turtle for marc series 2, 3 and 4

turtle for Marc

the forbidden city is LARGE. some need to rest from time to time.

steps

According to the story of the tourist guide in our head[hones, this enormous piece of stone was shipped to Peking as follows:
they produced water all the way from the North to the South and when the winter came, the water froze and they "iceskated" it to peking.

lucky chinese

This windowsill shows that many Chinese people have touched the dragon. Many places in the forbidden city have been touches by thousands, if not millions of chinese, which you can see by the discoloration of iron or copper, or the lack of paint. According to Yaobing, touching these doorposts brings good luck. I have let so many opportunities slip for luck! I could have been lucky all my life, had I paid more attention.

dragons everywhere in the forbidden city (dragons are a sign of the emperor if I remember correctly). these dragons can be found on the lower tiles of

almost all the roofs. Very nice.

this is a common sight in Peking, Chinese soldiers practicing their routines in seemingly random places, but often near tourist attractions.

big pillar on plein voor de hemelse vrede.

So they have a building for Mao on the one end of the square and a huge picture of mao on the other end of the square. and, of course, an incredible amount of chinese tourists on the square itself (not shown here)

plein vd hemelse vrede 2

plein van de hemelse vrede 1

it was so nice to fly to China via Amsterdam, since it gave me the opportunity to have lunch with Roos. JEE

Pas nou toch op voor die langzame trappen!

clearly an award-winning butterzopf! (not black on top and has 4 strands, beat that!)

what your towel looks like when you wash your face after a day in Bejing

touwtrekwedstrijd

when we were in Bejing, all trees started flowering

playing chinese chess in real time

playing chinese chess statue

a bench for the big bosses (the PhD students sat on the floor)

for most, being in the forbidden city means lots of nice views, for some it does not...

the holiest of buildings can be recognized by the amount of mini-imaginative animals on the roof

I kept wondering... if I do buy one of these chinese flags, what am I supposed to do with it??

chinamen

Zwitsers parlementsgebouw

En de winnende butterzopf is.....

Niet zo wilde zwijnen

Motorclub van Kevelaer

Anne is in gedachten al op vakantie op de Buiten-Hebriden

Benched skis

How many giraffes are there in Bern?

Jaren later: Wim aan de sigaar

Wie is dit?

helicopter mountain

the guy who owns this helicopter has told us that these are not very good for your heart, because they are not too sturdy and it is expensive and takes hours if not days to fix one when it is broken. But it looked like fun. Here it is following eelke on his trip from Laupen.

an overwintering caterpillar with warm feet

who dares to buy trousers in this shop??

1948 Bern: Klaas, Wil, Mien en Wieger en natuurlijk de Berenkuil

Onovertroffen

Kippenhok

Het wordt steeds waarschijnlijker dat het kippenhok er komt. Vanmorgen is de fundering gelegd en zijn de gaten in de voorkant gezaagd.

eelke with his treasure (the map)

hiking trails for people who do like each other and for people who don't.

aren't these hiking signs nice? Most hiking trails are very well blazed and you almost don't need your hiking map and booklets. But traveling with Eelke would be very unreal without having him looking at maps anyway. So we did bring the maps and we used them.

DEEP snow!

I had never seen so much snow before. awesome! we have waded through this white landscape for several kilometers. Very good excercise. And, when you are as well-prepared as we were, there is guarantee for "rozijnentenen" (raisin toes). The day we hiked here it had snowed a lot in the mountains but on this Saturday it was really sunny. We both ended up with little Dutch lobsterfaces. Who would have imagined I needed to bring Sunscreen to this new country?!

HANG player

The funny thing about this guy is that in the few times that I have seen him I got the impression that he has a quite limited repertoire with exaclty the same jokes. But as a street musician I guess that is enough, since in a tourist city, most people only see him once for a few minutes. His music is quite nice by the way.