Diagonal Stripes

Νάρκισσος / Narcissus

Spring is in the Air

Crossing the Maas River

Staircase Facade

Bursting into Life

Click on the pics to enlarge.

New Achmea Offices near Leiden Central Station

New Achmea (Insurance Company) offices - night pic - near Leiden Central Station. Click on the pic to enlarge. These 5 large concrete structures will hold office blocks that will be supported by some pillars on street level too, so that you can still walk right under them. A clever way to use space. The offices are next to the train station, which is also very convenient. Check this if you want to visit the architect's website and see some images. I think these will be interesting office buildings, real eye-catchers.

To see more - check my Dutch website with Google translate - just click here . Don't pay attention to the funny English - you'll get the picture. ;-) If you want to read more from my Dutch "Vrijspraak" blog using Google translate - try this. But it's probably better to read my English blog... Let me know wheter or not it makes any sense to you, ha ha. 

Vertical Lift Bridge Boskoop 2

My second posting with a view of the vertical lift bridge at Boskoop. Please read the comments on my former posting too!

In a way this is an ugly structure - if you look at the landscape surrounding it and if you look at it from this point of view. But the strange thing is: people get used to it, start to like it and even learn to love it. I am not living in this particular area, but local people will see these large bridges (there are 3 similar bridges crossing the same river Gouwe) as 'statements' and 'objects of pride'.

Whatever you think of it, these bridges make interesting photo objects. And, although I am not an engineer or mechanical expert, they are also interesting from a technical point of view. You can see the contra weights that help to lift and lower the deck with the road. The deck can be lifted high enough to allow large ships to cross below it. If you still want to know more, read all about it here.

Vertical Lift Bridge Boskoop 1

Our next king and queen

Eternity Forever (perhaps the only visitor I still have on this neglected photo blog?) asked me about the Queen in my Madam Tussauds post. Well, I can imagine that many people outside the Netherlands don't recognize her immediately, but the lady above Winston Churchill is Queen Beatrix from the Netherlands. And just to be prepared for the future - above you can see the wax statues of our next king and queen: Willem Alexander and Maxima.