Same island, different angles and times of year: above, seen from my apartment around the summer solstice at 22:04; below, seen from the far side at ground level, 10 October at 18:34.
After that week I spent working-remote from Heusden in early July, I biked (as the good, wannabe-more-Dutch person that I am) with my luggage in the front basket on back to Den Bosch for a lovely lunch w/the friend who’d initiated that whole house-swap thingy then the bike-on-train back to A’dam. This pair of what I believe to be white storks was hunting food in the fields between our bike path and the Maas / Meuse, so I photographed them a few different times as they and I were moving the same eastward direction.
Queen Emma, one has learned, was quite popular in the late 1800’s. She’s also the great-great grandmother of NL’s current head of state, who is himself the first male head of state since Emma’s regency, which lasted from 1890 during the final day’s of her husband King William’s life until 1898 when her daughter Queen Wilhelmina turned 18. In other words, heads of state in NL were women from 1890 to 2013. When I compare NL to plenty of other countries I’ve lived or worked in, I conclude this may well have been quite a good thing indeed.
A triptych of canals from my bike ride out out to Muidersloot back in May: above, boats plying the Vecht River by the town of Muiden, plus another of the Vecht below right and a smaller field canal in the vicinity on the left.
It took me a year but I’ve finally concluded that, yeah, I live by a lake now just like my brother does during his summers in Wisconsin – where this series had its genesis. (But just to be clear, it’s also part of the canal and water-management system, as is all fresh water in NL, aside from mud puddles in the street.) Above came near the end of my Friday-evening cirumnambulation of said lake (11,000 steps); compare the level of sunset at 19:18 on Friday the 27th to that at 20:00 in the other two from Saturday the 21st: ah, how the days shorten rapidly around the solstices! And the other was going to be part of a Signs of the City entry but it fits as nicely here. Yep, that’s my local swimming hole, unofficial though it may be.
Last images from my evening bike ride out along the canals, lakes and waterways of far western Noord Brabant and a wee slice of easternmost Zeeland, while visiting Bergen op Zoom back in May.
All from the Pride Boat Parade (the third weekend with an LGBTQI+ Pride event or parade, as it is I guess every summer, just I’ve not been around to notice as much the past few years) — fun, despite some brief rain showers that came on around the time of this photo immediately above. The inflatable things like the Ode to Queer Icons one, above, are pulled down to go under the bridges then pop back up – I caught the one at the top just before it popped back up :-).
One wfh-morning, a week or so before I flew to Bangladesh, I decided that I really did need to finally go for a swim across the street, before the weather got continuously cold and rainy again. Why wasn’t I doing this every sunny morning all summer????
All from the Pride Boat Parade (the third weekend with an LGBTQI+ Pride event or parade, as it is I guess every summer, just I’ve not been around to notice as much the past few years) — fun, despite some brief rain showers that came on around the time of this photo immediately above. The inflatable things like the Ode to Queer Icons one, above, are pulled down to go under the bridges then pop back up – I caught the one at the top just before it popped back up :-).
(so much world, so little time....) 