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More Forts (11) The final part (for this year)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
The Forts month came to an end more than one month ago and still didn't post the last part of the last fort that we visited on September 30th. The only excuse I have is that I was quite busy. The past weekend I went to the Dejima Japanese Film Festival in Amsterdan on Friday and Saturday and on Sunday to the Holland Animation Film Festival in my hometown Utrecht to see two Japanese animation films. I saw a total of 9 movies the past weekend. Not a bad average. In the weeks since my last post until Friday I was busy with all kinds of other stuff, which I'm not going to bore you with. Let's tell something about the fort.The last fort we visited was Fort De Bilt. Although I found most forts interesting to visit I found Fort de Bilt together with Fort Rijnauwen, Fort Pampus and Fort Hinderdam (sorry only Dutch) the most interesting. During the German occupation at World War 2 a lot of forts were only used for storage purposes. But Fort Rijnauwen and Fort De Bilt were also used as an e...
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My newest acquisition
2006-12-02 15:32:10
A Nikon Coolscan V ED Desktop filmscanner. Those dark winterdays may come now. Besides all the new photos that I will shoot with the digital camera I don't have to be afraid that I'll quickly run out of material. I guess I will post golden oldie material soon on a regular basis. My first project will be digitalizing the old slidecollection of my parents. After that I'll have lots of APS-films and 35mm films waiting to be digitalized.
More About: West , Acquisition

More Forts (6)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
I'm still catching up with posting pics from the forts we visited the past weeks. Today pics from the last two forts we visited two weeks ago when our brother in law took us on a ride around the area of Leerdam where they live. In my former two posts you saw pics from around Fort Everdingen and Fort "Nieuwe Steeg".The last two forts we visited that day with our brother in law were Fort Asperen and Fort Vuren. We didn't spent so much time on these two forts, so I didn't took so many pictures. At Fort Asperen we took a short walk around the fort, but didn't went inside. We went on top of the fort where you had a nice view over the area and over the village of Asperen. Fort Asperen also has an official website.Nowadays Fort Asperen is used as an artcentre and through the years it has built up a certain reputation with that. Till yesterday the fort had an interesting exhibition made by the famous British filmmaker Peter Greenaway. The exhibition was called Fort Asperen Ark, A Peter ...
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More Forts (5)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
Just pick up were I left a few day ago. Here are some pics shot on the same day as the pictures from fort Everdingen, which you can see in my former post. In this post I'll show some pics that I made at Fort "Nieuwe Steeg", near the village of Asperen and the city of Leerdam. Steeg is de Dutch word for (small) alley.It was the first time ever that this fort was open to the public. We had a half hour guided tour and after that we wandered around parts of the fort ourselves. The interesting thing about this fort was that in case of inundation (flooding) the fort would be completely surrounded by water, just like an island.Here are some of the pics.BTW, Wikipedia also provides some backgroundinformation about the "Hollandse Waterlinie" (Dutch Waterline).Part of a hand driven ammunition elevatorThe key cabinet with all the keys of the different buildings.
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More Forts (4)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
Now some pictures from 11 days ago when our brother in law took us by car to some forts of the "Hollandse Waterlinie" near where he and my sister and my parents live. Our first goal was Fort Everdingen. There was a guided tour around the fort of one and a half hour. We couldn't have a look inside the fort, because the fort is still in use by the Ministry of Defense. The Explosives Ordnance Disposal Command of the Royal Netherlands Air Force is using the complex until 2007, so probably after 2007 the fort might be open to the public.The guided tour was done by the author of a book about the "Hollandse Waterlinie", that was published 4 years ago. Coincidentally I gave Noriko that book two weeks earlier for her birthday. It was an interesting tour, especially because the author of the book told a lot of interesting details. The fort is located at the river Lek. The tour went through the river forelands which contains some nice typical Dutch landscapes.Along the dyke towards the fort y...
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More Forts (3)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
I'm still behind with posting pics from our visits of the forts of the "Hollandse Waterlinie". Blogger wasn't helpful because the server was slow for some unknown reason, which caused very long uploadtimes for the pics I wanted to post. Sometimes more than 4 to 5 minutes per picture. When you are running a photoblog it doesn't require much math to figure out how much time it cost to post 12 pictures, so I decided to wait until the server was a bit quicker.Anyway the pictures from my former post about Fort Hinderdam were taken on September 2nd in the morning. The pictures I'm about to post now were taken on the same day in the afternoon at Fort Lunetten which contains four defenseworks. Lunetten is also the name of the district or neighbourhood of my hometown Utrecht. We visited Lunet I and III. The English word for this type of defense work is lunette, a half moon shaped fortification. Number II and IV are in use by Dutch Scouting and numbers I and III were open for public that ...
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More Forts (1)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
Here are some more pics of the fortresses that we've been visiting the past few weekends. I'm a little behind with posting, so for some more backgroundinformation about the specific fortress I'll refer to the general website of the "Hollandse Waterlinie", The Dutch Water(defense)line. In this post some pics from our visit of Fort Vechten near Utrecht. We visited here two and a half weeks ago. This is the second largest fort after Fort Rijnauwen.This is the back of a machine gun casemate. This is one of the few that still has it's original cast iron gun turret on it. Most of the cast iron gun turrets were taken by the Germans in World War 2 to be used in their warindustry.This is the front of the casemate, here you can see the iron cast gun turret on top of the casemate.On the right side of the wall you can see part of the surrounding moat but it's all covered by duckweed.You often find bunkers nearby the forts in the surrounding meadows. Tomorrow some more pictures from other f...
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More Forts (2)
2006-12-02 15:32:10
Fridaynight didn´t went completely as I planned, so with a bit delay some more fort pics as promised.This time some pics from Fort Hinderdam (sorry only Dutch) a fort on a small island at the river Vecht. The fort is part of the "Stelling van Amsterdam" a ring of fortifications around Amsterdam developed between 1880 and 1914 and now an Unesco World Heritage Site. The fort was also part of the Hollandse Waterlinie. Although the Defense Line of Amsterdam was build between 1880 and 1914, the history of Hinderdam goes back to the Middle Ages when there was already a fortification that controlled the shipping traffic at the river Vecht. It was a place of dispute between the bishop of Utrecht and the count of Holland, because the river Vecht in those days was an important economic artery and those who controlled Hinderdam could charge toll, an important source of income for the rulers.The first part of the current fort was build in 1673 and the fort was extended in 1880 during the develo...
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Hiroshima (2) - colour-pics
2006-12-02 15:32:10
Here is serie 2 with this time a selection of colour pictures from Hiroshima shot during the same visit in 2000. These are all pictures scanned from an APS-film.The first pic is from Shukkei-en, a Japanese style garden at Hiroshima and almost 400 years old, constructed at the Edo-period. Maybe not the most gorgeous or most beautiful garden in Japan, but it sure is a nice and quiet place where you can escape for a while from the noisy and hasty city.This pic hasn't been Photoshopped. It was shot directly with a red filter screwed on the lens.Behind the older guy you see the memorial monument, the cenotaph for the A-bomb victims, where the annual remembrance service is held. People might have seen this monument on the news.This is the Children's Peace Monument dedicated to a Japanese girl named Sadako Sasaki from Hiroshima, who died in 1955 at the age of twelve from leukemia, caused by the atomic bomb, dropped 10 years earlier. You can check her touching story by clicking on her n...
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My first scans - Hiroshima (1) - B/W-pics
2006-12-02 15:32:10
I haven't figure out all the possibilities of my new Nikon Fimscanner, but the first results are promising. In this post I will show some black and white pics that I shot in 2000 in Japan at the city of Hiroshima , known as the first city in history that had the unfortunate and horrible honour to be bombed with an atomic bomb on August 6th 1945.The pictures in this post are scans from a black and white APS-film shot with a Minolta Vectis S-1.Most of the pics were shot in and around the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park where you find most of the monuments related to the victims of the A-bomb and also the Peace Memorial Museum. A visit to this museum won't leave nobody untouched, unless you are a cold-hearted insensitive brainless idiot. It sure is worthwhile to visit, but be prepared that it can ruin your day.But despite it's horrible and tragic history Hiroshima is also a fun city to visit. It has an excellent nightlife, good food (speciality Okonomiyaki) and some good sightseeingpl...
More About: First , Shima , Scan

Advertisement for new website
2006-09-08 22:46:00
The past few weeks I've been posting pictures from different fortresses that we visited. All those fortresses belong to the so called (Nieuwe) Hollandse Waterlinie, a unique defense line developed between the 17th and 19th century and made up of fortresses and waterworks to inundate (flood) areas in times of invading enemies to hold them back.I'll post some more pics later from other fortresses we visited and tomorrow we will visit some more forts with my brother in law.Noriko is absorbing all these books and information about the "Hollandse Waterlinie". She noticed that there is almost no Japanese information about this subject, so she launched a Japanese website about the "Hollandese Waterlinie". Some parts of the website are still under construction and even if your not understanding Japanese it´s worth a visit, because it also contains a lot of pictures from the fortresses that have been visited so far.If you´re using Mozilla Firefox you might have some trouble because not all...
More About: Internet , Website , Advertisement , Weblogs , Forts

The Fortress Island of Pampus and Muiderslot
2006-08-23 23:07:00
Last Saturday we went to the fortress island of Pampus and to Muiderslot, a medieval castle. Both were part of the Hollandse Waterlinie. It was a very nice daytrip. We had excellent weather and we had some great sightseeing. From Muiderslot there was a ferry to the fortress island. It took about 20 minutes from the castle to the island. Although short it was a nice ride on the ferry. We saw lots of sailing ships and also some old style (sailing)boats.On the fortress island we had a guided tour of about 75 minutes. It was an interesting tour. I was lucky I took both of my digital camera's because one of them broke down. Otherwise there would have been a chance I wouldn't had pictures here to share with you.After the tour we ate our lunch and waited for the ferry to take us back to the castle. At the castle we also took a guided tour and after the tour there were two other routes around other parts of the castle that you could walk individually. We also did and after that we checked...
More About: History , Island , Land , Fortress , Fort

What's next?
2005-08-04 23:38:00
Had some trouble yesterday adding images but things seem to work okay today.Haven't decided yet what kind of pics I want to add, but I guess most of them will be family/friends pics and landscape/sightseeing pics. I'm going through my photofolders to pick out some nice ones. Later on I probably will post more in a chronological order.I'm also working to figure things out concerning the lay-out. I'm not completely satisfied yet. So suggestions are always welcome. Today's two pics were taken last year May 2004 during a walk with Noriko and my mother in law near Leerdam the city where my parents live.