National Geographic Photo of the Day

February 7th, 2010

Recently there were some striking shots at the Photo of the Day over at National Geographic, for example this cedar waxwing. Or look a damselfly into the eye. Today’s picture shows two eagles in flight – really impresive. (They’re all downloadable as a wallpaper, by the way.)

A whole decade?!

January 25th, 2010

Ten years ago I posted on my newly created weblog for the first time. Has it really been ten years already? It feels like a century in internet-time, but much shorter than a decade in real life. I must be getting old. ;-)

To celebrate, I give you a link to a site that was all the rage back then – turn your speakers on!

(More elaborate posting to come, have got to run to work.)

Miep Gies overleden

January 12th, 2010

Yesterday Miep Gies died. She would have turned 101 years old next month. Gies was the last surviving member of the group that helped Anne Frank, her family and the other four onderduikers.

I visited the Anne Frank huis in Amsterdam on May 17, 2000. The concentration camp in which Anne and Margot Frank died in March 1945, is quite close to AndrĂ©’s parents place; we visited Bergen-Belsen in December 2007 and passed it on our bike trip last summer. Today, none of the original buildings of the concentration camps remain, but the train station is still there, and a white line along the side of the road marks where the prisoners were forced to to walk from the train to the concentration camp.