Tagged: landscape

The church in the village of Slenaken, province of Limburg, The Netherlands, seen through the trees in a hilly landscape

1. June 2022

The Gulpener Beerhike

This third walk from the yet to be published booklet The Best Beer Walks in the Benelux is set in Southern Limburg, that beautiful and very unDutch-looking part of the Netherlands. It is as if our country has tried to dig deep into Central Europe in order to get its fair share of hills and half-timbered houses. As a side result, also a few interesting beers were dragged within the national borders. The map can, as always be zoomed and panned; click here for a larger version. History The history of Limburg is fascinating. In fact, the province could just… Read More

Sunset and golden hour at Myvatn (mosquito lake) in North Iceland

Photography

17. May 2022

Spring in Iceland – a good time to travel?

After two trips to Iceland in the summer and two in the winter, traveling companion A. and I decided to give it a try in the spring. The period was more or less dictated by the Dutch May holidays, which this year largely fell in April. For nearly three weeks we traveled through the land of ice and fire. And the question is, of course, if it’s a good idea, travelling in Iceland in springtime. Spoiler: yes, although… This was our itinerary. Red=airplane, purple=bus, orange=car, blue=boat, green=walking boots. Click here for a larger version Catkins If you go to Iceland… Read More

Swamp with bushes, historic agricultural relict and modern wind turbines on the Dutch nature island of Tiengemeten

Photography

14. March 2022

Return to Tiengemeten

One of the best outings in the wider area of Rotterdam is a trip to Tiengemeten. A place that you can only reach by boat has something attractive by definition. It is not a coincidence that world traveller Floortje Dessing, when she couldn’t go to the ends of the earth for a while due to the pandemic, immediately traveled to Tiengemeten. Excavators My first vist to Tiengemeten was on a Sunday in December 2006. The transformation from farmland to nature reserve was in full swing at that time. Road plates lay over muddy plains, excavators were on weekend mode, surveyors’… Read More

Brienenoord Island in Rotterdam, the Netherlands with tidal nature and trees in autumn colors on a sunny day in October

Photography

6. November 2021

The Transformation of Brienenoord Island

There are few cities with a nature island within their borders. Both in the Netherlands and abroad I don’t know many examples. Rotterdam does have one. Okay, not really in the middle of the city, but well within the municipal boundaries and even (largely) within the Ringroad. We are of course talking about Brienenoord (pronounce breen-a north), separated from the rest of the city by a river channel named Zuiddiepje (which translates as Little Southern Deep) Van Brienen The island is 1400 meters long and about 200 meters at its widest point. It has been around since the early 19th… Read More

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

Photography

2. September 2021

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

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

Digital painting of a street in downtown Reykjavik, with colorful houses, shops and bars and in the background the famous Hallgrímskirkja

Digital art

25. February 2021

Impressions of Iceland Revisited

The landscapes and towns of Iceland are rewarding subjects for photographs, but they also inspire other forms of art. After four trips I have a hard drive full of pictures of the island of ice and fire. Thousands of photos, but also a growing collection of what I call digital paintings, for lack of a better term. This week it’s been two years since I was in Iceland, together with travel companion A; I wrote this blog post about it back then. It was great to see our beloved Reykjavik again but frankly speaking: the weather could have been better.… Read More

Kruisplein square in Rotterdam, covered with compact snow and in the background the Central Station on a sunny day in the winter of 2021

Photography

16. February 2021

The brief harsh beautiful winter of 2021 ★★★★

For a few years now, I have made it a habit, some time mid-March, to look back on the past winter, and especially on the photographic aspects of it. Unfortunately, since I started doing that, there has hardly been any real winter weather in the Netherlands. In 2014/2015, the winter lasted only two days. In 2016/2017 I had to go to the far east of the country to take beautiful pictures. And in 2017/2018 there was some cold at the beginning and the end, but the rest of the winter was grey and rainy. For the winter of 2018/2019 I… Read More

Block's little Block, a tiny houseboat in a green environment with forest, water, shrubs, reeds, grass and geese

Design

14. July 2020

A Tiny Houseboat: Blok’s Blokje

About a year ago I designed Blok’s Block, a kind of tiny house XL. A compact home for adventurous urbanites, to be placed on roofs of tall buildings. That Blok was recently joined by a Blokje, a little Blok, a design for a tiny houseboat. One of the reactions I received on the Block: it is not really a tiny house. There seems to be an unofficial upper limit of 50 square meters for this. Although the Block is relatively compact, it still has a floor space of 65 square meters. Would a smaller variant be possible that does fit… Read More

Artist impression of the planet Venus in a remote future after terraforming, with oceans and continents, cloud patterns and an impressive ring system

Space art

4. July 2020

The Rings of Venus

Terraforming is the modification of a planet in such a way that terrestrial life can thrive there. One should not underestimate such an enterprise. The terraforming of Venus or Mars is a huge project that will take centuries, if not millennia. But on which of our two neighboring planets is such a project the most promising? They both have their pros and cons, but on this page I mainly want to talk about Venus. Sister planet This closest planet in our solar system looks suspiciously like Earth, at first glance. With a diameter of 12,104 kilometers, Venus is only a… Read More