Category: Flashes

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This weekend we took a train to Rotterdam. We decided to spend a day there, as our Canadian friends Peter and Lisa were coming up from Bruges in Belgium, which was the last stop on their cycling holiday. Before meeting them and after coffee the three of us strolled to and through Museumpark and visited the Depot of the Boijmans van Beuningen museum. The museum itself is closed a decade or longer for renovations to their 19th century building. Next door a new depot was built, which is a unique feat of architecture: a large mirrored bowl reflecting the full Rotterdam skyline, with a tree park on the roof. The depot is open to the public, with temporary expositions, and guided tours of the actual storage spaces for a dozen or so people at a time. Pixel Pioneers was the title of the temporary exhibition, featuring early digital game designs, digital art, and a special focus on the works of Geert Mul. Het already started exploring media art before the web, treating collections of images as databases and working with the patterns across them. We previously saw some of his work at Dutch Design Week I think. The Depot’s rooftop park is a thing worth seeing in itself, and we had drinks and a snack there.


The Depot building reflecting the Rotterdam skyline.

By then Peter and Lisa had reached Rotterdam too, and we met up at café Heilige Boontjes for a drink, and exchanging small gifts, before finding a place to eat in the Witte de Withstraat. We were early for dinner, it was a school night for Y after all, so had no trouble finding a spot. It was great to see Y talk with Peter in and play a game of hangman with Lisa, both in English. She had practiced her English before our trip to Portugal earlier this month, because she wanted to be able to converse with our hosts Bev and Etienne, and made good use of the experience she gained now.

Continuing our conversations we walked back to Rotterdam central station where Peter and Lisa fetched their luggage and we took a train home.

It is a bit surreal to meet friends from across the Atlantic for just a few hours. By definition that seems too short to due justice to the scarcity of such meetings and the geographic distance involved. At the same time it is also somewhat miraculous that such connections and meetings even exist at all, a triumph for blogging as Wouter characterized his own lunch last week with Peter and Lisa. Indeed every in-person meeting since Peter and I first met in 2005 was carried by all our blogging in between that preserves shared context. Within that 20+ years of shared context it makes perfect sense to meet even if only briefly, whenever the opportunity arises.

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We spent a week and a half in Portugal this spring. Traveling together is something we do well with the three of us, and something I find healing. Although I found it hard at times to be in the moment, and to not let myself get irritated over small things.

It was Y’s first ever flight. Coincidentally my first flight was to Portugal too, albeit to Porto, and when I was 19, not 9 as Y is. It was as uneventful as it should be. After picking up our rental car we drove north to Caldas da Rainha for the first leg of our trip. My sister and her husband moved there for retirement after the pandemic, and this was the first time we visited them in their new habitat. I had planned to do so already a long time ago, but I never got around to planning a trip in time. This time we used Y’s two weeks of spring vacation, and actually planned ahead. We stayed in a nice AirBnB just outside Caldas, in the green hills, where we had a full floor of a much larger residence to ourselves, including the use of both an indoor and an outdoor swimming pool. The weather wasn’t very warm so Y enjoyed the indoor pool. We enjoyed the company of my sister and brother in law, explored the coast, visited Obidos and enjoyed several restaurants and coffee places in Caldas.


Obidos castle

We drove south again for a long weekend in Lisbon after three nights. It was the May 1st weekend, so a busy weekend in the city, and on May 1st itself public venues were all closed.
Lisbon was fun to visit, despite the barely tolerable Novotel, with a day spent in and around the São Jorge castle, in Belem and the earth quake museum, plus a morning at LX Factory. We also spent a day in Sintra, going there by train taking into account the parking issues when we visited the area in 2010 during an extended stay due to the Eyjafjallajökull ash clouds preventing our scheduled flight home.


A nice lunch with a view from S. Jorge Castle across Lisbon and the Tagus

We drove over the red 25 de abril bridge across the Tagus river (no shots were fired this time) further south to Sesimbra. Sesimbra is a fisher village and a popular seaside spot for Lisbon’s population, facing due south on the Atlantic coast. There we spent a few relaxed days with Bev and Etienne Wenger-Trayner, enjoying walks at the beach, the gorgeous view from their home across the Atlantic, and shared meals. Y and I played chess on the terrace, and Y used the English she practiced at home beforehand very well conversing with Bev and Etienne. We finished with an awesome dolphin watching tour from Setubal, where Y could almost touch them (and was splashed by them) laying on a net off the bow of a catamaran. We spent 30 minutes surrounded by a large group (over 15) of dolphins and their beauty and gracefulness overwhelmed me. Thinking back to a similar dolphin trip last year with my company team during the long goodbye of Frank I shed a few tears.


Up and close encounter with dolphins.

After a very nice goodbye dinner with Bev and Etienne at the cosy O Zagaia restaurant in Sesimbra, we drove back to the airport the next morning. This time we crossed the Tagus over the 17km long Vasco da Gama bridge, before returning the rental car at the airport.

Unplanned we did quite a bit more than we thought. My sister provided a filled programme. In a hotel like in Lisbon there’s mostly no other choice than to keep moving. Staying with our friends in Sesimbra provided the relaxed environment I realise I actually crave more of.


Chilling in Sesimbra at the home of friends

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As I mentioned in my previous post The Long Walk, I struggle to get out of the house and away from my laptop to take short walks in the neighbourhood during the day.

We live at the northern edge of Amersfoort, and across the small Laak river in easy walking distance there’s a polder at the provincial border. The polder is old. The Laak river was canalised as early as 1200 and in the mid fourteenth century dykes were put up further north to keep out the Zuyderzee (now IJsselmeer, as it was dammed in the early 1930s after the last flood and dyke breach in 1916). Between the Laak and the dyke land was made dry (the Laak runs up to a meter above the polder). Breaches over time created pockets of wetlands behind the dyke. Close to our neighbourhood some of those wetlands that earlier disappeared due to land consolidation were reconstructed recently. Prime bird territory. A few weeks ago as we cycled through the area godwits swooped around us with their distinct cries.


The Laak river is the boundary between the city and a greener area that further north becomes the protected nature preserve Arkemheen

To get me out of the house more, E gifted me binoculars for my birthday this week. As the weather was nice, sunny but with cold winds, we took a short walk this afternoon to the polder edge where a shielded observation point has been built. It was beautiful out there as the silenes were colouring the wetlands purple. Lapwings were present, various types of ducks and geese, a black headed gull was doing some cool moves in the strong wind before dive bombing into the water to catch something.


Purple swaths of silenes in the wetlands

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Uit de Haagse krant van woensdag 25 juli 1928:

Tegen radio-gerucht
Raad van Amersfoort neemt maatregelen
De Gemeenteraad van Amersfoort heeft een verordening aangenomen, waarbij verboden wordt radio-luidsprekers in werking te hebben met geopende deuren of vensters.

Is dit waarom je bij rampen ramen en deuren gesloten moet houden alvorens de regionale radio aan te zetten voor verdere instructies? Tegen geluidsoverlast? 😉

De krant waar het in stond had trouwens wel een probleem met focus en branding: het heette Het Ochtendblad van de Avondpost.

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Although it’s January, and nominally the middle of the school year, a new ‘back to school’ photo is warranted.
Y starts in group 7 today, skipping a year at the half way mark. She started in group 6 after the summer, and is now moving to group 7. After the coming summer she will move to the final year of primary school in group 8. In the past two weeks she did the middle-of-year tests of both group 6 and 7, and already spent some hours in her new group to get used to the change. She asked us to make a new first day of school photo today.

Child getting on a bike

Going to school the first day in 2025, 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020.