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General photos I have taken over the past years.

Saturday, September 11th, 2004.
You can see the first photos I took with my new mobile phone (Nokia 6230) in this Photo album. There you can see the Saxion University in Enschede where I studied Civil Engineering.


Friday, September 17th, 2004.
These photos are taken from my sister's bedroom window overlooking Schoolstraat. On the opposite side of the street you can see the catholic highschool 'Pius X'.


Sunday, September 19th, 2004.
Even though it was September, the weather was very nice, so I made several biketrips. On this particular Sunday I saw this funny hot air balloon.


Wednesday, March 16th, 2005.
During the winter months I attended a few small church meetings. At the end of the season we went with two groups to a local snackbar for some french fries. Later on we went to the nearby alley to go bowling. In the Photo album you can see a couple (kinda vague) images of this nice evening.


Saturday, April 9th, 2005.
As part of the 60 years of freedom (after World War II) celebrations in our city, a small squadron of war planes flew over in formation. There were also several activities in the city center to take part in.


Monday, April 18th, 2005.
A photo of myself in my bedroom. Besides the posters not much has changed (until 2008), haha...


Thursday, April 28th, 2005.
This really was a day with a golden touch added to it. A very cool experience, I must say... After 25 driving lessons in exactly 27 weeks, I passed the final test for my driving license first time! And I got it just in time to take it with me on my holiday to France. That would allow me to get some good driving experience.


Monday, May 16th, 2005.
Today we made a trip by car to the Veluwe National Park. I drove the entire distance, which was very nice. During our trip we stopped a few times, for example here at the monument at the Grebbeberg. During the second World War there were some very fierce battles here where a lot of soldiers lost their lives. This monument and all the graves still reminds visitors of the impressive years during the '40s.


Tuesday, June 21st, 2005.
At the end of my second year studying Civil Engineering we made an excursion to a building site in Enschede. Here they were preparing a tunnel which would later get hydraulicly pressed through the ground, so that they wouldn't have to remove the rails on top of it which lead to the railway station a few hundred meters to the left. The trip was both educational and interesting, so it was a couple of well spent hours at 'school'.


Saturday, September 3rd, 2005.
On this beautiful Saturday we went to Circuit Park Zandvoort for the day. There they had a special Alfa Romeo day for the true fans of this make of Italian car. We stood on top of the main building to watch the Alfas racing. Also the brand new Alfo Romeo 159 didn't stay unnoticed.


Sunday, February 19th, 2006.
Last night I went to Stream of Passion's gig in 'Biebob', a nice venue in Vosselaar, near the city of Turnhout in Belgium. To save myself from a lonely night at a railway station or to go to an expensive hotel, I spent the night at the house of the charming Vicky. After having a good breakfast, I had to go back home again. Because I had to switch trains in Antwerp, and had to wait for about an hour, I walked to the city center and bought myself a typical warm Antwerp wafer. And tasty they were, definitely! In the Photo album you can see the impressive main hall of the railway station in Antwerp.
These are, by the way, the first photos taken with my new compact digital camera Canon PowerShot A520. In every upcoming album you will be able to see photos which I took with this camera. I hope you like the better quality.


Thursday, August 17th, 2006 (1).
The summer holidays of 2006 were coming to an end, so I decided to enjoy the weather and go visiting a couple of cities in our country. I picked Groningen and Assen, because I have never visited these before. In the Photo album you can see the famous Martinitoren in the city center of Groningen. I was quite lucky to notice that there was a record fair on the market square. Of course I couldn't pass it without buying some rather cheap CDs. The result was 2 new albums.


Thursday, August 17th, 2006 (2).
On my way home from Groningen I visited Assen. I had a nice walk through the city and saw some nice buildings, statues and other things. Because it was about time for dinner, I got myself some french fries and enjoyed them while walking back to the railway station. In the Photo album you can see a few nice photos of my visit to this city.


Wednesday, September 6th, 2006.
Here you can see another photo taken in my bedroom. You can see two cool Ayreon posters. Then pen and the 'Pinkie Respect' sign are typically Lori Linstruth, the ex-guitarist of Stream of Passion.


Thursday, March 1st, 2007.
Another photo of me in my bedroom. As you can see the poster of Michael Schumacher got replaced by a Stream of Passion poster. An interesting detail is that this poster originally comes from Mexico. It travelled all the way to Sweden and then finally to the Netherlands. At the beginning of 2008, this poster also got replaced, but this time by an Ayreon poster (the 01011001 poster to promote the new album).


Wednesday, June 13th, 2007.
For nearly a year Peter, Timon and I worked on our graduation project. Today I was busy making the final presentation for our graduation on Thursday, June 21st. Most of the work was done behind this desk.


Wednesday, June 20th, 2007.
In the Photo album you can see photos of the nice scale model we made as 3D illustration material for our final graduation presentation. You can also get an impression of the room where we worked on our graduation project. Unfortunately we had to share this room with 3 students of Construction engineering who were damn bastards! Don't mind the abundance load of Royal Netherlands Air Force posters hanging at one of the walls. This was actually one of the freaky ideas of Peter, and they got quite a lot of attention during our graduation year, haha! We also gave our final presentation in this room and used it for the graduation projects exhibition for our families, friends and other relatives.
The scale model was sold after our graduation to the Saxion University, so they can use it for open days and other promotional activities. An interesting detail: it was not so smart to fill it with water, as it was leaking quite a bit even though it was supposed to be watertight...


Tuesday, August 28th & Friday, September 7th, 2007.
As a reward for acquiring my HBO diploma (yeah, I may now officially put the engineer title 'ing.' in front of my name) my parents asked me if I could think of something they could give me. Well this guy already had everything he could wish for (besides a nice girlfriend), so I couldn't think of anything at all. Then they thought of a nice idea of a new bike because I had my current bike for quite some years already. I really liked this idea, so I got as present in combination with my birthday, a new bike. In the Photo album you can see both my old and new bikes. The new one also has one more gear than the previous one (8 over 7), so this would make it even easier to climb hills and mountains here -- that's something I really like doing when the weather is good enough. So let's keep our fingers crossed for a long sunny period!


Friday, October 12th, 2007.
In September of this year I started to study at the University of Twente in Enschede. It actually is an extension of the studies I finished in June. The course is officially called 'Civil Engineering and Management', where I chose the specialization of 'Water Engineering and Management'. Because I'm originally from the HBO level, I had to follow a 'pre-master course' in order to be allowed to start the actual master course of two years. During the first half year I took this pre-master course as well a couple of master modules, which was already allowed. It was all very tough, but in the end I succeeded to get reasonable marks for the pre-master course.
This Photo album is about the mastercourse 'Marine systems', which is all about the water systems near the coasts all over the globe. For this course we were obliged to take part in the excursion to 'Het verdronken land van Saeftinghe' (The drown land of Saeftinghe) which is located in the province Zeeland. We left at 6:15 in the morning from the parking area at the university, so we would arrive at around 10:00 in the village of Emmadorp. We had to be this early because of the tides in the area -- it was only accessible when the tide was low. They still strongly adviced us to take boots and an extra set of clothes. So I did. But what was actually going to happen?
The idea was to take a trip through an area which is heavily influenced by the effects of the tides of the North Sea. A guide would guide us through this tricky area and tell us some stories, give explanations about the effects of the tides, water currents, the vegetation, animals and some information about the history of this area. Soon it became clear that it was some sort of mudflat hiking, which is a typical thing for people to do in the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. We had to walk through small, deep rivers which had only a couple of hours before had been filled with water meters deep. Because the mud/sand was still soaked with water, it was pretty exhausting to keep on walking, and because the tide would be rising again in a couple of hours, we had to keep walking in quite a high tempo. The hardest part of all was when you didn't walk quick enough through the deep mudflats. It acted like quicksand, so you slowly sink into the soil. When you try to pull one leg out, you automaticly push the other in further, which would make the next step even more difficult. The most important advice thus was very clear: keep walking! This general photo shows you what it looked like. This photo is taken from their website and shot during summer, but we had the unpredictable weather of October.
Because this trip was so active and exhausting, I didn't have much time to take a lot of nice pictures, even though the landscape was amazing! When we got back to the visitors center, washed ourselves and got dressed in some clean clothes, we visited this visitors center and looked at some educational things. Then we visited a local bar/cafe for a drink just before we left Emmadorp to go back to Enschede. It took us quite some time to get back at university, as there was a motorbike accident on the highway and some major traffic jams near Utrecht.
You can find some more (Dutch) information on the 'Het verdronken land van Saeftinghe' website. There are some nice maps, photos and information on how you can go on an excursion yourself to this unique place in the world.


Tuesday, January 8th, 2008.
In order to promote the marvelous new Ayreon album, called '01011001', I received some posters. I took some of them to a Heavy Metal record store, so they could also promote the new album. Because this store closed its doors forever (due to the effects of downloading music), I decided not to post the photos online. Of course I kept a poster for myself. I put it up in my bedroom and you may definitely take a look at this one. I replaced the Mexican gig poster of Stream of Passion with this one. Maybe you remember I had it hanging there. And by the way, I'm on this photo too -- it's the most recent one I could find!