Browsed by
Author: Hanneke

I started my first blog when I left the Netherlands (my home country) for an internship in Alaska in 2004, to keep my friends and family updated on my adventures over there. Little did I know it would be more than 13 years before I'd move back to the Netherlands! I spent a year in Toulouse (France) before starting a PhD in meteorology at the University of East Anglia in Norwich (UK) in 2005. That's when I started this current blog, first in Dutch but I soon switched to English. I really enjoyed life in the UK, and was actually planning to stay there after my PhD, but "life is what happens when you're busy making other plans" and I ended up moving to Tromsø in Northern Norway in 2009. Tromsø is a photographer's dream, surrounded by spectacular mountains, with the light ever changing from the midnight sun in summer to the dark days compensated by aurora-filled nights in winter. I learnt Norwegian and got a job as a weather forecaster - I got thrown in at the deep end, doing radio interviews and speaking with fishermen with way-too-strong dialects straight from the beginning, before I was anywhere near fluent in Norwegian :D I survived though, and slowly started to do some research on the side. I got more and more involved in research projects and in August 2015 I moved 2000 km south, to Oslo where I started working 100% as a researcher. A year after moving to Oslo, I met Michiel at a music festival in Brussels :) and we started to travel very frequently between Oslo and Rotterdam, where he lives. You can't do that forever though, and I soon realized I found the perfect "excuse" to finally move back home, something I had been considering many times before. So since July 2017, I'm living in Rotterdam! I'm actually taking some time off before finding a new job, and I'm looking forward to lots of adventures in the near future - so stay tuned!
♥ ♥ Bart & Kaya ♥ ♥

♥ ♥ Bart & Kaya ♥ ♥

My oldest brother Bart got married to Kaya on 10 July! The wedding took place on a Dutch island called Vlieland. It takes almost 2 hours to reach the island by ferry, and you can’t bring your car. The island is quite small, with only one village. Everyone gets around on bikes, and the island has a great holiday atmosphere. There are 5 similar islands (Terschelling is the one “next door”), and Bart and Kaya have spent a lot of their holidays on them. Vlieland is their favourite island, and that’s why they chose to get married there! Perfect choice, also because this was the only island that I hadn’t visited yet 😉

We all stayed in group accommodation which worked out really nicely! Everyone arrived the evening before the wedding, so we all had dinner together and we did some geocaching (a sort of treasure hunt using a gps) in the evening. Below you can see the ladies (plus my dad) team before and after finding the cache 🙂

The next morning (the big day) we woke up to rain. And not just a little bit, no it was POURING. It stayed like that for hours too… Luckily the town hall was only a short walk from our accommodation! I didn’t take any photos of the actual ceremony as there were a lot of people taking pictures already. The first photo below is taken just before we left to the town hall (the groom with his daughter Mare), and the second photo when we walked back – Mare and my mum are having a nice “OOOOO” conversation 😉

We came back to our accommodation to have some cake & champagne!

Mare seems keen on the champagne too 😉 (don’t worry, it was a child-friendly champagne without alcohol!) And a portrait of Mare and my mum 🙂

Then it was time for speeches! There were several, including a long emotional one by Kaya’s mum (first photo) and also a long one by Bart and Kaya themselves, with some tears but also a lot of laughter 🙂

Paul took this nice panorama of everyone listening to the speech by Kaya’s mum…

Then there was time for presents, though most people had given their presents earlier so they didn’t have to take it to the island and back 😉

Here are two family portraits, first one with my parents, my sister, my 2 brothers and me, and then one including Kaya and Paul 🙂

And a photo with my mum, Mare, Paul and me…

After the speeches, Bart and Kaya had arranged rental bikes for everyone, and we cycled to the other side of the island. Bart and Kaya had a special “freight bike”, see the photo below. We cycled almost 10 km, and we had the wind against us for most of it – poor Bart!! 😉

We had a very nice lunch in a small restaurant there. After lunch, Bart and Kaya went off with the wedding photographer/friend 🙂 to get their official portraits. We went for a little walk on the beach before returning to the accommodation where we had a big bbq in the evening. The place we stayed had a big garden with a fireplace, and we sat around until late at night. It was a great day! For the official photos, keep an eye out on Bart & Kaya’s weblog. UPDATE: they can all be found here 🙂

We stayed on Vlieland for a few more days, I’ll show some photos of that in my next post! It’s hard to find time for the blog though, now that we have a *real* summer here in Tromsø, with temperatures of 25 degrees 🙂 Quite unusual, but really nice! We’re making the most of it 🙂

Back in Tromsø

Back in Tromsø

We came back from our trip to the Netherlands and Canada last Wednesday night, and found wonderful summer weather in Tromsø! There is no midnight sun anymore, but the nights are still very light. Last night, we went for a walk, to one of the easier “Ti på Topp” mountains: Nattmålsfjellet, 297 m high. It was incredibly beautiful, with large fields of cotton grass…

We really enjoyed our little walk (it only took about 45 minutes to reach the top), and to be out in nature again. In Canada we were mostly staying in cities and we were craving the outdoors!

This panorama (you can scroll through the enlarged version) shows the view from the top, with Tromsø island on the far right – beautiful!

Paul went back to work today, and I am FREE 🙂 It feels great not having to work on my thesis anymore, I feel like I have my life back now! Keep an eye on this blog during the coming week, I am preparing a lot of posts with photos of our time in the Netherlands and in Canada…

DONE!!

DONE!!

Wooooohooooo, I did it!!! Today I printed my thesis 🙂 It took me 3 years and 9 months of blood, sweat and tears… Well maybe not blood, but definitely some sweat and plenty of tears. It’s a huge relief to have it out of the way. (at least for the coming 2 months, as I do still have to defend it sometime in autumn…)

The two bound versions ready to be mailed to UEA (my university), and me with the title page.

Bring on the summer now! We’re flying to the Netherlands on Tuesday, for my brother’s wedding, and then on to Canada for 2 weeks. I hope to post some photos on here before we leave, but let’s see – I might just want to sleep for 2 days instead 😉