos of the marathon are… Read More

The parking garage entrance near Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam, Holland on a foggy day in autumn

A Misty Morning in Rotterdam

Autumn is the season of special effects par excellence. In addition to beautifully colored trees and spectacular cloudy skies, mist and fog sometimes create a special atmosphere in these months. On October 8, the mist conditions in Rotterdam were truly sensational. The day started with thick fog but at about nine o’clock the sun slowly started to break through. From my balcony I first saw the Parkhotel, the Boymans museum and the Depot building emerge from the mists. After that, the Euromast and the twin towers of the Erasmus MC slowly appeared. Apocalyptic Beautiful images quickly appeared on the internet,… Read More

Detail of a digital painting depicting the landing of European space probe Huygens on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005

Seven Digital Space Art Paintings

Space art as a genre is older than you might think. As early as 1301, a certain Giotto di Bondone from Florence made a painting depicting Halley’s comet. But the big breakthrough didn’t come until the late 1800s, when science fiction writers like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells started writing books that needed to be illustrated. Space art pioneers like Chesley Bonestell, Pat Rawlings and Don Dixon used the tools available to them in their days: paint, charcoal, chalk, pencil. Today, space artists, not to mention filmmakers, use digital tools with which nothing is impossible. Miles long spaceships on which… Read More

Dramatic sky over a farm under spectacular lighting conditions in the polder along the IJssel river near Zwolle, The Netherlands

The wet and chilly summer of 2021

The summer of 2021 was a soaking wet exception to the sweltering and bone-dry summers of recent years. Tropical days were scarce; rain showers were anything but; at least in the Netherlands and the direct neighbours. Looking back According to the meteorologists, summer ends on August 31; according to the astronomers it goes on for three weeks more. So at the time of writing, September 3, we are in a kind of twilight zone, a transition phase. Autumn is in the air, most summer flowers have finished blooming, the first trees are starting to change colour. It’s time to look… Read More

Digitally generated satellite image of the Earth, with Europe, and more specifically the Netherlands, in the center

Is There Really No Planet B?

It’s a popular theme in science fiction: the quest for a new Earth, because the old one is becoming uninhabitable, usually due to human interventions. The search, in other words, for planet B, a place to escape the self-inflicted crisis. Sometimes the idea is elaborated in a somewhat ironic manner, like in the unsurpassed Dutch series Missie Aarde (Mission Earth), in which the Netherlands take the lead because it’s the only country not under water thanks to its dykes. Sometimes it’s dead serious, as in the movie Interstellar, in which drought, dust storms and crop failures make the need for… Read More

Pavement tile on Dutch railway platform asking to keep 1,5 metre, or vijf tiles, distance, because of covid-19

Eighteen Corona Hikes in the South Wing

Before the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic, traveling companion A. and I were quite regularly hiking all over the Netherlands. But then, in March 2020, public transport was suddenly declared “for strictly necessary journeys only”. For a while we dutifully adhered to that rule. But at a certain point it started to feel uncomfortable. Car owners merrily drove all over the place, but consciously carless people like us, suddenly saw our environment limited to a radius of a few kilometers around our own homes. And since A. lives in Leiden and I live in Rotterdam, joint walks were prohibited according… Read More

Detail of a piece of digital botanic art, entitled Hocus Crocus, based on a photograph of crocusses in springtime

Four Seasons of Botanic Digital Kaleidoscopic Art

Apparently I needed some extra color during the past lockdown winter. That’s the only way I can explain the explosion of colorful works of art that sprouted from my laptop during those months. I already wrote about the Icelandic impressions; also the European flag project and the Rotterdam paintifications were given a nudge in the right direction. But the greatest avalanche of new work came from the domain of Kaleidoscopia. An infinite source of botanic art, made with a “digital kaleidoscope” and based of photos of nature from all seasons. Beautiful shapes The kaleidoscope was invented in 1815 by the… Read More

Rietveld Park in the Rotterdam neighbourhood of Nesselande, with electricity pylons and a metro viaduct but also islands, bridges, jetties and hiking trails

The Best Metro Hikes In And Around Rotterdam

Hiking in the Rijnmond area, is that a good idea? The answer, of course, is yes, if you pick a good route. You do not necessarily have to travel to Drenthe, Limburg or the Veluwe, let alone to Iceland, Scotland or Madeira. People from those hiking paradises would be impressed by what the Rotterdam region has to offer in terms of landscape and urban beauty. By analogy with the famous NS walks here are a number of routes with as a starting and ending point a metro station or tram stop of the RET. The collection currently consists of twelve… Read More

Artificially aged photo, transformed into a vintage postcard of the Cool Tower en Beer Harbour in Rotterdam

Vintage Postcards of Rotterdam in the Twenties

This blog post is made for growth. A few years ago I produced a series of artificially aged postcards of Rotterdam, seemingly from a bygone era but with contemporary landmarks such as the Markthal, Central Station and Erasmus Bridge. In the meantime, a new generation of architectural highlights is under construction or just completed. Some people already talk about the Roaring Twenties. That is, of course, a nod to the 1920s, which brought Rotterdam the Van Nelle factory and Dudok’s Bijenkorf, among others. It’s too early to say for sure that these Twenties will as Roaring as the previous, but… Read More

Impressionist sketch of a fictional abbey on the dark side of one of the planets around the ultra cool dwarf star TRAPPIST-1

TRAPPIST-1: the Link between Astronomy and Beer

Today we will travel to 2MASS J23062928-0502285, better known as TRAPPIST-1, a star at about 40.5 light years from Earth. That would normally be quite a long journey; even light takes more than four decades to get there. But in our imagination we’re there in the blink of an eye. Ultra-cool TRAPPIST-1 is a so-called ultra-cool red dwarf star, which made the news in 2017 because Belgian astronomers discovered seven Earth-like planets in orbit around it. The terms ultra-cool and Earth-like should not be taken too literally. Anything below 2700 degrees Kelvin (more than 2400 degrees Celsius) is considered ultra-cool… Read More