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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!
Amsterdam Light Festival

Amsterdam Light Festival

On Christmas Eve I went to Amsterdam with my sister for the Amsterdam Light Festival, a festival of light, art and water. My sister had already seen it from a canal cruise, but she wanted to go back to take a closer look and see some of the art work that cannot be seen from the water.

Sculpture at Amsterdam Light Festival Decorated houseboat in Amsterdam

We went by scooter, but we did part of the walking route. It was really pretty!

Collections of light sculptures Tree with birdhouse - the birds fly along the tree and colour the branch behind them - really magical effect

Colourful sculptures…

Another light sculpture Infinite light tunnel

The botanical garden was open and there were some sculptures there. This tree wasn’t part of the festival but I loved the way it was lit 🙂

Very pretty tree in the botanical garden

This was my sister’s favourite sculpture: the two men from the traffic light 😀

Huge traffic light men My sister with the stop man... ... and the Go man :D

Rings of friendship…

Friendship rings Friendship rings from the front

Scooter parking at Rembrandtplein, we stopped for a food break here.

Scooter parking at Rembrandtplein

There were many more beautiful sculptures that I didn’t take photos of, and some are best seen from one of the canal cruises. This festival has been going for some years now and it keeps getting better. It’s well organized, with all the canal cruises offering special boat trips, a well marked walking route, many information points and there are guided walks as well (with a “light guide” who is dressed in a very special costume full of lights!).

Bike ride at sunset

Bike ride at sunset

I am in the Netherlands right now, and a couple of days ago I went for a bike ride before dinner, around sunset. From my parent’s place, it only takes about 5 minutes to cycle to the entrance of National Park Zuid-Kennemerland. In the park, no cars are allowed so it’s a great place for walking or cycling. It was a beautiful evening…

De Oosterplas, a nearby lake Cycling towards the coast at sunset

While the sun was setting, a nearly full moon was rising behind me. I walked up to a high dune with a viewpoint on top, for some great views of the orange sunset.

Looking back at the rising moon Sunset
Two women coming down from the viewpoint Panorama from the viewpoint, the lake is called Vogelmeer or Bird Lake

Cycling back I passed the Vogelmeer (Bird Lake) which didn’t get its name for nothing 😉 There were two swans near the shore, while the water was reflecting the pink colour of the sky. Very pretty 🙂

Two swans & the moon The lake was turning pink at sunset

Swans & moon reflection Pretty!

After that I had to rush back home, but I took another photo of the sunset that was turning red.

Sunset colours in the dunes

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Dhaka, Bangladesh

Last week I spent a couple of days in Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. The ministery of Foreign Affairs in Norway pays for a project where my institute helps the Bangladesh Meteorological Department. This project has been going for 4-5 years already, and I have recently been asked to join.

It was my first visit to Asia, and the traffic chaos was overwhelming! It can take anything from 20 minutes to 1.5 hours to reach the department from our hotel. I couldn’t get my head around the population either, Dhaka is the 11th city in the world with 12 million inhabitants, and the Greater Dhaka Area has 17 million people – that’s more than the Netherlands (which is already the most densely populated country in Europe apart from Malta/Vatican City/Monaco/San Marino which are so small they don’t count 😛 )

Traffic in Dhaka: complete chaos The Bangladesh Meteorological Deparment. Apparently the side wings were planned to be as high as the middle part, and they keep adding floors!

Bangladesh is a developing country and a lot is still done by hand. I visited the weather office, where weather maps and weather forecasts were done on paper.

Written weather forecasts Weather map drawn by hand, showing every hPa...

Yet things are slowly changing, and some of the Norwegian products for visualising meteorological data are now in use in Bangladesh. Very nice to see!

Some Norwegian products in use for visualising meteorological data The weather office

We had lunch with the project group. The flags that were decorating the building on the outside and the inside were showing the names and faces of people who were running for union elections 🙂

They served us a tasty lunch every day Crossing the courtyard. Another smoggy day...

On our last day, there was a strike and we were told it was safer for us to stay at the hotel. So instead, some of the project members came to our hotel where we had our final meeting.

Final meeting at the hotel

We were staying at a very posh hotel, and my room was on the 22nd floor! I took these two photos from my room…

Construction site seen from my hotel room The fascinating view from my room on the 22nd floor!

Around sunset, I took some photos from the balcony on the 23rd floor…

Sports field and lots of highrise buildings Sunset over Dhaka

We only had 3 days in Dhaka (it should have been 4, but we lost one in Istanbul), so time flew by. There was not much time for sightseeing, and even if there had been – we had been advised by the Norwegian embassy to stay in the hotel and not venture out in the city by ourselves, for security reasons. If everything goes to plan, I will become project leader for this project in 2016. That means I will travel there once a year, and hopefully on one of those trips I’ll have the chance to discover more of the country!