picture/day

No loitering

2012-02-25T23:13:00.000-05:00

no loitering.... loitering is a funny word. it looks funny, but i never heard someone say it. when i say it, it sounds funny, but perhaps im pronouncing it all wrong... :) im still waiting for an opportunity to tell someone to stop loitering... haha.

you see this "command" hanging every here and there. for example, at the start of the path to our apartment complex is a bridge leading to a street of (i think) single family homes. every night around ten, this bridge is locked for reasons that are beyond my understanding, and early in the morning its opened again. next to this bridge is the "no loitering" sign. but how can you not loiter there, if you cannot pass the bridge if you fail to come home before 10?! (locals actually know a way past the 2 gates on either side, so i really dont see the point of locking it. perhaps to make the no loitering sign useful?).

so... no loitering means that you are not allowed to remain in a certain public space for a certain amount of time (dutch translation here). wikipedia is not very helpful, other than mentioning its mostly prohibited in the US, UK and australia. in theory you could get arrested for loitering. i dont really like the image, the policeman with baton and the 3 guys, casually hanging around. the one standing is smoking. even with this simple image, they managed to throw in some stereotypes!

the sign above was at the subway station (green line, science park), above a bench. but isnt waiting for a train some kind of loitering too... ? how am i supposed to wait for a train then.. ?

Oooohh, beeeghhhh..

2012-02-25T00:07:00.000-05:00

i take so many pictures... and then i just copy them to my laptop, view them. select some. forget the rest. i usually do not take the time to throw out at least the unsharp ones... i do sometimes copy them to an external disk, as im so afraid to loose them. and... because my computer is overflowing. beeghh. i should sort them out. also, i am planning to make a photobook from our road trip. i should write emails. sort out papers. ooh, shit, and file my taxes (iieeekk!! last year was such a frustration, i dont want to do it again..). but what do i do when i come home? on a good day, to the gym. on a lazy one.. just cooking... then couch. then bed.

im very frustrated with my computer, too. the past few weeks it suddenly became extremely slow. time for a new one? beeehhh...

i wish i could just do like the cute dog above. enjoying some sun.... :)

The universe

2012-02-24T00:03:00.000-05:00

im really tired and not at all in a writing mood. i was in the kitchen all night and half of my "experiments" there failed... buuuh. ah well, im not alone, according to the universe. pfew. that was in cambridge, close to the charles river on some lamp post...

Impossible heels

2012-02-22T22:58:00.001-05:00

i like shoes. at home we have this cute bench of which you can lift the seat, revealing a lot of storage space. many of my shoes are in there (although not all.... it didnt fit). sometimes i look in it, and see a pair i had forgotten about... yeejj! i also like to try on shoes. especially here in the us, where the heels seem higher and the shoes more ridiculous. i dont own a pair of high heels as pictured above, but i have tried on many models and had tim picture it (here another example). this furry model was in the sales section, there were many of them. i guess they were just too weird....

when we were in miami during new year's eve, we saw many, many dressed up ladies. heels like this or higher. and most ladies were not very well trained in walking on them. it was fun to see...

when we were about to return to our hotel, we saw 3 girls. it could have very well been the girls we saw earlier that day on the beach. they were all wearing a super short skirt and killer heels. then... one of them dropped her phone. she reached out her hand to pick it up, but at the same time the other hand went to the back of her skirt, and she realized she could not pick up the phone. there they were, standing on the sidewalk like 3 bambi's, just learning how to stand on their hoofs. she reached out her hand again, but the pavement was really far away! i was about to walk back and pick up that phone when another passerby did just that. and guess what?! right after that she dropped it again, and the entire scene repeated itself. standing there helplessly on their impossible heels. but being oh so pretty....

i wish i could have taped that!! most certainly, if i ever were to make a movie, that would be one of the scenes i would include... :)

Grave post

2012-02-21T23:52:00.001-05:00

i dont know how to start this post. i guess by telling which cemetery we visited, where, and why. it was this saturday, and we went to hull. we planned on going there this weekend, but only if the weather would be good. the weather turned out perfect, and off we went... we have been to hull many, many times in all kinds of weather, and i never get bored of it. it is a bit of a drive, as it is at the far end of a peninsula in the massachusetts bay (by boat its very close to boston actually, but the ferry only goes during the week :(. i have posted many pictures of hull on this blog (here, here and here, for example). the indians called the area nantasket, which means low-tide place. hull history means lifesaving; their lifesaving post, opened in 1889, saved 1000s from shipwrecks. yet 19 to 30 people still drown around hull every year.

last year, we discovered the hull village cemetery. we literally drove right into it. its situated on a hill, overlooking the ocean. it was the first cemetery i ever saw with such an amazing view.... i think i will dedicate next week's post to this cemetery as well, so that i can show you how beautiful it is. this week i want to show you just one grave. it was in the newer section. usually i avoid the "new section". all the stones are uniform, as are the rows, perfectly aligned. but not so in this cemetery. many stones had very personal messages engraved. the above one had one too, but of a different kind... and then i saw the age of this person, steven coble. only 2 years and exactly one month older than me, yet by now i am 4 years older than he ever got...

of course i wondered what happened. but this is not some ancient grave. was it ok to google around, and find his story...? eventually i did.... and it just made me sad. the missing persons site told me that on feb 16, 2006 around 11 pm, 26 year old steven coble and his 18 year old cousin went fishing. their canoe capsized, and while the cousin was found hours later shivering on a rock 65 yards off the shore, there was no sign of steven. in another newspaper i found that only on april 18, steven's body was found in the waters of hull. a sternman on lobster boats, he loved the water and fishing. he had 2 daughters and was engaged.

these are "facts". i just found them on the internet. but the stickers say so much more.

for more taphophiles, go here.

Presidents day

2012-02-20T22:33:00.004-05:00

this is the side of a house in lowell, massachusetts. this is not an uncommon sight in the usa, i have seen them smaller, and a little bigger (but mostly smaller), but i never managed to take a photo, usually because we were driving by and i saw it too late. here i made tim stop (and we were a bit lost, so it was a good opportunity to look at the map). i thought it appropriate for today, as it is presidents day, a federal holiday in the us.

this day was implemented in 1879, to honor george washington, the first american president. it was originally on his birthday, february 22, and was also the first holiday to honor an american citizen. it was then named washington's birthday, and thats how it is still described in the american law that describes federal holidays. but from 1971, presidents day has always been on the third day in february, as dictated by the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. i find that very funny. the uniform monday holiday act (i dont think they call it UMHA, although americans love these kind of acronyms). i guess thats american regulation and efficiency all in one! as such, many american holidays are always on a designated monday, so that americans then always have a 3-day weekend, instead of some random day off in the week (perhaps also to prevent people from taking off more days in order to MAKE it a long, even longer, weekend?).

presidents day... i do find it complicated... although by law its still named washington's birthday, its now more known as presidents day, and supposedly more regarded as a day to honor the office of the presidency rather than a specific president. ah well... not much honoring was going on at our place, we got earlier than normal, to be at the dentist at 8 (yuk), then groceries, then major housecleaning (beehh, not done yet), then some work and then it was evening again...

for more monday murals, go here!

Golden dome

2012-02-19T23:51:00.002-05:00

i took quite some pictures during the snowstorm in january, but since we havent had any snow since, those pics look a bit out of place.. :( but i like this one so much! today we were here again, its in the boston common, and you can see the state house in the back. today skies were perfectly blue, and the sun was shining. it was really nice walking around, and my wintercoat was too warm...

the state house was builst between 1795 and 1797 (i was surprised by that, somehow i thought it was built more recently). you can visit the state house, but we still didnt get to that...

i like its golden dome, you can see it from many places. when on the banks of the charles river, on the cambridge side, you can see it shine. originally, however, the dome was made of wood shingles! in 1802, it was covered by copper, to prevent leakage. first it was painted grey, and later yellow. in 1874 it got its real golden layer... then i found that it was painted black during world war II. the article doesnt mention why, which was my first question, ofcourse! amazing, how you can just type your question into google, and when its somewhere on the internet, it will pop up.... so.... the answer is..... it was painted black to prevent reflection during blackouts. this to protect boston from potential bomb attacks. i found that here, where you can also read why there is a little pine cone at the very top of this dome (i had never seen that, i guess you have to be closer to the dome to be able to see that).

A party?

2012-02-18T23:40:00.000-05:00

saw this car last week, next to ours, just had the chance to snap a quick pic when he passed us. i thought it looked funny. were they going to a party?

or did they perhaps kidnap the balloonman.... ?

everything is possible!

Park street

2012-02-18T00:14:00.001-05:00

last week or so we were sitting at park street, waiting for the train to come, the train in the other direction was just leaving (im thinking really hard where we went or came from, i cant remember, and i think its odd we were waiting for a red line, but we clearly were, as you can see...; our home is on the orange line). in weekends and evenings trains come less frequent, and its not that crowded, so i felt more free to take some pics.

when we were in boston for the very first time, we rented an apartment close to the park street stop. it took a while to figure out this station (in fact we didnt manage to figure it out during that week). you can walk to the orange line, the red line, and upstairs you can catch the green line. but it was not clear to me, at all, how to get from one platform to the other. especially when arriving on the green line "outbound"... complete desorientation. "i see the platform i want to go to now, but HOW do i get there?!" to complicate matters even further, there are 4 different green lines "inbound", and i had no clue how people knew which green line goes where (then i found out they have letters, B, C, D, and E, and there are 2 platforms, B & C stop on one side, behind each other, D & E on the other. but this took me months!!). the designation "inbound"& "outbound" was weird to me too at first, they sort of randomly choose the center of the city, and depending on that, directions are given as in- or outbound (sort of like up- or downtown, i guess, only boston is just so tiny!)

hmmm, i guess this is boring, if you have never been to park street in boston. if you ever go; remember that you are allowed to cross the tracks of the green line at park street. you dont have to wait until a train arrives, going in on one side, and leaving on the other..... :) (when someone told me that, i was just glad not being the only one who thinks this station is very complicated...).

Through glass

2012-02-16T23:25:00.001-05:00

watching the fireworks during chinese new year from behind the window...

Lousy parking

2012-02-15T23:33:00.000-05:00

when walking to the subway one morning we saw this car... parked like that!! i think the photo does not entirely show how ridiculous this was, and how, relatively, steep.... i guess he/she didnt fit in the normal way you are supposed to park you car, and came up with this solution instead. im just wondering if it was sheer frustration and anger, or perhaps also just for the fun of it...?

we once got a ticket for parking in the wrong direction. something that does not matter (anymore) in the netherlands, you can park however you like, so we were not aware that here that can get you a ticket for that. luckily for us, the ticket never made it to "the system" tim found out when he called to pay the fine (what was it? 20 or 40 dollars or so?), so we never paid... we thus were sure this car would either be towed, or at least get a ticket. but when we got back home in the evening, the car was still parked like this...

around our subway station are 788 parking spots, and they are always, always all occupied (during the week, that is). for some you still have to walk a good 5 minutes to the station, and parking costs you 5.50 per day. i just calculated that that is more than 20,000 parking dollars per week (!!), just for this station. wish that would go straight to me.... !

Burial ground

2012-02-14T23:31:00.000-05:00

during the week, we will always goto work by subway, its fastest and cheapest (traffic into boston in the morning, and out of in the evening is more often than not awful). i wish i could go by bike as i used to in the netherlands. tim actually did it a few times, and i did not like that at all. fortunately, he himself decided pretty quickly to stick with the subway (you basically have to bike on the highway at certain parts.. beehh). but on weekends, we often go by car. parking is free then, and no traffic. when driving past charlestown, i always see the above cemetery. i had been wanting to go there since a while, and now that im participating with the taphophile tuesday, we finally did! driving by turned out not to be the same as actually getting there, but we eventually did. as it is fenced off, we walked around to get to the entrance, which was locked! buuuhhh... :( turns out it is always locked. i thus took the above picture through the fence.

this cemetery is in between blocks of houses, and looks a bit out of place. it has an elevated center, and then many graves seem to be placed arond that, in a circle, kind of like sun rays. it is named the phipps street burial ground, named after solomon phipps, a settler from england. it is the oldest cemetery in charlestown, dating from around 1630! it has 1549 gravestones, and according to the sign, it might be that the layout of the cemetery corresponds to a map of the town. fortunately, a 19th century "beautification" plan to straighten all stones into neat rows was dismissed. there are people buried here from every class and background, the most notable being john harvard. the exact site of his grave is unknow, however, since his marker stone is gone. (most of this info i found here.)

there was a sign on the gate "to enter this site, please call the boston parks department".it feels kind of weird, having to call someone to get access, (how does that work? do they come immediately, do you have to make an appointment..?) yet i would love to be able to walk around there, like this i could not get a good impression of the cemetery. so... another time, maybe... (just a pity i really, really hate to make phone calls..). on flickr i posted 2 more pics that i took through the fence.

for other taphophiles, go here!

How cheesy!!

2012-02-13T23:36:00.001-05:00

and its not even a mural... but this is all i got right now. im a little lazy! saw it and ignored it, in boston's chinatown, but then tim said; hey, hey! and well... i took the picture... :)

tomorrow is valentine's day. signs of that are everywhere; the office at our apartment complex asked all residents to pick up their delivered packages as they kept coming in, taking up all the space. shops have entire aisles just for chocolate and other red/heart-shaped candy (they started that beginning of january, some even earlier). and even tonight, at the supermarket one of the employees went crazy over the intercom; "we have roses here, a dozen, they are so cheap, cheaper than anywhere else! we men are in the doghouse, so be her hero, bring her roses. buy some nice chocolate. now do it, really, and here is the place to do it. do your shopping, and get the roses too. and some candy. and since its cheap... you dont even have to spend a lot of money. dont you want to get out of that doghouse... " it went on, and on and on... (a youtube video about the doghouse (had never heard it before); its rather funny, but a bit long....).

in the netherlands, valentine's day is not that big (pfew), but here it seems really important...

for some real murals, go here!

Boston & Tim

2012-02-13T00:16:00.003-05:00

so.... today a photo of tim & boston, after boston & me... :). no pink for him... this is from quite a different location. not on the banks of the charles river, but in winthrop, but on the other side of the water you can see boston again. had to look it up, but winthrop is a town, and not part of boston. its tiny, yet densely populated, and cute, with many dead end streets, leading to the ocean. it was established in 1630, and that makes it one of the oldest towns in the us! named after john winthrop. you can read all about him here, as i am supposed to goto bed now....

it was cold today! -4 C during the day, and very, very windy. but soooo sunny, as you can see, so we had to go out and do some exploring....

Where's the....

2012-02-12T00:35:00.000-05:00

...snow?! i liked this statue during the one real snow "storm" we had this year. it is in the boston common, and i dont know why its there or who made it... in fact, i had never seen it before, the snow made me suddenly see it... :)

today we had a little snow, tiny flakes. but it was not cold enough for them to stay on the ground. buuuhhh. but... for the economy no snow is good. at least, thats what i read in time magazine. there is more work for construction workers, more gets done, people buy more, and the city does not have to spend millions on snow removal (last year's budget for snow removal was 16 million dollars, in boston!! and they spent it all, maybe even more...) and roads get less damaged (although the roads around here are so awful already, i cannot imagine they can get even worse...).

Hey, Dali!

2012-02-11T10:20:00.001-05:00

sorry, no post last night, i was suddenly exhausted and fell asleep on the couch.. (actually quite a while ago since that happened. at some point it happened almost daily!).

just a quick post to make up.. here we were just driving around, not too far from our apartment (but have no clue anymore where this was). i suddenly saw this (i think) stencil-painted face of (must be) salvador dali on this piece of street furniture. hahaha, almost every day i learn something new, because of this blog (as a result, it also always takes me much longer to write a post than i intended. as it is usually the last thing i do before going to bed.... i usually end up going to sleep later than i should) i was looking up how you call this thing. well, its a fire alarm call box, but normally they are painted red, so im wondering whether this one is still in use (and so i learned that in the UK they call everything placed on streets, like benches, fire alarms etc "street furniture").

anyways... these boxes look very ancient, and they are! but they still work, and for example after 9/11 they proved useful in new york (there are 15,000 of those in new york). power and cell phone service were down in large parts of the city, but those boxes are powered from a separate supply and continue to work in the face of outages of both electrical and telephone systems...

behind is a fire hydrant. you cannot park in front of a fire hydrant. always frustrating, when you think you have found a parking spot (parking in boston is horrible!!), the fire hydrant pops up... grrrr. if you do park there, you can expect a parking ticket. or.... if there is a fire... firemen will not hesitate to damage your car... (picture here).

and once again... i wrote much more than intended! i just wanted to show this pic, and write that this is a typical residential street with use houses. that i like these streets, and that they are just as you see them in the movies... :)

Boston & me

2012-02-09T23:59:00.002-05:00

i dont have my computer here right now, so im using tims annoying (non-apple) computer, and his photo. of me.. :) in cambridge, photographing the charles and boston in the background. the hat (how you call such a thing? we dutch call it a "muts", here you have such weird names. isnt it called a "beanie"? i think that sounds really weird.. :) ) i bought at H&M, mostly because it was pink, it tends to sit a little weird on my head, as you can see, so i dont wear it much. the perfect photographer's gloves were knit by my friend sylvia, who lives in california, where she probably doesnt need them.... she also knitted me a perfectly-fitting purple hat (beanie?), that i usually wear, but i thought pink fits better with my red snow boots. at least in my world..... one day i show you the boots, i just got them for this winter, but barely had the opportunity to use them so far... :( buuuhhh.

Banning sugar?

2012-02-08T23:07:00.000-05:00

this sculpture is in cambridge, in a park called the cambridge common, which is right behind the harvard university campus. i liked this sculpture, but did not really know why it was there. underneath the inscription you can still faintly see that someone wrote "yet they still do" (i think someone should repaint that, its a good addition that makes you think if you didnt when reading the first sentence).

it is a memorial to the great hunger in ireland. both the woman and the man have a child in their arms, and they depict separation due to hunger. the great potato famine was a period between 1845 and 1852. due to a potato disease, potatoes were not available, while a large part of the irish population depended entirely on the potato for food. 1 million people died, and another million emigrated from ireland, causing a significant drop in the population.

regarding food..., today i read an article in nature magazine in which the authors argue that sugar should be taxed, just like cigarettes and alcohol! they write that there are 30% more people obese than there are undernourished (although im not sure this is worldwide or US only). interestingly, while sugar is present in nearly every product, long-long-long ago sugar was only available during a short period of the year; in fruits during harvest, and in honey (but honey is guarded by bees... ). so.. evolutionary we are (still?) not used to taking in so much sugar, yet we all do.... (many people eat 500 extra calories a day, just from sugar additives in their food!! just look at the labels... especially here in the us many, many products will contain high-fructose corn syrup)

several governments are now thinking of taxing sugar, but while you dont need to smoke or drink to survive, everyone does need food..... im not sure making sugary things more expesive will help to reduce sugar intake. but maybe it will help the food industry? if sugar becomes something "bad"/expensive, maybe they will stop putting high-fructose corn syrup in everything?

sorry for the boring post, here is the entire article, which is in fact really interesting. if you cant get to the entire article, i can always send it to you... :)

In between...

2012-02-07T23:05:00.000-05:00

julie from taphophile tragics asked me last week about a wider shot of the netherlands cemetery (last week i just showed 2 graves). i took some while we were there, but the sun was so beautifully bright, only the ones from behind turned out ok. as you can see, this small cemetery is literally just in between 2 houses. instead of the next house, there is suddenly a cemetery, you dont even see it when down the street. it just pops up. unfortunately i have no idea what was there first, the residential street, or the cemetery? (the cemetery dates from 1859). i also still dont know why this cemetery is in melrose. i presume it was just a matter of availability, as i havent been able to find info about a dutch settlement or whatever in melrose. there are people buried here from as far as (relatively) worcester, which is an hour by car from here. melrose was a relatively new town, only in 1845 it separated from the city of malden, and became the town of melrose (in exchange for city in 1900). in 1845, the melrose-area got 3 trainstops, and people working in boston in search of a country atmosphere moved here (haha, actually just like tim and me... although it was more that we would never be able to afford the same kind of apartment with all its amenities in the center of boston...), perhaps some of them were dutch.. ?

there is one other pic i wanted to show, but i cannot break my self-imposed rule of 1 picture a day. so, i cheat, and you can have a look here, at my flickr account, for the one grave that was in dutch (and a few more pics of this cemetery). its not a spectacular photo, but the dutch text is just weird, and was hard to decipher, at first. but it reads "hier ligt het stoffelijk overschot van roosje ween", which translates into "here lies the corpse (!!) of roosje ween". i think thats very weird. why not just, here rests, or here lies... why "the corpse"? perhaps their dutch was not that good anymore, and they didnt know "stoffelijk overschot" is not something you use on a grave? (or is this normal? any dutch who knows this?)

for other taphophiles, go here!

Ghost sign

2012-02-06T23:42:00.003-05:00

i took this pic 2 weeks ago or so, when we had some snow. this is on cambridge street in boston (i wonder whether cambridge has a boston street? i actually dont think so... :)). although i walk here every now and then, i never noticed this faded mural before. its an old advertisement for quaker oats, "the world's breakfast" (yuk! defenitely not for me!). actually, if you look carefully, you see such faded advertisements on houses/buildings here and there, i like them, as they always look nicely old-fashioned. i was googling around to find more info on this specific one, but... nothing. i just found 2 other blogs that also pictured the one i have here, but no further info.

on wikipedia i did find that these are called ghost signs, brickads, or simply fading ads. the copied wiki-defenition: "a ghost sign is an old hand-painted advertising signage that has been preserved on a building for an extended period of time. the signage may be kept for its nostalgic appeal, or simply indifference by the owner." many of these signs were placed between the 1890s to 1960s, so this one might be decades old! in a time when billboards did not exist and there were no committees deciding as to whether a building would be ruined by such an advertisement or not...

i think they are interesting, its like peeking into another time, however briefly.... moreover, they are so much more interesting than huge mass-produced billboards! having never noticed this one before, i saw the exact same one somewhere in cambridge later that day, equally faded. from now on i will pay more attention to these signs, so perhaps i'll show you another one sometime...

for more murals, go here!

Super bowl

2012-02-05T23:47:00.000-05:00

this is a piece of art by barbara kruger, which i photographed in the museum of art yesterday (on my screen the colors looked very crisp. on my screen, not so much... :( ). we have an entire book with her photo/phrases, which are really interesting. she takes her pictures from different media sources, and puts a phrase/question next to it. often, they really make you think. for example; "when i hear the word culture i take out my checkbook" "your moments of joy have the precision of military strategy", "i shope, therefore i am", are a few of them. the pictures are important too, ofcourse... (so you should really look her up!).

anyways... i realized the one above perfectly describes what i have been watching tonight; the super bowl, the annual championship of the highest level of professional american football. it was the new york giants against the new england patriots. until last week i didnt even know what the super bowl was, or that the patriots were in, or.. whatever. but i watched the entire thing. plus 4 times as much of commercials. my goodness... our host this evening told us that for every minute of playing time, there are approximately 4 minutes of commercials. i know now that guys in tight pants have to get a weird-shaped ball to one side of the field, and during this process they are most of the time lying on top of each other. i also noticed they have a towel hanging from their pants, and some have black stripes under their eyes (to prevent reflection or whatever.... well.. the sun still bothers me sometimes, even though i wear a lot of black eye-make-up too! but... i dont usually wear a helmet, perhaps it has something to do with that). more importantly, some players are really really fat, and i could sometimes see their bellies (yuck), and.. the while the patriots had shiny tight pants, the giants had matte pants, and i now know that shiny pants make your ass look more tight. (of course, this has not been scientifically tested. it could be that the patriot's pants were more tight, or their asses better trained...).

from the numerous commercials i learned that women are objects. i saw many very pretty, barely dressed ladies recommending some product or another... (another image/text of barbara kruger would have been highly welcome).

all in all, it was interesting, and i saw a little more of american culture...

Giant head

2012-02-05T00:32:00.001-05:00

this is one of the 2 gigantic baby heads that are flanking the back entrance of the museum of fine arts in boston. we were there today, and as it was quite sunny and not too cold, i once again tried to picture these sculptures... one has its eyes open, and the other, above, has its eyes closed. they are bronze, and weigh just 1.6 tons at 8 feet tall. the sculpture is titled "night and day", and made by Antonio Lopez Garcia.

about every time that we go to this museum (and thats pretty often. although we only go when we can go for free. that is, on wednesday evenings or the first weekend of the month with our bank card), i take pictures of these heads, but im usually not very successfull. they are just sooooo big, and it is such a weird piece of art... when i saw them first i thought there was something wrong with me. i passed by in a bus and wondered if i really saw what i just saw. when i really saw them, a few weeks later, i didnt like them at all. now im not so sure anymore. for sure they are interesting! perhaps one day i will like them... (probably when i am able to photograph them in a way that i am satisfied..)

Road house

2012-02-03T23:11:00.001-05:00

i read on the news that there is quite some snow in the netherlands! no more trains, extreme traffic jams.... while around boston they know very well what to do with snow, but there is not much of it (none here, at the moment). this was 2 weeks ago, when we drove to new hampshire, somewhere along the route, off the highway. here and there a house next to the road, in the middle of nowhere. it looks nice.... and it must be rather quiet. but most times either me or tim says, oooh... would you want to live there? na. not really....

Cheese balls

2012-02-02T23:26:00.001-05:00

im not very inspired today... so here, some cheese balls...

theres no snow at all. its rather warm (certainly for this time of the year), and i wonder if we ever will get more snow! last year we were immersed in it, the streets were getting narrower and narrower from all the snow piling up on both sides. and now?! nothing... :( i could as well be in the netherlands. although... there its pretty cold now, with temperatures well below 0 (celsius).

believe it or not, but the primary reason i bought this enormous thing (what is it? a box? a can?) was because i thought it would look funny at home. placed atop the bookshelf, its size looked really disproportionate. but, of course... after several weeks, i had to try one. and then a few more. and they were not that good, but they were there, and there were a lot of them. and then.... about halfway or so, they got stale. yuk... not surprising, if you think of it, such a huge box filled with air, and cheese balls. that will make them go stale. is that why there are so many overweight people in this country? because everything is in such enormous packages.. and you do need to eat it, before it goes bad, otherwise its a waste!

i actually trashed them, they were really not good anymore, but then i realized i wanted to take a picture. for comparison, i put my favorite pink illy-cappuccino cup next to it (which i brought with me from the netherlands, i couldnt leave them behind). just the other day tim and me were thinking how it would be for a real american, one that has never been outside the us, perhaps outside his state, to go to the netherlands. he would find everything small. the houses, the cars. the portions in restaurants and the milk cartons in the supermarket (maximum one liter). the fridge would be tiny too, but that would turn out fine, as most products are sold in at least half the size as they are sold here. but you cannot keep everything for weeks in it, it will go bad, as high-fructose corn syrup is used in much less abundance....(gelukkig!)

woops, i wrote a lot. and that for a picture of cheese balls... :)

Dancing dragon

2012-02-01T23:08:00.000-05:00

last sunday we went to chinatown, as they were celebrating the chinese new year (year 4710), which started jan 23rd. the year of the rabbit giving way to the year of the dragon.... (once every 12 years, as there are 12 animals) i was reading a bit, and did not realize this; in western culture/literature the dragon is a mean, scary beast that needs to be defeated by heroes and so on. on the other hand, in eastern culture the dragon is a symbol of good fortune and intense power.... this could be a good year... ! :) people born under this sign are regarded as innovative, passionate people who are colorful, confident and fearless.

the dancing dragons were going from door to door in chinatown, seemingly tireless, throwing around lettuce and oranges (this was what they were feeding the dragons). as they were going up each stairs leading to the shops and restaurants, firecrackers were going off. of course, there had to be a policeman guarding this all, but he looked rather bored... (maybe it was too noisy for him).

the theme day for this month at citydailyphoto is animals, so that was a good opportunity to show this pic! :)

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Netherlands cemetery

2012-01-31T23:07:00.002-05:00

i am enjoying the taphophile tragics more than you can imagine! i was so eager to do today's post.... and then i didnt have much time... :( on top of that, i was (as often) not satisfied with my pictures and didnt know which one to choose. well, this is what you get... the graves of hannah and simon courant. as you can see, hannah died on may 15, 1881, and her husband less than 2 weeks later. i think it is interesting that their age is precisely noted, but not their date of birth. as you can see, both were born in amsterdam, the netherlands. and guess where those graves are located...! just a few blocks away from our apartment.... we live here now 1.5 years, and i had no clue that very close to the 2 cemeteries i described last week, there is another cemetery. and it gets even more interesting (to me, at least); this cemetery is meant only for people born in the netherlands, from dutch descent, or married to a dutch! i came to know about it when i was frantically searching for info about henry brown for last week's post. then i had to wait till the weekend to finally check it out.... grrr..

this saturday we went. it was so sunny it almost felt like early spring.... we walked to the street facing the main entrance of the wyoming cemetery, an average residential street where we once parked the car... just a little further, in between 2 houses was the little "netherlands cemetery association and roxbury mutual society burial ground"!! one part was still entirely empty, but the middle was quite packed with very old graves, many dating from before 1900. some were illegible, but i could see that many people indeed were born in holland, mostly amsterdam, and some names were indeed typically dutch! i went by every grave (tim got bored, but it was so interesting!).

i have spent quite some time trying to find information about this cemetery. why in melrose?! (of all places..). but the only thing i could find was this page (that led me to this place initially). in 1859, a group of dutch jews (explaining the hebrew on many graves) living in the greater boston area formed a fraternal organization, the netherlands cemetery association, and they opened this cemetery for their members. currently, there are around 475 graves, and it is not affiliated with any temple or synagogue. it is still active, as i saw one grave from 2010 (or was it 2011? i forgot..)

i could not find a whole lot about hannah and simon courant (i have to admit i did not spend a lot of time on that, i was more interested in the history of the cemetery and am frustrated i could not find more). the only thing i could find is that they had a son, mark courant, who was born around 1855 in the netherlands. in 1882, just after his parents died, mark married betsy bronkhorst (she was born in england in 1859, but her family seemed to be from from belgium originally), in suffolk, massachusetts. she was an assistant house keeper, while he was a cigar maker. betsy died already in 1885, and was buried at the netherlands cemetery too, while mark died in 1917 and was buried in woburn, massachusetts. (i found this all here)

there was also supposed to be one grave with a dutch inscription, so of course i wanted to find that one. that wasnt easy, but eventually i did find it (by then tim was really, really bored..). perhaps i will show you that some other time!

for other taphophiles, go here...

Roa mural

2012-01-30T18:21:00.000-05:00

i had a really hard time choosing one of the pics i took from the mural i want to show this week. finally i choose this pic, but to see the entire mural, you have to click on it! unfortunately, my pics dont do this piece justice... :( it was sooo impressive! this is in miami, the sunbather that i showed earlier is on the wall to the left. if you go here, you can see a few more pics, close ups etc.

the one above is made by the street artist roa. of course, i had to look what i could find about him online (where would i be without the internet!). roa is from ghent, in belgium. he has painted in many cities in europe and the usa, including london, paris, new york, los angeles, and recently he had a show of his work in paris. he mostly paints animals, in various stages of decay. in this interview i found, he mentions that the type of animal depends on the region where he paints, as he likes to paint the ordinary animals from that location. quote; " I dream to go one day to Africa or Australia to extend my choices". he likes to paint abandoned places, as you can see here (you should really check it out! many beautiful, and funny murals). i think his work is really beautiful, and very well fits the locations!!

here you can see more monday murals.

Sunday slogan

2012-01-30T00:03:00.000-05:00

today was a much too long day. beeehhh. its good that in such cases i can always just let the church have their say.... what a great play on tooth decay.... this was during our holiday, somewhere in florida, but already i would have to look where approximately i took this photo. grrrrr....

good night!

Hmmm, pizza!

2012-01-29T00:03:00.001-05:00

today we had a pizza from this place for dinner... somehow i got to know about groupon one day (and then livingsocial, and then bloomspot, luckily for me, this was only a few months ago), and now my inbox gets loaded every day with their "daily deals". grrrr.... essentially it means that i now sometimes spend money on things i otherwise wouldnt, "because its so terribly cheap now!". this time it was a coupon for 10 dollars, giving me 20 dollars to spend at upper crust, the pizzaplace. there are always nice rules coming with such groupons (only one coupon per table, only valid till..., not for alcohol, have to spend the entire amount at once, etc etc). ah well... the pizza here is really good, and actually too expensive, so with the groupon it was worth it... (and then we went to the movies with another groupon, the ticket now only was 6 dollars instead of 11 or 12!) :)

picture again from last week. all the snow is gone! it was very, very sunny today, didnt feel like winter at all!

Last saturday...

2012-01-27T23:46:00.002-05:00

... it looked like this when getting off the subway in chinatown. i was surprised, it actually looked like quite a snowstorm... :) but it wasnt that bad at all, they just hadnt really cleaned the streets here yet. today it mostly rained, but tomorrow its supposed to be sunny, and not too cold.

ah well... im not in a writing mood. good night!

Charles river

2012-01-26T23:26:00.000-05:00

we had a nice walk on sunday, it was not too cold, although quite grey out, and the snow was still there (its raining, right now). we took the red line to central square in cambridge, and then walked by MIT, hit the charles river and walked on the cambridge side along the river, then crossed the longfellow bridge and were back in boston. i took a lot of photos while walking, one of them above.... on the right you see prudential, and to the left the hancock tower. i was very surprised to see the river is (partially) frozen. sure, we had a few very cold nights, but most days it has been rather mild. im sure the laws of physics can explain this all, but i cant... :) on july 4th we were in a canoe on this river, what a difference!

supposedly, the charles river is one of the cleanest urban rivers in the usa nowadays, but in the past it was extremely dirty; you were not allowed to swim in it, and if you happened to fall in, you would get a tetanus shot and antibiotics! this was common practice until mid-1990s! i do have to say, americans like to give you as many shots as possible (everyone gets the flu-shot, just 2 days ago they asked me if i didnt want a tetanus-shot, as i hadnt had one since childhood, and most (all?) teenagers get vaccinated against hepatitis B. when arriving here they didnt believe the note my physician wrote for me, namely that i received all required vaccinations, and thus they wanted to vaccinate me again against some childhood-disease. i refused and thus i was required to have my blood tested to prove i was indeed vaccinated. i still remember how furious i was then..).

anyways, you still are not allowed to swim in this river naked, as you can see here. you will get arrested and handcuffed... but perhaps those officers just secretly enjoyed that... (otherwise they would have given the man at least a towel, no?!)

Dutch delicacy

2012-01-25T23:12:00.001-05:00

i have not been home in 2011... by now i have not been to the netherlands in over a year, and i really start to miss little things (the big things i missed before, already... haha). one of the things that more and more came to mind when having breakfast or lunch is pictured above. a delicious slice of bread with chocolate sprinkles! yes, this is what the dutch eat on a regular basis, and yes, this surprises everyone not from the netherlands. and no... those sprinkles are not entirely the same as the ones you use for baking, to just add that little extra to a pie or cupcake. i found that out the hard way... :)just 2 weeks ago i could only think about a "boterham met hagelslag" (a slice of bread (boterham) with (met) chocolate sprinkles (hagelslag)). when we were in the baking section of the supermarket, i decided to buy such a little box with the baking sprinkles. i almost bought 2, as they were only 1,50 a piece.... at home, i did not put the box in the cupboard, as not to forget it during breakfast the next morning. but surely, i didnt forget it, it was the first thing on my mind when waking up. we toasted some bread, i put on some butter, covered it well with the sprinkles... and was disappointed right after the first bite. ofcourse the taste was wrong! beeehhh, this was so not hagelslag..! :(

luckily... our dutch neighbor is much more knowledgeable about where to get dutch stuff in the usa than we are, and she happened to go to a dutch store somewhere around boston. she got us a real, dutch box of chocolate sprinkles!! yumyuymyum. thats what you see above... the most real bread we have been able to find at our supermarket, toasted and buttered, and then real dutch hagelslag. hmmmmm. a true delicacy. for a dutch living abroad that is..... :)

ah, and hagelslag literally means "hailstorm". now isnt that funny...?

if you want to try some hagelslag, either "melk" (milk chocolate), or "puur" (bittersweet), just order from this website!

Tree protection

2012-01-24T17:10:00.001-05:00

this is at the wyoming cemetery in melrose, close to our apartment (a 5 minute walk). i go here every now and then, sometimes alone, as it is so pretty! next to the cemetery is pine banks park, and then there is yet another cemetery (the forest dale cemetery), but somehow i prefer this one. many people, including us, run or walk around these 2 cemeteries. with my (slow) pace it takes 30 minutes, just enough.. :) (somehow i feel weird running on the cemetery itself, and i think its not allowed. but many people do walk their dogs, and, ofcourse, you can access it by car. im now kind of used to this, but the first time i saw this in the usa i was totally surprised and a bit annoyed. "really, driving on a cemetery?!").i liked this grave as it is so extremely tiny, and, i presume, got partially covered by the tree trunk over the years. i tried to find something, anything really, about this person, but google could not give me any answers this time. grrrrr.

so... something about the cemetery then. it was established in 1857. in 1887 and 1891 they expanded the grounds, leading to a total of 61 acres. other than that, it has not changed but for the trees that have grown older and bigger. and ofcourse the addition of people, currently there are 25,476 graves. right now, the cemetery is running out of space (although it looks like a really spacious cemetery), but they are working to solve this problem. the above grave is in the 1700s section, so named because it was also the place where the first house of melrose was built, in 1645. the exact location is indicated by this sign, its near the entrance of the cemetery. it was the house of deacon thomas lynde, who built it himself. around that time, 3 families owned melrose, the lynde family being one of them.

other than that, i found on strangeusa.com that the cemetery is haunted... according to the description: "the cemetery is known to have had strange occurances in the late night hours. especially, a feeling of negativity and people have said they have felt like they are being watched. many people have been chased by a young girl and have heard strange sounds coming from the rear of the cemetery. dark figures have also been reported in the 1700's section" (i.e. the section where i took this pic. the shadow, btw, is my own... ;) ). but other than that description, and some commenters describing similar experiences, i could not find anything about this! i myself have not experienced anything weird at this cemetery, perhaps i should go there again and pay more attention to the supernatural...... does anyone believe in such things... ?
for more graves on taphophile tuesday, go here!

Banksy, cancelled

2012-01-23T22:57:00.000-05:00

i like the monday mural theme, but, as i said before, its not that easy to find graffiti in boston. im sure the graffiti busters have something to do with that, combined with zero-tolerance policies (recently they arrested someone who tagged subway cars and stations in boston, plus other cities, and he could goto prison for 3 years!). but there is a little here and there.. (and actually a lot along the orange line, but this is not legally accessible). just read somewhere that boston spends around 6 million/year to get rid of graffiti!! above is in chinatown. and as you can see, its very ugly! i wouldnt call it a mural either, but.... underneath this used to be (most likely) a real banksy. the only thing remaining is a tiny part of the man, in black, underneath the white R. this is what it used to look like, in 2010. then someone decided to paint over the man, as you can see here. and at some point at least 2 more people went over that, as you can see above. we actually had been looking at this wall before, seeing nothing but ugliness. haha, its still ugly, but just wanted to show that many graffiti-writers do not care on which wall they write, or whether they overwrite someone else's "work". i think its too bad that something this ugly replaced the banksy, although all of them did something that was illegal; defacing a wall that is not theirs... but still, something like this is much more interesting than a grey empty wall, right? (but this person had permission to paint that wall).

last week someone told me about "hanksy", a kind of a prank on banksy, but with the face of.... tom hanks. hahahaha. here you can see an example. no clue who is placing those..

for more monday murals, click here...

Sunday slogan

2012-01-22T22:47:00.002-05:00

last week i did a sunday slogan, and since i collected a few over the past few weeks, heres another one! taken during the same trip last saturday. they dont cease to amaze me.... in fat, whenever we drive past a church, im hoping to add another one to my collection, and im disappointed when they dont have a sign out front. sometimes theres still hope, i can see the sign from afar, but coming closer i see it only gives the hours for sunday prayer or reads "all are welcome" (how boring!).

the one above is a very bad one, i think. how on earth can they write that?! how does it make people who are maybe not so into god (or not at all) turn to him?

because i have so many questions regarding these signs, i google around a bit this week, but couldnt find much on wikipedia (bbuuhhh). i did find this site where they posted the most hilarious church signs (and many more weird ones in the comments). some of them i have seen myself around here, in the exact wording, so i do think churches share them. still dont know how this exactly goes though... perhaps priests make a lot of road trips and just note down the ones they like, and then use them for their own signs. hmm, but they could also just use the internet. a weekly email with the best slogans? a website from which they can pick? (would it be for free or is there this full time slogan write?) maybe...

Real snow!!

2012-01-22T00:11:00.000-05:00

yayyy! finally the first real snow of this season..... when going to bed last night it was not yet snowing, which was very disappointing to me. naturally, i woke up several times during the night and had to check the snow... and jeejjj, at some point it was snowing. it wasnt such a spectacular snowstorm as we had last year (we even had several), with strong winds and big flakes... these were tiny flakes... but they were coming down steadily for hours, so we woke up to a nice layer (again, not the knee-deep we had during our first US-snow last year).

we walked a bit around boston this afternoon, above the boston common with the skating rink at the frog pond, such a different view than in the midst of summer (taken form the other side)! unfortunately, some snow drops on my lens... we walked around a bit, and i took some pics from higher up, where young and old were sleighing down. suddenly, a man standing next to us bellowed; "you are not taking pics of my kids, now are you?!" me, surprised and not yet knowing what to say, could only think of this event. then he said: "because if you do, i have to sign a release form". i just mumbled something like "eehmm.. i was just taking a pic of the entire view from here.. ok" but then he said: "i was just joking!! its one of those things i like to say, there are so many photography students around here". pfew...

most of my pics were disappointing.. but i guess over the coming days i will show you more of them anyways.. :) im not sure how long the snow will last, forecast says higher temperatures in a day or so.

Side street

2012-01-20T23:40:00.004-05:00

just a side street in new york, somewhere in chinatown. i was so surprised to see so many of these scooters lined up, and a bike behind... looked more like rome to me!

we had some snow here last night, and more is expected tomorrow, hopefully i will be able to take some pics...

Stupid dutch

2012-01-19T22:48:00.001-05:00

as you might know, new york city's borough brooklyn is named after a very cute dutch village, breukelen (breuckelen in old dutch). the dutch breukelen is close to the city utrecht, where i used to live, and sometimes i would bike around this area, which is very beautiful... (buuuuuh, i miss my bike!). there are many huge and beautiful mansions along the river, dating form the 17th century belonging to wealthy merchants, mostly from amsterdam. already in 1624, the dutch were somewhere in that area on long island, NY! in 1646, breuckelen was part of new netherland, but in 1664 they lost it to the british. over time, the name evolved from breuckelen, brockland, brocklin, brookline, brookland and eventually, to brooklyn. brooklyn's official motto is still a dutch one: Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which was also the dutch motto until 1816. it means "unity makes strength".

now, brooklyn heights is a neighborhood within brooklyn, which looks rather nice, judging from google images. but.... the above advertisement is taken in the netherlands (in december 2010)! around breukelen.... (with in the background a dutch train...). why the hell do they call it brooklyn heights?! why does everything have to be in english? (this happens more often in dutch advertisements). it just really annoyed me...

anyways... here we still dont have snow. it started snowing on monday, and there was a nice (little) layer of snow on everything, enough to get the snow removers out of bed early, by 5 am (!!!) they had cleared the paths around our apartment complex. but.... by the end of tuesday it was all washed away by the, yet again, high temperatures and rain. now its freezing again, and some snow is expected. perhaps even more on saturday!! lets see....

Southernmost southernmost

2012-01-18T17:22:00.001-05:00

i did not know what to post today... and then decided it had to be a pic with people in it, havent posted that for a while! but my most recent pictures with people in it go back to the first of january, when we were at key west, florida. this is a sort of monument, intended to resemble a bouy, standing at the southernmost tip of key west. this is written on the side with the least number of people, and it also mentions that from here its only 90 miles to cuba (as you can see here). there were many things on key west labeled as "southernmost", the southermost hotel, house (but there was also a southernmost southernmost house next to it), supermarket, restaurant... etc... but this monument was overcrowded with tourists. there was quite a long line with people wanting to have their picture taken next to it. at some point people became impatient and just had their picture taken from the other side, as you can see here. the ones facing the sun probably ended up with a better picture, but the others have the text with "southernmost point...", having at least an excuse as to why they were standing next to that ugly big thing! :)of course, this is not really really the most southern point of the usa. on the island itself are points farther south, and also those are only the southernmost points of continental usa, the island hawaii is more southern....in fact, i just read there is another key, key ballast, that is more southern than key west, but this island is privately owned, and therefore apparently does not count (perhaps because tourists cannot get their picture taken there?). this island had been owned by someone for the past 50 years, but last year it was for sale! for only 13,800,000 dollars.... you can see that here, on the "private island website". "private island website"... can you believe it?!

it was hard to write a post without visiting wikipedia... :( but they are blacked out for 24 hours to protest against SOPA and PIPA...

Benjamin Waterhouse

2012-01-17T14:45:00.000-05:00

i took this pic long ago, at the mount auburn cemetery in cambridge (for an earlier post about this cemetery, click here). this is the grave of Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who died at age 92 in 1846. i took this picture because i liked this stone, and it is not usual to see that much text on a grave. upon reading it, i became even more curious! i put the pic in my "to post sometime, but first need to read more about this person" folder, and never did so. but thanks to taphophile tragics, im finally posting it! when waterhouse, born in the usa, was 21, he went to europe to study medicine, both in britain and the netherlands; he got his degree in leiden (as you can read on the stone; leyden). back in the us, he became professor at harvard medical school. in europe he had learned about the small pox vaccine, which he wanted to introduce in the us. he wrote to the then-president, john adams, as they had been roommates in the netherlands (how interesting!). when a reply did not come, he wrote to the vice-president, thomas jefferson, and when he became president in 1801, waterhouse introduced the vaccine. he did the first vaccinations on 4 of his 6 children, i guess the ultimate proof that a doctor deems something safe... he then also did a "controlled experiment" in which he deliberately exposed 19 vaccinated and 2 unvaccinated boys to the smallpox virus; the latter 2 died. (well into the 20th century this kind of experiments happened. i suggest this book if you want to know more about that). and so, he brought this vaccine to the usa. vaccines were discovered by edward jenner in 1796, when he noticed that milkmaids who caught the cowpox virus did not catch smallpox. by 1977, this deadly pathogenic disease has been eradicated, thanks to vaccination! it is said that jenner's discovery leading to vaccines has saved more lives than any other person...
of course, i got most of this knowledge from wikipedia... i could read it for hours, just following links... :) but.. tonight, the english wikipedia will be unavailable for 24 hours, to protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. if you want to know more about that; click here.
now i really digressed too much... to see other taphophile tragics, click here!

I have...

2012-01-16T22:49:00.000-05:00

... a dream. who doesnt know that it was martin luther king who said that?

during our holiday, we saw the lorraine motel in memphis, where martin luther king was assassinated while standing on his balcony in 1968. in fact, the wife of the motel owner had a stroke some hours after the murder of MLK, and died 5 days later. years later, when the motel was in financial troubles enough money was raised to buy it. and only in 1991, it officially opened as the national civil rights museum. we were there on christmas eve, and the museum was closed, unfortunately.

the next day we drove to new orleans, where we saw this mural of martin luther king next to malcolm x. this area was not the most inviting, and i felt extremely touristy when i stuck my camera out of the window to take a picture...

the third monday in january is a national holiday in the us, to honor martin luther king, observed for the first time in 1986. yet it was only in 2000 that all 50 states in the us recognize this holiday, with new hampshire and utah being the last states to do so.

here you can view other murals from around the world!

Sunday slogan

2012-01-16T00:33:00.001-05:00

just read it; "exercise daily, run from satan, walk with the lord"

really?! which slogan generator spit that one out?! im really wondering about this. how does it work? do all the church-people sit together and come up with some witty text that in some way has something to do with normal life, as well as god, and then mixed together? did they assign one priest thats good with words? do they just google some random words and hope that something comes out? is each church free to put up whatever they feel like (provided it has something to do with god), or is there a more national oversight, and churches of the same kind put the same texts?

ofcourse, the best still remains this one.

i can only feel for the first part; exercise daily.. this year has not been very good in that respect, so far. i was sick most of the past week, although its getting better now. but i still think running is better than walking... but cant i just do that alone?!

When snow...

2012-01-14T23:59:00.000-05:00

....refuses to come to boston..we have to go to the snow! grrr... still not one flake here... :( i liked it so much last year, and now... nothing, nothing, nothing...

we went to new hampshire, where they dont have a 6.25% sales tax like massachusetts. depending on what you buy, this can make a difference! so, an hour away from our house, there was snow, jeejjj! but it was also really cold. i am still a bit sick, so mostly we just sat in the car and enjoyed the view (we tried not to take the highway).

around here you can find abandoned houses/cars/shops as well. we saw some (but not as many as in mississippi), like this car above. the door was open, and inside was a total deteriorated mess..

What happened..?!

2012-01-14T00:11:00.002-05:00

we were having a long walk in boston, and suddenly we entered this street. entirely deserted, but with such a mess! (i must admit, this was a few months back, but i havent been taking pictures this week..) what on earth happened?!! and why was nobody there...? then we saw all those bricks are actually made of styrofoam! from afar you really couldnt tell! without knowing, we had entered a movie set... but the shooting had been done already, and they were cleaning up... :( we also saw several trashed cars, some on top of each other...

it was for the movie RIPD (rest in peace department). its due to release somewhere in 2013, and stars ryan reynolds, kevin bacon, jeff bridges... among others, and has something to do with undead police officers and whatnot... apparently, they have been filming all over boston! (so, only for that im curious to see that movie). it was interesting to see that for such a movie they just shut down several entire streets in the financial district of boston on a sunday afternoon (not that it is very crowded there during weekends anyways), and how many cars (entirely demolished) were involved, and how many props, and that even the newspaper boxes were brought in by them, as well as the bike, the streetlight and the parking meter.... imagine how much work it is to clean it all up again, and how many people are involved!

Street art

2012-01-12T22:38:00.000-05:00

without a real plan or tourist guide we randomly drove around in miami, perhaps driving through streets and neighborhoods that you should avoid... but more importantly, letting ourselves be surprised by the most interesting things!

we drove by this enormous mural and i could not believe its size! so... ofcourse we parked somewhere to take some pictures. i was disappointed with them back home, but it was hard with so much sun and shadow at the same time... :( this is in the wynwood art/fashion, which used to have mainly abandoned warehouses, but recently has many art galleries and studios. and, as you can see, walls that are painted by street artists. apparently, there are 100s of murals around this district, which are there legally!!, making it one of the biggest street art districts in the world (we did not see that much, but the wall next to this one was beautifully painted too, i will post that some other time).

above "the sunbather" by daniel fila, which was completed less than 2 months ago. since 8 years, fila paints this wall, but never a piece this big. next to the wall there is some sand, so it seems that she really is lying on the beach. on purpose i pictured the billboard above it. as you can see, this mural is really huge! moreover, it illustrates an interesting question posed by the street artist banksy; what is defacing the neighborhood more?

Graffiti busters

2012-01-11T21:19:00.005-05:00

saw this truck at government center in boston, a few weeks back. just looked it up; you can call the "mayor's hotline" (!!) if you see some graffiti, and they will come and remove it. since they started, they have removed graffiti from more than 1000 locations (but i cant find when they started). indeed, there is not that much graffiti in boston, especially when compared to other cities we recently visited.

the mayor of boston is thomas m.menino, and he likes to put his name on everything, as you see, his name is on this truck. his name is also on 600 (!!) bikes that were recently placed throughout the city, for the bike sharing program allowing you to rent a bike at one place in the city and return it somewhere else if you like (my question; did he personally label them all?) his name is even on all the trash cans around boston! on one side they say "big belly" (i guess because of the way they are shaped.. i should find the pic i once took of that), and on the other side... "mayor thomas m. menino" (and he does have a big belly!). these are just a few of the public things that carry his name... i saw many more.... why?! i think its weird... yes, hes the mayor. but... not the dictator! (putting your name on everything public somehow is more suiting for a dictator, i would think..) besides... for how long is he the mayor? if the next mayor comes on, will his/her name have to be exchanged for the current one? what a waste of time is that?!

Body redecoration

2012-01-11T10:47:00.000-05:00

yes... we made a u-turn for this sign..... i had to picture it! so far, i have not felt the urge to redecorate... for me, its like this; i dont like to wear the same clothes everyday, so why on earth would i want to have 1 image permanently on my body, without having the chance to easily remove or change it?

today, tim had some redecoration; he had 3 of his wisdom teeth removed. i had that done 2 years ago, (2 at the time, in 2 visits 6 weeks apart or so), and i found it awful. necessary redecoration (or so the dentist said), but really awful. seeing him like that makes me feel how i felt then again. and compared to what other people have to undergo, that was just a minor medical redecoration. beeeghhh. i now have a throat infection :( and the doctor suggested, but did not recommend, to have my tonsils removed. well, i would rather not! so...., certainly i wont do any voluntary redecorations... close to our house is a tattoo shop, and they, so they advertise, also do "branding and scarring", unfortunately that always makes me wonder about the how and why.....

Grave addiction

2012-01-10T16:35:00.000-05:00

i like to visit cemeteries and have posted some pics here. now i know that this makes me a taphophile, and through biebkriebels i learned there are more grave addicts (oh how i like that word play), contributing to taphophile tragics initiated by julie.

this is in new orleans, on dec 26. we were driving on the highway directly above it, and i made tim get off it to visit this cemetery. we had no real clue where we were, except that it was close to the french quarter and the nearby neighborhood did not look that inviting (it was actually in the iberville housing projects). we just parked the car in front of the entrance and wandered around. there was nobody else, and the fog made it all a little more spooky. many graves were about to collapse and it did not seem to be too well maintained. through google maps i found where we exactly were; st. louis cemetery #2, consecrated in 1823 (there are 3, several blocks away from each other, #1 being the most visited; here you can view biebkriebels' pics of that one). and if i were to believe internet forums, we should be happy not having encountered any robbers or even murderers. you are strongly advised to ONLY go to these cemeteries through an organized tour (that will cost you some 20 dollars per person; getting robbed after all, only in a more sophisticated way...). commenters feed these beliefs by saying that because these graves are aboveground, bad people can hide behind them, and suddenly attack you. blablablabla. i did not feel unsafe. common sense, please....

anyways. it was flooded during katrina, but damage was minor. ever since this visit i have been fascinated by these aboveground structures and could not believe the explanation in my tourist guide; that this is because new orleans is below sea level, and flooding can make underground coffins float up, spreading corpses everywhere. some googling around told me that this happens sometimes, indeed. but, it is more likely because this was tradition in the native countries of the early settlers (i.e. spain and france). so why did they do it there? probably because of the rocky soil in southern europe; not easy to dig holes. i noticed that some of the graves looked like ovens (here you can see that in one of my flickrpics). the hot climate in NOLA does sort of turn the tomb into an oven; the high heat causes the body to decompose rapidly in a process that you could compare to a slow, natural cremation (it takes about a year, i read here. interestingly, until 1963 catholics were not allowed to be cremated, but such a natural cremation was ok). in this way, the next familymember can be buried in the same tomb, all they do is shove the remains of the previous one to the back, thereby saving a lot of space.

whoops... i wrote a bit too much, but i had so many questions and found so many elaborate stories on floating bodies which kind of annoyed me...

Country side?

2012-01-09T22:02:00.000-05:00

another neon sign! currently not working, and i thought ready to be demolished.... i saw it for the first time early september, last year. only the sign was left, behind it a bare piece of land. i tried to take some pictures then, but all turned out bad. on sunday we went there again, and now some building is being constructed! i presume it is a new motel, and maybe they will restore the sign? unfortunately there is a fency around it, so taking pictures was again not easy. actually the only one that was ok-ish i took from the car, while we drove by, haha...

yes, i also like those neon signs! they are sooo american! nowhere else i saw so many of them, and such enormous ones! this one that i posted earlier is impressive too, its along the same highway, and we sometimes go there for dinner (the restaurant is very, very american too. really like you see in the movies. i would love to be invisible one night and picture everything and everyone there.... as for me, i think it would show the true heart of america.... :) ). from reading i gather that most of these signs and motels were built in the 1950s and 60s, and really made the usa so different and more modern than europe, at that time... i would like to be able to go back to that time and see how it all looked, with all the fancy cars and people...

perhaps back then this really was the country side... but now its certainly not. this is the crazy route 1 around Saugus, close to our apartment, completely bombarded with many different shops and restaurants, some more crazy than others. theres a huge chinese palace called "kowloon" (with absolutely horrible food, we tried it once and never again), there is a restaurant in the form of an enormous ship and some italian place with the tower of pisa next to it. another restaurant has a huge neon sign that just says "EAT" (still to be photographed), and then there are ofcourse the usual suspects; mc donalds, taco bell, burger king, hooters, and many stores and supermarkets, a minigolf and a skating rink. this stretch of highway is always very busy, and as it has very short entrance and exit ramps it is nerve wracking at times to get on or off.... this part of highway is sooo full, crowded and overloaded with crazy things making it so ugly that i think its some kind of beautiful... and guess what! this route 1 is the same route 1 that eventually leads you to the keys in florida! i think thats so funny. it is 2377 miles long, starting at the canadian border in fort kent, maine, all the way to key west..... route 1 even has its own wikipedia page....

Neon sign

2012-01-08T23:16:00.002-05:00

whats more american than a huge neon sign?

during our trip we saw so many, also many still standing, but not used anymore..... just recently i read that its extremely expensive to restore such a huge sign (they talked about 35,000 dollars!). above is in boston, a sign that was installed in 1910. in 2006 it was refurbished and turned on again, after having been off for several decades. (ah, here i found that this costed 200,000 dollars!! so much?!) it was bought and restored by the development company that is making fancy apartments of all those old buildings around there. last time, somewhere last year, we walked around there it still looked pretty empty, although there were many signs for apartments for rent or sale.... today we just went on the bridge, to picture the buildings in the setting sun.... why is it always just for a few minutes that everything has that special glow?!

here i found a website that reports about the restoration of neon sings along route 66. not a cheap business either...

The Keys

2012-01-07T23:21:00.000-05:00

i really wanted to see the keys. we went on the last day of our holiday, the first day of 2012. route 1 leads you from island to island over 42 (!) bridges, until you are in key west, 129 miles from miami. somehow i had an image in my mind of this chain of islands, surrounded by perfect beaches and blue water, nature, and no people. we would be some kind of explorers... entering these perfect untouched islands. how wrong could i be? and how stupid! of course its not like that! they keys are what they are because of tourists like me, "who want to see the keys".... and i guess people living there also just like to go to the supermarket... :D i must admit, it was even quite ugly at times... just a us highway, with fast food chains, and other superstores alongside it.... i really thought we would not see that here, these were islands after all! well, perhaps it was like that before they were only accessible by water, which was until 1910, when the overseas railway was completed. nowadays, tourism is the main business, which is clear from the many h/motels along the (mostly) single lane highway. traffic thus can be slow, but when we went it was ok (aside from some crazy drivers when we went back. one of them a tourbus... yuk).

just like all the other places we drove through, there were abandoned places... this one in front of the airport. this building was already ugly, and abandoned even more so.. :)

of course, it was pretty too. when on the bridges, seeing all the little uninhabited islands, or when i saw the sign for "private island for sale" (!!), we had a swim in the ocean somewhere along the road, and that was very pretty too. the water was not deep, and so clear.

Where's Waldo!

2012-01-06T22:44:00.001-05:00

do you see him....? i think its funny that waldo has a different name in other countries (in danish its holger!). the first book was published in 1987 titled "where's wally", by the british illustrator martin handford. somehow i only know it as "zoek willy" (dutch for "find willy"), but according to wikipedia the dutch call him wally, like the original. i really liked this book, but i never owned one myself... every time i see it im still tempted to buy it!

sorry, im just not done yet with my pics from our holiday... so heres another one from miami. there were many rather new looking apartment buildings like this. the entire city appeared new, rich and fancy. and predominantly spanish.... unfortunately we did not have much time here, and the time we spent we were somehow rushed (for example by our expiring parking... grrrr). i sure liked the beaches and to see ocean drive, but i was attracted by the city. i liked new orleans better, and the more northern part of florida.

Citgo sign

2012-01-05T23:10:00.000-05:00

i showed you the boston (in)famous citgo sign once before. here you see it from the other side, a little further away (or quite a bit, actually), but still very well visible.

i like the lamps in this street. the houses are pretty nice too, but you cannot see them here... its quite a fancy street! im rather sure its commonwealth avenue (or comm ave, as they refer to it here), but im not 100% sure. if you get out at the kenmore stop on the green line, you should visit the fancy commonwealth hotel. they always have a photo exhibit, which is for free! (and you get to see a glimpse of the hotel). we have been there now twice, and both times saw some really interesting photographs. both times there was work from harold feinstein, whom i didnt know before, but now i even bought a photobook from him for tims birthday, that is not yet published. but when it does, it will come with his signature.. :) which reminds me... i think they might have changed the exhibit at the hotel... time for another visit!

Chilly weather

2012-01-04T22:28:00.000-05:00

this is some dislocated brick (i guess part of the stairs) along the charles river in boston...

its very chilly, suddenly! when we returned from miami monday evening it was rather mild (luckily, as we didnt bring winterjackets), but yesterday and today the temperature suddenly dropped dramatically, well below 0 degrees celsius! even put on an extra blanket on the bed! still no sign of snow, however.... whereas last year it was packed with snow by now....

now im just wondering why someone would write "chill" on some concrete..

No trespassing

2012-01-03T23:16:00.000-05:00

saw this sign alongside an unpaved road in the everglades. unfortunately the road turned out to be closed after 2 miles... so we had to turn back, which gave us at least the opportunity to photograph it! apparently yhe "everglades conservation and sportmans club est 1950" will shoot you on sight when trespassing... great... so, we just took the pic and drove on...

i uploaded some more pics on flickr (here), still not done however! its frustrating how much i already forgot. where was it exactly? what did we do? etc... ? so in order not to forget flickr is actually quite useful.. if i do it fast enough... there are also some more pics of the deserted cars along the road. while many abandoned places had a sign "no trespassing" this one did not. so all the while i felt a little uneasy, taking pictures there, and i imagined some guy jumping out of the bushes with a gun. luckily, no such thing happened.... would have loved to take a peek inside such a deserted place, but i didnt dare! i found a website where people post pictures of abandoned places... and sometimes they do go inside. especially this one i liked, its beautiful and sad at the same time...

ooh, its suddenly cold in boston!! right now its -10 C (15 F).... but still no sign of snow....

Hello Boston!

2012-01-02T22:43:00.001-05:00

yup... today we went back to boston. buuuuhhhh, i didnt want to leave that warm weather and blue ocean... but on the other hand i am looking forward to my own bed, and some selfmade meals again. beeghhh, thats what i dont like about staying in hotels; what to do with dinner?! but h/motels turned out to be cheaper and easier than for example airbnb (which was our original plan). also... (un)packing the suitcase was not something i enjoyed, and having to choose in advance what you will wear (i always bring too much and never what i want to wear), the dirty laundry you accumulate, and how all that stuff never fits into your suitcase anymore when going home, while it did neatly and perfectly when packing for the trip.

it was beautiful! we saw so much, and so many different things. different landscapes, incomparable cities and climates.. etc etc. we slept in 6 different places, crossed parts of 4 different states and drove approximately 1865 miles! (or... tim did, i should say. thats 3000 km!!), i took almost 2000 photos (but those need to be sorted out yet), and saw even more that i didnt photograph...

above is around boston. i liked this one... you can interpret it however you like.... ah yes, we also saw many, many such slogans during our trip. some i photographed, some i would like to remember (should i write them down before i forget or is that weird?), some that made me laugh, and many that i already forgot... one day or another i will post them... the first load of laundry is done already, and now its time for my own bed. jeeejjjj!!
ah, i would almost forget; this is my conclusion: the us of a is very, very beautiful, and unbelievably ugly. sometimes its either one of those, sometimes its both at the same time. anyways; now i even want to see more of this country!

Miami beach

2012-01-02T11:17:00.001-05:00

the last day of ~~2012~~ 2011 (!!) we went to miami beach and swam in the ocean! it was so pretty and blue, and very sunny and warm... i never swam in the ocean in december!! i also never swam in the ocean in/around boston, not even in summer as the water does not look as attractive as it did here... (actually it looks rather dirty).

these 3 pretty ladies were lying close to us, and i could not resist taking a picture... :) after that we walked around on ocean drive lined with art deco houses/hotels/clubs, it looked fancy and pretty. it was so crowded! (and many, many german people, i noticed). in the evening we dressed up and went by publi transport back to the city, for new year's eve. public transport in downtown miami is free! it was called the "metromover" and was without an operator, so you could sit in the front and have an amazing view of miami (too bad we didnt do it during the day). we were stupid to arrive too early, at 8 we were downtown... we walked around a bit and saw the urban jungle. it was as interesting as the tour through the everglades, with all the dressed up people, and the women with impossibly high heels (i noticed that women are much more dressed up here anyways than in boston. in boston it seems everyone goes in pyjamas to the mall, here they walked around in stiletto-heels and short skirts). it was great people watching, but around 10 we had enough... and... boring as we are... we just went back to the hotel... and had champagne in the jacuzzi.. which proved to be difficult too; it was far too hot to sit in that thing until midnight!! hahaha. we missed all the fireworks in miami, but thats ok with me..

First sunset

2012-01-02T00:17:00.000-05:00

of 2012 we saw on key west, the southernmost point of the usa! quite a drive from miami, but it was worth it... :) ofcourse, in reality it was so much better...

i liked the pelicans, you see 2 above. there are so many exotic birds around here, i like that so much! unfortunately i did not see any flamingos.... :( buuuuh.

now we are both completely exhausted. holidays are quite tiring! ;)

as i missed some posts last year (i did not do 365), i will post some more from the holiday later on. now its time for bed.

From Miami...

2012-01-01T09:35:00.000-05:00

happy 2012!!!! (the skyline seen from a very posh neighborhood...)

it is hot here, and very sunny! i got a little sunburn yesterday at the beach... amazing, on dec 31st...

later more about the last day of 2011, today one more day of exploring...

Airboat tour

2011-12-31T19:08:00.001-05:00

yesterday when driving from fort myers to miami we went on an hourlong airboat tour in the swamps of the everglades! above you see such a boat. it is a flat-bottomed boat propelled in a forward direction by a propeller, using a lot of gasoline... (i think). it was marvelous!! we went through tunnels of trees... saw 2 alligators; one lying somewhere in the mud and one swimming in the water (i found that a bit scary.. but one of the tour guides suddenly just grabbed it and pulled the enormous animal out of the water, yuk). and they were feeding him marshmallows! (writing that down im wondering whether he was real.. ?). sometimes the boat went really fast, and we were just going over branches of trees etc... yup, i was afraid, but still it was fun, and especially just beautiful... i took some pictures but they are not that good... you really have to see and experience that yourselves!! like on tv.. haha...only i didnt know those boats are very noisy because of the propellor....

it was very touristy, however. along the highway there were many, many of such airboat tours. perhaps if you look from the air you see a big black cloud coming from the swamps... not very ecofriendly. at the entrance you could also hold a baby alligator. the guy almost forced him into my arms, but he quickly understood i was really not into that. i thought that was a bit sad, everytime that animal was put into another set of hands, everyone wanted to feel it, and the guy was constantly touching its eyes to show how funny it looks when he closes them.. they should leave that part out! aside from all these "complaints" it was really amazing to see a little bit of the everglades like that.... :)

Alligator safety

2011-12-31T08:26:00.000-05:00

as you can see, there were some warning notes, but quite ahead of the plastic fence, i was surprised about that too. we actually were just driving, and then we saw many, many people with cameras hanging over some ditch... so we turned the car and then we saw allll those alligators lying around there! it was a little weird. and indeed, i was wondering about the warnings... but they came a little later. here we were actually standing on some bridge, and the alligators were below, as you can see...

we also did a tour (im looking for a pic now, but they are a bit disappointing), and the guide told us that during summer (i think?), anyways, when the waters are high in the everglades (now they are low, brownish and stinky, and then they are clear and you could drink it, he said), the alligators move much more, are much active, and they also cross the highway (the one we drove on!!!), so you see some dead ones along the road, that had been hit by cars... :(

unfortunately, the info center was just closing when we were here.

Up close

2011-12-30T23:14:00.000-05:00

this is quite a crappy picture, but its to show you how close we were to alligators!! can you believe it? i couldnt.... i only saw those in the zoo!! today we drove from fort myers to miami, through the everglades. the weather was perfect, around 24 degrees celsius, and it was all very impressive. the trees, all the different birds, and then the alligators!! at this point just the plastic was seperating us from 3 alligators that were just lying around. haha, they were actually quite boring, just lying in the sun, not moving an inch...

tomorrow i will post another picture...

just realized that tomorrow is already the last day of 2011! the past week i kind of lost track of what day of the week and what date it is...

Retirement destination

2011-12-30T00:15:00.000-05:00

again did not know what photo to show for today. i was looking for one pic to show it all, but ofcourse that one doesnt exist! we woke up in this fancy hotel in tampa and went straight for the pool again. we were a bit slow this morning (also, we switched back to "our" time again, so we basically lost the hour we gained when arriving in memphis), but we didnt have to drive that far today. we first looked around in tampa a bit. it looked nice! and: it was sooo sunny! no jacket needed, the temperature was perfect. tampa seemed quite a modern city, we went through it quite randomly, without a proper tourist guide or whatever (we did see an ice skating rink! haha... in a city where it last snowed in 1977) then we drove to st. petersburg, a city located on a peninsula between tampa bay and the gulf of mexico. there we went to the dali museum, which was in a very special building (photos later..). i really liked to see so much of his work, and to see that his early work is so different from what (i guess) most people (including me) know. really beautfiful, weird paintings and funny titles. unfortunately it was extremely crowded in the museum... grrr... but we managed to see it all, and from up close (so much detail!). then it was already 4 and we still had to drive to our next stop. i suddenly realized we missed sunsets on the beach for the past 2 days, so today we really had to... the sun was amazingly red while setting and we tried to get to the beach... that turned out to be difficult! right at sunset we drove trough al place where all the beaches were private! we found a house for sale and after all the abandoned places we have seen we assumed it would be empty, but.. while running through their garden... we saw the owners sitting outside... oops. we drove a little further and found a bare piece of land surrounded by "no tresspassing" signs. well, it as our last opportunity to see the sun setting into the sea! so we went.. it was beautiful but the sun had gone down already... buuuuhh.. :(

ah well... now we are in fort myers. in yet another fancy motel! it has a huge pool, with real lanes for real swimming.... jeejjj! so thats what we did immediately after arrival.

ah, and now i entirely forgot about the pic i posted; thats right behind the dali museum, in st. petersburg. you can see how sunny it is! i just read on wikipedia that this city is also named "god's waiting room", because so many people go here for their retirement (either american or otherwise). the other nickname is "sunshine city", since it is sunny here for 360 days a year... you choose which one you like best!

Abandoned places

2011-12-28T23:42:00.000-05:00

during our holiday we already saw sooo many abandoned places.... unbelievable. entire motels, hotels, houses, cars, trucks, you name it. this morning we drove by the above place, it had 3 of this kind of cars, and 2 relatively new cars, all abandoned. the shops (and houses?) had still a lot of stuff in it, perhaps just everything (by looking through the window), and were abandoned too. just so weird! why? i keep wondering. is it the because this country is so huge, and has so much space, that you can just leave behind what you dont like/want anymore, and start anew somewhere else? is it because of money? someone bought it but then something happened, not being able to use it and its just forgotten? nobody wanted to buy it and over time it became worthless?

this morning we got up early again.. it was very sunny and we had a run in panama city beach! something i surely never imagined i would do... then breakfast at the waffle house (we saw so many along the way yesterday, we were curious). the waitress was so nice and the food was good and cheap, yumyum. such a breakfastplace you defenitely cannot find in the netherlands, where they keep filling up your coffee, and where you can share one plate if you like... then we had a long drive ahead of us again. we drove to tampa! the route was beautiful again. different from yesterday. we drove through many forests... and now we are in a very, very fancy hotel. it was only 90 dollars and when planning this trip i thought it would be nice to have a hotel after the airbnb home and 2 motels (but the motels were not bad at all). we got warm chocolate cookies upon arrival, and there is a gym (we went. sitting in the car is not good for us, we eat too much!!), and a heated outdoor pool (we swam) and a toooo hot outdoor whirlpool (how fancy!! but the champaign we had in the room.. :) ). and now its time for bed. tired again...

here i uploaded some more pics of our trip, from memphis and new orleans..

Stilt house

2011-12-27T22:43:00.001-05:00

this morning we got up early and left new orleans. we drove along the shore of the gulf of mexico through mississippi, alabama, and finally arrived in panama city beach, florida. yet another amazing trip. so many impressions it made our heads spin! the scenery changed enormously along the way and it is so much i am afraid i am already forgetting it. ofcourse we took pictures along the way, but today i am particularly disappointed with mine; they really do not show what i saw!! so... tomorrow i should try harder....

it was a beautiful sunny day, and we decided to ignore the "tomtom" system entirely. we drove through the bayou savage national wildlife refuge, which is where i took above photo. houses were all built on stilts (i didnt know that word), which is done mainly to protect the house against flooding. the one above is still in the very early stages of construction, haha! i especially liked the little plane (i think?) in front of it. then we were back in mississippi, but along the shore, and it looked entirely different from what we saw just 2 days ago! many, many fancy hotels and we saw several casinos. the rich like fancy beaches, i learned from that... then the road led us through some small towns and all the towns were equipped with the same sets of shops that are probably all over the us; a retail chain, a home improvement chain, several fast food chains... (many waffle houses in this part of the country). they depicted this nicely in the movie young adult that came out recently, when charlize theron is driving back to her hometown. that could be anywhere in the us....

then we entered florida and drove through pensacola beach on santa rosa island. it seemed as if we had arrived in paradise! white sandy beaches, no jacket needed, driving right along the shore. everything looked so beautiful there... and the white sand was amazing to see (i had never seen that). no strip malls there... just some houses and beach. after 1.5 hours more we arrived at our sleepng place for the night; panama city beach. we are staying in a motel right on the beach, unfortunately we just missed the sunset.. :( but we have a room with a view on the ocean!!

buuggh, am i tired... tim is sleeping already since 9. he started to complain a little more that i cannot drive, and i should really get my license finally, as driving is really tiring and now he has to do all the work! but... im tired too! and im reading the map.... ! :)

NOLA skyline

2011-12-27T01:21:00.000-05:00

couldnt choose which picture to post! something from the colorful french quarter? the less touristy and less well off neighborhood around it? the sculpture garden? canal street? (i really liked that street) a cemetery? (they are really different from the ones i know) the mississippi river? with or without a boat? so... i choose the skyline of new orleans (NO) in louisiana (LA) as seen from algiers point. as you can see it was rather misty, and this lasted the entire day, so i dont really know what the skyline of NOLA looks like...

new orleans really feels different from memphis, and i liked it better. it was definitely more lively, and there was more to see. the houses more colorful and cute. and palm trees! those make a difference too, and i really think they can make any place look more friendly... the air felt much warmer here too, it really felt tropical and humid. unfortunately it was not the best day; it was raining on and off, and the entire day there was a dense fog. that made for some nice pictures though. this morning we were about to take the ferry to algiers point by foot, but just before departure they told us it would not be coming back until the fog was less dense... (you could really see nothing ahead of you). we thus went off again and instead drove around new orleans a bit, and finally drove to algiers point ourselves. that was much nicer as we explored the area a little more. then i snapped the above pic and we were just in time to take the ferry back, for 1 dollar (free when by foot). the mist above the mississippi river was so beautiful! and it was interesting that it got really cold when we went through it. a boat next to us completely disappeared and then appeared again... cool!

i think i will post more pictures later, on my flickr account. i guess when we are back, since now there is no time... :) but there is so much i would like to show!

Canton, Mississippi

2011-12-26T00:29:00.001-05:00

this morning, christmas day, we left memphis and drove all across the state of mississippi!! it was very grey out and later during the day we had quite some rain, unfortunately... but it was amazing. while we first drove on the highway, we later left it for the smaller roads, leading us trough small villages and with too many new impressions... im just really amazed about how many houses, small (or larger) shops and gas stations are left abandoned... some already half collapsed, burned down, or otherwise damaged. we saw a lot of trailer parks too, and many houses so small, in the middle of nowhere.... some well-maintained, others surrounded in mess and old rusty cars etc. some poshy houses too, but not too many.

above is the city of canton, where we briefly walked around. isnt it cute? and isnt it like in the movies? (it has been the decor for some movies, just check wikipedia... ) we also stopped in jackson, the state capital, but everything was deserted, on this christmas day.... even many fastfood restaurants were closed...

now i wish i knew more about this all! i wish i knew all the history, and facts. on wikipedia, i just saw for example that there are only 3 cities in mississippi with more than 50,000 residents, and 60% of all mississippi residents lives below the poverty level....

then we arrived in louisiana, and passed by the beautiful lake pontchartrain, eventually arriving in new orleans! you can defenitely feel that the air is different here, and although still chilly, its a bit warmer than memphis. we went to the french quarter for dinner. unfortunately it was dark already, but i think this area must be beautiful by daylight, we will see tomorrow... :)

Oooh Elvis!

2011-12-26T00:04:00.000-05:00

i think its fascinating how everyone in the world, or so it seems, knows elvis. i know who he was, that he was pretty, and the hair, sideburns and the dancing. and his final years in which he almost seemed like a caricature of himself, with even more hair and sideburns, and the weird tight jumpsuits. i knew it all (how? tv?), yet he was dead before i was even born...

so, yesterday we went to graceland. that wasnt cheap, 60 dollars entrance! (already an 8 dollar coupon subtracted) and 10 dollars for parking... but for that we spent 3 hours marveling at everything elvis. first parts of his house (which was completely over the top!), then more about his rise to fame, his grave, next to his parents behind his swimming pool, his cars (he had multiple, and had 1 painted in pink and 1 in purple!), how he was despised by the press very early on, and how his performances were not decent (how stupid am i, only then i understood why he was called elvis the pelvis!), many many pictures of him (my goodness was he goodlooking!), his planes (golden seatbelt buckles...). i learned so much more about him, and yet still know so little about his life! they focused on his stardom, and emphasized his cuteness, but barely anything was revealed about his private life (other than how generous he was and how he liked to play and had many motorized toys to drive around graceland, while nowadays its strictly forbidden to walk on the grass, haha). so... yesterday night i spent most of the time reading more about him on wikipedia... haha. also, i am curious now how elvis was perceived in europe. when did he become famous, did my parents like him, etc etc.... :)

after that we drove around memphis a little more and went to the motel where martin luther king was assassinated. its now a museum about civil rights, but unfortunately it was closed as it was christmas eve, im still really frustrated about that! (and spent quite some time reading about that event on... yes, wikpedia..) then we had a beer in beale street, accompanied by some life music. that was nice, but the street was still pretty much deserted (perhaps also because of christmas).

it seemed like 50% of the buildings in memphis are abandoned and collapsing or about to do so, that was a bit tragic to see.... also the area around graceland did not seem to be very good. the only amazing thing was that there, in the middle of nowhere, we went to an aldi supermarket and found stroopwafels!!! probably the most dutch cookie there is! that was a pleasant surprise.. :)

Merry christmas!

2011-12-25T01:02:00.001-05:00

merry christmas to everyone!

we toured memphis today and i had so many new impressions... amazing. i also took almost 400 photos just today and cannot choose which one to post! i actually wanted to post one from graceland, and write something about elvis, but right now im just too tired. so, instead, this christmas ball. we were close to the mississippi river in some park. we walked up a hill for a better view, and on top there was a sort of bowl (sorry, i really dont know how to descirbe it in english) of grass (so the hill went down again, as well as up, like a teacup on top of the hill), and in the middle of the teacup was one tree. with one christmas ball hanging on one of its branches. and many underneath it. it was as if we found some hidden treasure, really funny! i guess tim was a bit annoyed, but i was fascinated by the ball's reflections and spent some time trying to picture the tree and myself in them, as you can see above... :)

well, really time for bed now, tomorrow will be a long day, and hopefully along the way i will post more about memphis!

Hello from....

2011-12-23T23:04:00.000-05:00

.... memphis!

above a picture of the most famous stret in memphis; beale street. this is where many black musicians performed in the 1860s, and where elvis presley later used to spend a lot of his time. today, it was pretty empty, but it showed that it now mostly is a tourist destination. i guess we were a little too early for the music to start and people to come, but we wanted to see it while it was still light out. it was sooo cold! that was a little unexpected but well...

we arrived in memphis this afternoon (after leaving our home around 4.30 this morning, beehhh! we had an extremely long wait (4 hrs!!) in atlanta where we had to change flights since lovely priceline decided to change our original booking), then we had a little debate which rental car to choose (i wanted bright red; better for pictures. tim wanted black. we went for the black as red cars are supposedly stopped more often by the police (source; big bang theory), and the tire profile was better according to tire expert tim, moreover the black car has massachusetts license plates; still i would have preffered red...), found our place for the coming 2 nights easily (here you can see pictures, its quite cool, with little notes everywhere and several music instruments you are allowed to use), and then drove and walked around memphis a little. its like in the movies!! my goodness, i wanted to picture it all! we were both sitting in the car mouths wide open. ooh, look here, look at that! there! but, it was rather grey out, so the pics did not turn out that well... maybe tomorrow! then we will visit the house of elvis, among other things....

now we are both exhausted, tim already fell asleep.

Bye boston!

2011-12-22T23:17:00.001-05:00

tomorrow morning (painfully early) we leave boston.... and will return after new year!!

above a picture of the boston skyline. those knowing boston will recognize certain landmarks, like the prudential, and the harvard stadium... this pic was taken after the first snow of the season, on the last day of october (if i remember correctly), from the tower on the mount auburn cemetery in cambridge. everyone visiting boston should visit that cemetery; its really beautiful! and everyone living here should visit it at least once during autumn and during spring.. :) i myself didnt know of its existence, until someone asked me whether i had been there already, and after living here for almost a year i hadnt heard of it.... what a shame!

it was founded in 1831, and supposedly america's first garden cemetery, with "classical monuments set in a rolling landscaped terrain". wikipedia also tells me that cemetery is derived from the greek, meaning "a sleeping place". well, anyways, time for bed now. alarm goes off in 4 hours...

tomorrow i hope to post a pic from our first destination!

Three sisters

2011-12-22T00:14:00.000-05:00

posing for their mom, next to the apple store in new york. they were really posing, as you can see. and all so perfectly dressed... too bad i had the wrong lens at my camera when i saw them. it was so awfully crowded also. we went to new york because i wanted to see rockefeller center with the christmas tree and fifth avenue with all the decorations. but it was all so terribly crowded! policemen were guarding the lights and closed off the street with policetape when the lights turned red. complete organized chaos. you could hardly stop to take it all in, or someone would bump into you. ofcourse the real new yorkers also had to show that they were annoyed and clearly sighed and aarghhhed and pushed people aside to show their haste and that they had to go somewhere really important right NOW and all those stupid tourists were very much in their way in their city.... funny... i was glad we had spent the entire morning in the more quiet streets which were in fact more interesting than this area! but! we didnt really see it when it was dark, so perhaps then it would have been more impressing...

American graffiti

2011-12-20T23:13:00.002-05:00

we went to spanish harlem to check out the graffiti hall (why not wall?) of fame... part of it you see above. it was one of the first places where graffiti writers could paint legally in new york, from the early 1980s onwards, organized by the school counselor. there were some pretty nice things, although im really not that interested in the tags, how fancy they may be. whats the use if i cannot make out one letter?! its only cool in the face you see above; its entirely composed of tags!! you can see that here, in a detail shot that i put on flickr. im wondering how often these walls change their content... here for example i found some pictures of the wall looking entirely different! im (still) reading a book about american graffiti, and saw pictures of the new york subway trains, entirely covered in graffiti. what a mess (inside and out)! only when they managed to eradicate that, painting on walls became more popular. nowadays, graffiti is a serious crime here, and you can be send to prison for 3 years...

Also NY

2011-12-19T23:08:00.002-05:00

new york is not only the crazy times square, rockefeller center or fifth avenue. for a little more quiet, but perhaps less safe neighbourhood you can goto harlem (although depending where you go it can be crowded too)! which is what we did after washington square park. ofcourse most people know the apollo theater in harlem, where for example ella fitzgerald started her career at amateur night. however, we went to spanish harlem (96th - 120th st & fifth/third avenues), which is less well known, and less taken care of than harlem. the buildings are less fancy and the rents not as high as in downtown manhattan. in fact, it has the highest concentration of low income housing projects in the us. they do like to get their hair cut here. the opposite side of the street was lined with barber shops, i think we passed nearly 10 of them!

ah, i am now reading on wikipedia that al pacino was born on 108th street. perhaps in one of the above houses? (dont remember which street we were here, but somewhere around 110th-106th). i somehow liked this row of houses, but it was difficult to get a nice picture of them. we did not go there to check out houses, however. tomorrow a pic of what we went to see there...
here on flickr i posted another view of this row of houses, then it looks quite different, as you see!

Complicated pose

2011-12-19T00:05:00.001-05:00

after sitting in the bus for several hours, we walked from chinatown to washington square park in greenwich village. when getting out of the bus, i realized it was a little colder than i expected and dressed for. brrrr. but still, i was defenitely wearing more clothes than the lady above!! i think they were taking pictures for some yoga-advertisement or so... altough to me it did not look that natural...

i just went to my beloved wikipedia for some more info on this park. its very big, and has quite a history! there used to be a native american village nearby, and they also owned this land. until the dutch (bad dutch!) attacked and drove them out. they did more bad stuff, as you can see here. until 1797 it was farmland, and then it became a burial ground (it was not yet part of new york at that time). in 1826 it became the washington military parade ground; a public space where volunteer militia companies responsible for the nation's defense were training. only in 1849 it became a park.... the remains of around 20,000 bodies still below ground....

NY loves.....

2011-12-18T13:26:00.000-05:00

.... you not! we saw that once on a t-shirt and found that very funny. probably its true, also. but which tourist would buy that instead of the I love NY?

we went to new york yesterday! just for one day.... i was so curious about the christmas decorations there and... since its still not snowing it was a good opportunity to take the fung wah bus... (i wouldnt do that when its snowing). pfff, up we got at 4.30, just missed the first orange line train (like last time), but arrived at the bus terminal in time. hardly had to wait there, got in the bus, and off we went at 6.15, ofcourse again without a word from the driver. before we knew we stood in chinatown, NY, just before 10.... you can do quite a lot in one day, especially if you dont feel the urge to visit all the touristy places. but thats ofcourse exactly what we did, since i was so curious about christmas at 5th avenue. my goodness, it was soooo awfully crowded there!! (luckily we also went to harlem, but about that in another post). above is at columbus circle. i had seen those stars at several NY blogs already, but really wanted to see them for myself. they change color every so often, from a beautiful purple to red, blue, green, yellow... ofcourse i liked the purple best and ofcourse for whatever reason i dont have a picture of that. arrghhh... but it was so crowded also there and everyone wanted to take pics and the best spot to take pictures (in the middle), was blocked by some fancy lounge-area that you could only enter with a certain type of creditcard. why?!! it was such a disappointment... just a few months ago you could just freely walk around there and sit on some couches, and now it had become some exclusive area around which the poor tourists could walk and take their less-than-perfect pictures.. :)

then we went to have dinner at the same restaurant in chinatown as last time, and at 7 we got in the bus and by 11 we were back in boston. perfect! needless to say, more pictures to follow....

Funny, but...

2011-12-17T01:10:00.000-05:00

...why? how did that piano get there? were they planning on burning it? why in this open field? somewhere around boston...

we just got back from the new sherlock holmes movie. very funny too. but... sometimes, i wondered, why? i couldnt follow it sometimes... but well, still funny...

Newbury street

2011-12-15T23:31:00.000-05:00

on newbury street (if you click on the link you can see its apparently bostons most enchanting street) you can find hotel chocolate. i thought that was just a hotel named chocolat (perhaps after the book or the film?), and i liked the bike with the flag (and the fancy couple, although i was annoyed by the guy behind the flag, haha). the tire does need some air i see now. but... its not a hotel, its a british chocolatier and cocoa grower, with 55 stores in the united kingdom and 5 stores within the us and the middle east. you can go there for "gourmet" chocolate. sometimes we joke we should start our own shop with "good food", and we will use terms like "artisan, old world, european, organic". with those words we can ask a lot of many for our products, and people buying it will think they are very hip, and special.... maybe we need a bike and a flag as well...

In comparison

2011-12-14T23:03:00.001-05:00

this is what "cooking" in the lab looks like... :) this is a very old pic, still from the netherlands. (i think taken in 2007!) the purple-capped bottles contain yeast cells, from which we were purifying a protein (actually working with yeast is not that bad, it smells nice.... like bread.. ). the bad thing was that i was doing this in a room in which it was 4 degrees celsius, to protect the protein. sometimes i would sit there for an hour or so, which was not the most pleasant thing... in the right corner you see a door to the -20 room. luckily no experiments there, but sometimes we would need to go in there to search something, the advantage of that was that 4 degrees suddenly felt very pleasant.
at least when baking a cake you only get fat, not cold... ;)

Christmas cookies

2011-12-13T23:41:00.000-05:00

currently, im a little into baking. actually, i always like to make stuff from the oven (thats why i bought a fancy oven in the netherlands, thats not here with me, buuuuhh), but recently im trying a lot of new recipes. i dont know whether fellow scientists agree, but i think cooking is like doing an experiment in the lab. differences being that in the lab you usually do not (or should not) want to touch the stuff you are dealing with, defenitely you dont want to taste it, and more often than not it smells bad. i would even go so far that when it smells good in the lab, you most likely did something wrong. for example, you heated that high-sugar solution a little too long, and it turned into caramel. while that may be a good thing in the kitchen, it for sure isnt in the lab... :) (tim experienced that recently, and didnt touch the autoclave ever since...). other than that, its the same. you mix stuff, you wait a little here and there, you heat or cool, and in the end you have a result thats either good or bad (although bad in the lab not necessarily means you failed, it could mean the result is different from what you expected, while in the kitchen...). what i dont like about recipes for cooking is that they always list the amounts of the ingredients at the top, and in the directions they only mention the ingredients, not how much. in a labprotocol (at least in mine), i never list them all on top, but you just take what you need as you go through the experiment. thats just a minor detail (although it really annoys me a lot!! haha). just as in the kitchen, you have all the ingredients standing around somewhere (but sometimes you have to go to a colleague to borrow that cup of sugar.... )

just by accident i stumbled upon this amazing cooking website a few weeks ago, and since then i made several of the dishes (mostly the cakes and stuff). its interesting, here in the us they cook by measuring out cups and table- and teaspoons, while back home i was used to measure grams with a scale. so for some of the first recipes i followed here, i converted the cups back to grams. but... working with cups is sooo much easier and faster than measuring everything out on a scale! that took me a little while, i have to admit, since i felt that taking cups and tablespoons was not "very precise" (nor scientific... ). moreover, you cannot just convert cups back to grams, as a cup of sugar is heavier than a cup of butter, for example.

so, i also made the abovepictured cookies, which were really easy to make, and they are soooo pretty!! they look quite like the picture on the site (which is not always the case). oh, and tim likes them a lot.... :)

Urban outfitters

2011-12-12T23:47:00.001-05:00

urban outfitters is a very hip store. or so they pretend to be. the young people working there are also very hip. they are so hip that its almost non-hip.... i never dare looking at them let alone speak, as im not sure what will come out of them. will i even be able to understand their language? surely they are not from the same world as i am. moreover, they never give me the feeling im worthy to speak to in the first place, certainly im not as fashionable as they are... i think i never bought anything, although we go to this shop every now and then. i guess its these uberstyled employees that put me off. if they look like that in these clothes... or perhaps just the price... they also have a lot of stuff for your home, extremely expensive but oooh sooo cute. stuff you really dont need, but would love to have, as it looks soooo cooolll. luckily, a lot of that stuff is either too cool or too expensive, and thus the price will be significantly reduced after a while... thats when we come in, and buy it all. thats why we now have a door-mat that says "home sweet apartment" (marked down from 30 to 2 dollars), and some journal in which i am supposed to make one sketch a day. not that i ever sketch... (marked down from 16 to 2.5 dollars) just to give you an idea of the kind of stuff they sell (and what i think its worth).

anyways... now i saw the abovepictured signs on their windows. "save $$$$ for booze"???! that really was too "snazzy" (just found that word in the dictionary, not sure its correct...) for me, i just couldnt go inside. or does it mean im getting old?

Looking up

2011-12-12T09:02:00.000-05:00

at copley square. you see the hancock tower, as well as the ugly church in front of it. to the left are buildings of which i dont know the name.... and i guess another part of the church?

Nice... socks!

2011-12-11T00:04:00.001-05:00

today it was pretty chilly! we went to a free photo exhibition and then had quite a walk through boston. along the way we saw some guys in speedos. standing around as if it was the most normal thing to do on a chilly saturday afternoon...

back home i found out it was for the 12th annual santa speedo run where men and women run for charity. in speedos.... and some santa decorations. they raised 250,000 dollars! too bad i missed them running... :( here you can see a video of the event. and here is their website, so that you can join next year, if interested....

Cleaned out

2011-12-10T12:45:00.000-05:00

its funny how this morning i read about occupy boston in the dutch news before i saw it on the american... :) they cleaned them out last night more than 24 hours after they were supposed to leave. in the gym i saw a press conference about it. the square is now really empty... and they are working hard to get it all cleaned up and restored by the end of this week. 47 got arrested. in fact, the police gave them the option to go, if they wanted, without arrest, and so some choose to do so. but 47 remained stubborn and got themselves arrested. how stupid is that?

anyways.. i also read in the dutch news that occupy boston was one of the biggest movements. dont know whether thats true, but they were one of the few that were allowed to stay longest, and i think where the police really tried to be reasonable with them and gave them more than enough time to leave, so that it wouldnt escalate as happened in some other cities. im curious to see what will happen next. if they really are there to change something, it should not matter that they cannot sleep in a tent in some square anymore, right?

Without title

2011-12-09T23:48:00.001-05:00

well, this man was just crossing the street, close to the TD garden. i have no 2-word title for that.. he did have a bag of dunkin donuts with him. some people like that stuff, apparently.. :)

behind him you see those large concrete balls. they surround many government buildings in boston, and were placed there after 9/11. why? so that people cannot drive their truck or whatever into the building.... at least, thats what someone told me. and i did see them in front of several government buildings, but googling around does not give me much, and im too lazy to really search.. ah well..

By midnight...

2011-12-08T23:31:00.000-05:00

... the occupiers are supposed to leave dewey square in boston.... they asked people to come and support them. im curious what will happen, i guess it will be all over the news tomorrow.

above the tents, and behind it you see south station. we dont go there very often, but actually i like this station, its quite big and looks interesting. although it apparently became more dirty since occupy boston (occupiers using the toilets etc, asking for food from vendors, using electricity to charge all their electronic devices). the bus terminal with buses to new york, canada and wherever else leave from south station too, and its also a big train station. but.. although we are here now since more than 1.5 year, we have never taken the train! (not sure if we miss anything, however.. :)

Self portrait

2011-12-06T23:07:00.000-05:00

although i took quite some photos on sunday, this is yet another older one, since i still did not take them off my camera. and anyways it was time for a self portrait... this was the day after the first snowstorm of the season, when we had a walk on the cemetery. the tree's shadow was so perfect, i took many pics of it! and then a few with our shadows in it as well.

its still pretty mild out, i saw that the skating rink in the boston common yet again had to close early because of the warm weather.

Sleeping outside

2011-12-05T23:26:00.001-05:00

here some occupiers without a tent, sleeping next to the tent city in boston. today was another big day for them... some donators raised enough money to buy a tent that is more suitable for the coming weather than the normal tents that are there currently. however, the city of boston does not allow any "permanent structures" in the tent city (so also no portable toilets, for example), and if i understood it correctly, they filed this winterized tent under permanent. now.. the occupiers knew that this tent would not be allowed in advance, yet they did let it come. it cost 1350 dollars. can you believe it?! 1350 dollars! wasted! i would have loved to have 1350 dollars.... many people would, but those occupiers decided to show off the "hyporcrisy of the police", not allowing them their tent. so..., they did not fight (how great of them), and they allowed the police to take the tent away, just 20 minutes after it arrived. this as opposed to a few days earlier, when someone donated a huge sink (to do dishes and stuff), that was taken away by the police as well. the videos of that event are rather sad, as you can see here, and 1 person got arrested. beeghhh. its so stupid!!! as do many people think, even those who did not think so earlier on. here you can read more... (and i guess tim can pick out my comment in the comment section.. ;) )

Liquor store

2011-12-04T23:52:00.000-05:00

now doesnt this look like a very american liquor store?

i still cant get used to the fact that you have to goto a separate store to buy alcohol. its weird and inconvenient... even so we dont drink that much... :) ah, and lets not forget tha you need to show you are above 21! even if you are not buying the alcohol, but just came along.. if not everyone in your party can prove they are above 21, you sometimes wont get it (but i wrote about that once before). but the most frustrating is when you goto a restaurant, and dont get your drink, as has happened to me far too often by now (i dont always take my passport with me, and that always turns out to be the case when i want a drink... )

ah well... at least its cheaper that way... ;)

But angels....

2011-12-03T23:18:00.002-05:00

.....dont smoke. right, mom? but this angel was smoking....

i have no clue why there was an angel, i just saw him, took a pic, and at the same time a little girl came by and asked above question to her mom.

this was in new bedford, some 51 miles from boston, and its the whaling capital of the world! (or so it used to be). the streets have cobblestones and that makes for an uncomfortable walk. we went to the whaling museum (tim insisted), but i found it rather boring, although they did have one entire room devoted to whaling-memorabilia from the dutch! there was some delfts blauw and some paintings. the only thing i found impressive was the size of many of the whalers boats; some barely bigger than the whale... we also saw how you catch a whale, and all the tools, but i did not like that. beeehhh.

and then the next disappointment came when we got home.... we had this photo contest from our apartment complex; everyone could submit photos and the best would win a prize. and see! there was a little envelope under our door. so i thought; yeeeeyyy! finally! i won something!!! and then i opened it, and yes, it was second prize in the competition!! only, it was not for me, but for tim..... buhuhuhuhuhuhuhuh....

Working out

2011-12-02T22:29:00.001-05:00

along the charles river in boston....

me, on the other hand... im still an amateur (still?! lets say i am...). until we moved to the us of a i never owned a pair of "athletic" shoes (at least not that i can remember). and only a few weeks back did i discover that the type of socks do matter, when running. at least for me... those regular black socks that i have since years are not sufficient. how i wish i had known that earlier!

Missing action

2011-12-01T15:59:00.003-05:00

december already.... pfff. and that means theme day! this month's theme is "action shot". this is (yet another) old picture of mine that i took in 2009, in berlin. here you see a piece of the berlin wall that is still standing (i forgot where exactly this is). we were with a small group, just released from some scientific conference, free to explore the city. we were walking towards the wall, and i knew what all of them would be doing; looking through the cracks.... although we had just passed the other site by bus, and had more or less seen that there was nothing there, no action at all!! so i quickly got my camera ready for this action shot of no action... and yes indeed, they walked to the wall, to stare through the cracks... :)

i remember that during holidays, we once went to see the berlin wall when it was still functioning to separate east from west germany. i was less than 8 years old, and i still remember very well walking there. seeing those guards in towers, asking my parents if what they had just told me was really, really true; that you could not cross that barrier, because if you did, those guards might shoot you. i could not understand that it was possible to be just walking around, in the sun, while being so close to something so scary. not scary as in books or television, but something that was obviously real.

now that wall is demolished, although you can buy little (original or not..) pieces of it (people make money off anything!), and larger pieces are scattered over the world, here you can see a list of where they are. there is a piece in new york, at 53rd street, between madison and 5th avenue, with a nice little seating area around it (although it was 2004 when i saw it for the first and last time.. :) ), and wikipedia just tells me that there are at least 2 more in new york...

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Since 1980

2011-11-30T23:41:00.001-05:00

this is a picture of tim taken at my birthday, posted on his birthday. isnt that original? ;)

its taken at the hot dog stand in coney island, new york. the business was started in 1916, when you could buy a hot dog for just 5 cents. the stand next to mr nathan's sold hot dogs for 10, and nathan used to work there. just copied this from wikipedia as it is so funny: "At a time when food regulation was in its infancy and the pedigree of the hot dog particularly suspect, Nathan made sure that men wearing surgeon's smocks were seen eating at his stand to reassure potential customers." my question; why surgeon's??! because they are doctors.. or? anyways, now nathan's famous has many stores spread over the us, and each year at coney island there is a hot dog eating contest on the 4th of july. this year, for the fifth time, it was won by joey chestnut, eating 62 of them in 10 minutes. yegh... if you click on his name, you can read all about his technique, as there apparently is a special technique and training required for eating so many hot dogs in little time.

ah well... we went out to dinner tonight, just not for hot dogs...

Crazy weather

2011-11-29T23:29:00.000-05:00

the crazy weather continues! tomorrow is the last day of november, and you can go out with just a cardigan, no real jacket required... its so warm. im not complaining!! i like it! i just remember from last year.. i was wondering when the real cold, and ofcourse snow, would come... the weather remained so mild for so long. especially when compared to the netherlands, where it was much colder. but then the snow came, and it stayed cold for sooo long; i think only by the end of may it was warm again.

but... this year its more extreme than last; as a result, the skating rink at the boston common had to close early today, and some trees in the public garden started to blossom again, as you can see here.

above was at the cemetery behind our apartment. there is this little pond with a green lawn around, perfect for sunbathing....

Steaming chimney

2011-11-28T23:07:00.002-05:00

i have had this pic in my "to-maybe-post-someday" folder for quite a while now, until i saw this beautiful pic today, and a link to more info about the steam you often see in new york streets. now i spent most of this evening reading about steam, haha!
what did i learn today? well, first check this diagram, showing whats all going on underneath your feet in new york, as if whats around you isnt yet enough... steam is generated by heating water up to 1000F, turning it into... steam; every hour, approximately 125,000 gallons of water are turned into more than one million pounds of steam, which is then delivered through the steam pipes underneath the ground to many buildings in the city. its used to heat, cool or supply power. since 1882, steam has been provided to manhattan. sometimes you see steam coming from the manhole covers, which allows for nice pics (as you can see in the first link). interestingly, manholes were renamed "maintenance holes" somewhere in california, out of concern for for gender equality. hahaha! this steam can be dangerous too, as you can read here, steam pipes sometimes explode sending hot steam up in the air; the average steam pipe is 54 years old, but some are as old as a 100 years!

so what are those orange chimneys? they surround a steaming manhole and are there to make sure that nobody gets hurt; that steam vapor is very hot and could burn you!!! also, these stacks elevate the steam vapor above street level so that drivers can maintain visibility. so... if you see steam vapor coming out of a manhole that is not protected by such a chimney, you have to call the steam company immediately, there could be a leak.... (although usually its caused by water falling on a steam pipe).

hmmm... dont know if i feel safer, knowing all this.. :) certainly i will stay farther away from those pipes, from now on, i was not really aware of how hot that steam could be and saw them as mere photo opportunities...

(the crazy glow behind the steam chimney above comes from times square, which can be seen well ahead..)

Men only

2011-11-27T23:23:00.000-05:00

whats there to see? no clue, but it seems to be for men's eyes only...

this was in chinatown, i thought just a few weeks back, but it was in june already. how fast is time running?!

Summer day

2011-11-26T23:32:00.000-05:00

a summer day at the end of november.... can you believe it? i didnt.... i hung out of our window for a bit this morning and decided it was quite nice, but then put on a t shirt, vest, scarf and light jacket, as we were going for a walk in the breakheart reservation, a 10 minute ride from our apartment. we hiked up some steep hill and it was hot! off went the jacket, the scarf, and then also the vest. t shirt was enough, and its almost december! just 2 hours up north they have snow and here it felt like an early summer day.... (but with leafless trees).

up at the first hill we found this piece of rust. tim tried it; the front wheels were still perfectly turning!! just googled around a bit, and here i found that it is a car engine that was used to power a rope tow for a ski hill that once operated there! (im just curious when that was) we intended to go for a short walk, but walked around for nearly 4 hours, the weather was just too perfect...

Shopping fever

2011-11-26T00:23:00.001-05:00

the day after thanksgiving is called black friday... most stores have lots of discounted goods for the real americans. some stores opened at 4 this morning, others already at midnight... and some fanatics just skipped their thanksgiving to camp out in front of whatever store has whatever discounted product they want to buy. as you can see here; those people planted themselves in front of a store at 1 in the morning of thanksgiving, and spent 24 hours just to be the first allowed inside upon opening. why? because the most heavily discounted things will run out, and what if you miss out on all those amazing deals?! but well, nobody is harmed when you sit outside a mall for 24 hours, while everyone else is enjoying a nice thanksgiving.. :) on the other hand... in los angeles there was a lady who pepper sprayed 20 people as to prevent them from getting stuff she wanted to buy. other than that, there were some shootings and burglaries, as you can read here. we were briefly thinking to go and check out some mall at midnight yesterday, just as observers... but the thought of so many shoppers gone crazy... made me tired and we just went to sleep.. anyways, i found some pis of crazy bargain hunters here..

of course, occupiers around the nation had some opinion about this day too (actually the pic above i took at occupy boston; this is the tent where they make signs, to state the obvious). i just saw on the occupy boston facebook page that some occupiers went to meditate in some mall, apparently around a vending machine (to prevent shoppers from buying something to eat/drink?), and one got arrested.

they are all crazy!!! the best bargain would be when staying at home, buying NOTHING!! but i have to admit, this evening we went for a little shopping ourselves. it was quite crowded, and the discounts not that amazing, so i only bought a pair of shoes... as if i needed those... ;) (but they were only 14 dollars!! from 55 originally...)

Turkey butcher

2011-11-25T00:23:00.000-05:00

today all the scientist europeans around boston gathered (or so it seemed), prepared heavenly dishes and an entire turkey (like the real americans!) and enjoyed thanksgiving like the americans do.. :) i just enjoyed and had lots of food... jeejjjj (there was not one american present, that was kind of funny, being in the us of a)

thank you all!

Food mania

2011-11-24T00:05:00.000-05:00

tomorrow its thanksgiving here in the us.... the supermarket was overflowing with turkeys again, and this evening the whole foods (also named whole paycheck as it is probably the most expensive supermarket around) was filled with people trying to get their last shoppings done for the big day tomorrow... as tomorrow will be food, food, and food... ah, and of course about being together and thankful.

more about thanksgiving here.