Harvie, Ryan and the Badger

In the south of the Netherlands

After traveling through the whole country - in about 4 hours - we managed to reach Maastricht. Maastricht is in a battle with Nijmegen for the title of the oldest city in the Netherlands. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Maastricht :).

Its cathedrals, tall buildings and clean, narrow streets, it's wall drawings, huge groups of tourists and small water streams under trees and streetlamps are just lovely.

The cities in the Netherlands are very well organized and even an easily-get-lost person like myself can get around. Plus they have delicious food and crunchy ice cream which help with the whole orientation process.

Here's a few pics from Maastricht, the city devided in two by the river Maas:

Between the rain and the plain

Groningen is just lovely, but, you have to allow it its few eccentricities in order to really enjoy all the culture, clean air and welcoming people it has to offer.
One of its main "I do what I want" features is of course, the weather. It rains for three minutes, then it stops.A hopeful creature like myself, was very excited about the sun the first few times the rain stopped, but after ten minutes or so, it starts again and again and again. Still I was able to get a few snap shops of the beautiful architectural mixture that Groningen has to offer. I know it sounds like I'm advertising for tourist vacations, but I actually like the city a lot. All the green and friendly faces do
help fight the moody weather stigma.







Its second "I do what I want" feature has to be the abundance of bikes. They come from everywhere and everybody rides them, from children to old but athletic people. Accidents do happen of course. I have never seen so many people with crutches in just one day, but clearly a price has to be paid for all he clean air :).

A third "I do what I want" feature includes the eclectic nature of everything, from faces you see on the bus, to the food you find, streets you step on and the discussions you have in a pub, with a bunch of eager students from around the globe (from Nicaragua to Italy to Ethiopia and China).

Diana and I wanted a view of the city yesterday so we went to the 90 m tall Martinitoren.
Where the importance of time is clearly stated, where the wind blew in our hair and Diana had a little Marilyn Monroe moment.

So far it's been all visiting and coping with the rain and the bikes, which are of course the very enjoyable parts of my stay here. The academic year has begun and survival is my main goal :).

Enjoy mainly predictable weather and mostly accident free streets, while I'll enjoy everything else that HERE has to offer and anywhere else has LESS of :)!


Tot ziens,
Lumi

Let's be SKEPTICAL!

I fell into the allure of the unexplainable a lot of times in my life, but, then again, that tickles my curiosity filling my body with dopamine, so you can't really blame me for seeking the stuff. Still, we can all benefit from the positive part of being skeptical.

Clean drinking water for EVERYBODY!

Look at what a chap from Englad has developed:

Q: "So, what's new on TED?" A: "Something you should ponder for sure."

If you're not familiar with TED, you should know they have ideas worth spreading. Therefore don't limit yourselves to the talk I posted and dig deeper into TED Talk history and other parts of the site: www.ted.com.

Meanwhile, here's an almost 90 year old lady, very coherently telling us something about ourselves that we probably rarely hear:

Laugh and the world may laugh with you, weep of laughter and they may laugh harder :)

I've reached the 6th season of the wonderful sitcom Frasier and I thought I should share a bit of Frasier humor with all of you. Watch until the end, it's only a tad under 7 minutes.



Hope you're having a cheerful summer :),
Lumi