[edraket]

Hi guys.. I am just putting in some pictures I had up already. I'll try to put some more "regular" stuff up later when I can ftp again.



This the market square in dowtown rotterdam. The big church you see in the middle is one of the very few old buildings we have left. (The germans leveled the city in the beginning of the war)


This is just a green area near where I live. (Wich is in the big building in the background.)


This is in the park close to our house. They have scottish highland cows living there so they can graze and maintain the landscape. They are also really cute and furry.


Camping in the forest with my wife.



We have lots of heatherfields in holland.



This is the view from the big hill near our house. This is a 15 minute walk from our home. You can see the skyline of Rotterdam in the background. We actually have some hills around where I live. They are all man made though. Actually they are big trashdumpsters that they cover with a few feet of dirt. They let them grow over and they turn into really nice hilly parks.


The view from my house.
Holland is very small. So we are pressed for space. Houses are rarely less than two floors high. And there is tons of appartementbuildings like these.


This is my wife with the bike we rented a few weeks ago when we were on vacation. It was quite hard to manouvre. But we had lots of fun.


Ok..thats it for now.. More to follow. Like the shopping carts that are in the water in front of my work, or the man drinking beer in front of my work.

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: edraket ]

[Lapjos]

Thanks for your pics!

I really like them, they are not the typical photos you see in ads, they are no altered appetizer like lonely windmills with no one around, like lonely beaches with no one around or flat and lonely fields with no one around.

Somehow funny that these campaigns like to convince the viewer that theres not a soul living there, when the total opposite is true.
AFAIK the netherlands have the highest population density in Europe.

Mmmmmmmhhhhhhhh....heatherfields, I really would like to walk around in these


BTW There's a Dutchman in my biology class. One lesson my teacher decided not to teach us biology but to let him give a lecture about the netherlands. It was very interesting. Besides basic survival hints (Never wear an Ajax-Shirt in Rotterdam ) we were astonished that he was able to draw out of his mind an accurate map of his country with the different states, cities and isles. He said that he learned to do this as every other Dutch in primary school...I still can't believe that. Is that true?

[Rat]

Everyone's making me wish I was where they are! Good job!

Nice pics. More big green areas than here.

[[Shizo]]

Shopping carts are dumped even in Holland?!!! DAMN!
Hehe, they aren't dumped in mother Russia at least, because there ARE no shopping carts :)
Nice place, would like to see more "REGULAR" stuff, and especially shopping carts in water.

[Rat]

That camping one reminds me of this summer when I went camping (and on a loooong bike trip) with my dad.

[Lunatique]

I thought the cow was a bear!! Hahahaha.

[edraket]

Hey

Lapsos: Yep we get extensive topology in elementary school. Not only about Holland btw. The whole world.
I guess at one point I could have drawn a fairly accurate map of russia or south america as well. But that has disappeared from my brain long ago.

There is actually quite a bit of green around here. Even in the "randstad" which is the part of the country where all the big cities are. It is regulation that a city maintains a certain amount of green within its boundaries.

Ok..well there is more to come. I'm just waiting for the sun to hit the beerguy to show you guys the big hit....hehehe

[wayfinder]

lapjos, uhmm...

hauptschule?

we learned to do that in school as well (in baden-w�rttemberg no less) with a german map.

i'm pretty sure i can still do it.

[egerie]

Hoe gaat het ? Mar ya ik heb (?) geen bananen...

Fond memories of Holland... *especially* pofetjeus (spelling?!??!) ! Those little puffy pancakes thingies... hmmmmmm

[Lapjos]

[GERMAN]Nee, bin auf 'nem Gymi. Da die anderen meines Kurses auch so �berrascht waren, gehe ich mal davon aus, das sie das auch nicht gemacht haben. Wo genau warst du in der Schule?[/GERMAN]

Got nothing else to say

[edraket]

Did this on the way to work this morning:
For Gimbal especially...


I saw nine feazants this morning actually. And I have about four of these series..hehe
But...
I got better as time progressed.
First this one...

I got quite close this time.

And then this one...


A prime catch...

Then later on I found this one...

Pretty good eh?

And while it flew away I made this pic. I didn't seem to catch the bird. But I like the pic so I will post it anyways...

Sorry for the shitty quality...

[edraket]

All these were shot from the roof of my work:


Someone dragged them out of the water for some reason.



Looking at rotterdam.


One of the many kinds of public transport..de tram.

ok..leaving the roof.

This is the beerdrinking guy in front of my work.
He's there because my work is in the old headquarters of the Heineken brewery....
Cool eh?


I live in the building to the left.


A coworker of mine and a statue.
The hand is actually kept warm by some sort of heating device inside the statue. It was really creepy when I discovered that.
In the background is a supermarket that only sells biologically made stuff. Thats getting real big here right now. Everything you can get there is grown without fertiliser or hormones or genetic manipulation etc.
That stuff became real big after we had three major livestock epidemies in europe the past years.


Chicks in the forest between my work and home.


In the same forest. The bottom left is where I shot the heron this morning.
I love these trees. They are overgrown by ive to the point where they are falling over because of the weight.
Very eerie looking.

ok..on to the next post...

[ April 09, 2002: Message edited by: edraket ]

[edraket]

Fries..THE dutch fastfood. Usually eaten with mayonaise or peanutsauce. Or in this case..both.


Into the supermarket..
This is my wife looking quite surprised..


The cheese section. Dutch cheese is one of the few dutch foods that I am really happy with. Believe me..you have not known cheese untill you have had the dutch cheese. (And not the old shit they sell as Gouda in the US, although technically the same stuff it tastes like shit)


And some donuts looking oddly the same.
Donuts suck here. These are probably a week old...
Did you know that donuts where derived from the dutch oliebollen? Oliebollen are like donuts without holes. The hole was invented by the first settlers to be able to fry the oliebollen on a lower heat.
Oliebollen btw are only sold before newyears here. And everyone eats them all day on that day. Untill you puke and then some more ... yummm

[egerie]

oh yes cheese. yumm... Everyone you have to try 'Old Amsterdam' gouda if you have the chance.

[Lunatique]

Wow, the donut bit was very educational.

Man, I LOVE cheese(year of the rat)! Man, just looking at that picture made me drool....

*drool*

[edraket]

Old amsterdam..A fine choice.

Maybe we should organize a sijun convention in Holland.
I'll take you to all the museums and stuff.
And then we will have a cheeseparty afterwards. If you come near newyears we can have some oliebollen too!
Did I mention that there is a museum here in Rotterdam that has the only (supposedly) known non finished Rembrandt? It's believed to be just the underpainting. It's marvelous.