Category: Various

Detail of the Koningshoeven abbey near Tilburg, The Netherlands, with statue and proverbs

30. October 2021

Hiking to La Trappe brewery

I once had the idea to publish a booklet: The Best Beer Hikes in the Benelux. With hikes in the 20 kilometer range, and one or more craft beer breweries included in the route. When the printed version of that booklet will be published remains an open question. But untill that day I’m going to publish the hikes one by one as a blog post. And there is no better destination imaginable for the first episode than Koningshoeven Abbey. It’s the place where the most famous Dutch Trappist beer is brewed: La Trappe. So on a beautiful Saturday in October… Read More

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

Space art / Various

7. July 2021

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

Various

10. June 2021

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

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

Photography / Various

6. May 2021

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 thirteen… Read More

Thirteen pieces of space art by Frans Blok, framed and ready for an exhibition

Cartography / Space art / Various

20. December 2020

World Maps and Space Art Exhibited

Over a year ago, I was asked if I wanted to have an exhibition of my work in the entrance hall of the RIVM, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment in Bilthoven. At that time, I had only a vague idea of the existence of that institute. But then first the emissions of nitrogen by agriculture and industry created a kind of national crisis in which the institute played a pivotal role. And after that the covid-19 pandemic came upon us. By now, there is probably nobody in the country who has never heard of RIVM.… Read More

Detail of a world map made of facemasks, carelessly thrown away on the pavement, showing the distinct shape of North America

Cartography / Various

22. October 2020

Toilet Paper and Facemasks, Icons of the Pandemic

In times of crisis, people get creative. And in times of lockdown, people have time to spare. So it was to be expected that covid19 would lead to an explosion of art, as a way to make the best of the miserable situation we found ourselves in. This phenomenon struck me as well, in the form of two new world maps. Toilet rolls In March of this year, in the week we discovered that the corona pandemic would not pass the Netherlands completely unnoticed, I saw someone walking with three mega packs of toilet paper. And moments later another person… Read More

Gibberish: dozens of fantasy words in the bedroom colors yellow, blue and green, to easily fall asleep

Various

6. April 2020

Forget counting sheep: this is the way to fall asleep!

I’ve had a lot of sleeping problems in the past. To be able to fall asleep fast was a talent that seemed forever out of reach for me. Falling asleep in the evening was usually not the biggest problem, but when I woke up at about three o’clock in the morning, the tossing, turning and worrying began. As a result I had a hard time concentrating during the day, creating a lot of stress and making sleep even worse in the next night. Tricks I have come up with a lot of tricks over the years to get out of… Read More

Australia reforested, a detail of the Forest World Map, made of 15.000 digital trees, surrounded by virtual grassy meadows, with also New Zealand and a part of Indonesia

Cartography / Various

31. January 2020

A Virtual Forest and One Trillion Real Trees

Planting trees is perhaps the most fun way to save the world. Who doesn’t love a forest, an arboretum or a beautiful avenue of trees? I am giving a symbolic impetus with my digital forest world map, but of course more needs to be done. Much more. Land art The World Map of Trees, shown below, is made of more than 15,000 trees. Together they form the continents of our planet, while the surrounding grassy meadows represent the oceans. A piece of land art on an area of approximately 200 hectares, accessed by roads and paths (the equator and some… Read More

Map of the metro network of Rotterdam, The Netherlands as it may look like in 2050, with three new lines and some smaller extensions

Design / Various

1. January 2020

The Rotterdam Metro in Past, Present and Future

The Rotterdam metro network is the oldest in the Netherlands. With more than one hundred kilometers, five lines and seventy stations, it is also the most extensive metro network in our country. How did that happen? What are the expectations for the future? And couldn’t that map of the line network be a little prettier? I’ll answer those questions in this blog post. The beginning The Rotterdam metro was officially opened on February 9, 1968. On that day trains started running on the first section: six kilometers, seven stations, from Central Station to Zuidplein. I was there, together with my… Read More

Grassy dike between Brouwershaven and Bruinisse, part of a long distance trail around Lake Grevelingen

Photography / Various

27. October 2019

Hiking Around Lake Grevelingen

After the completion of the Oosterschelde trail, friends Arie, Maarten, Bart and I had to make a decision. Which long-distance hiking trail are we going to walk next? Aren’t there other great bodies of water in this part of the country? How about hiking around Lake Grevelingen? Remarkably, there is no official hiking route around this largest saltwater lake in Europe. But no worries, friend Bart lives a stone’s throw away from Lake Grevelingen and knows the area well. Time and time again he provides us with the most beautiful routes. It took us four years to complete the Grevelingen… Read More