This week Thursday we had a departmental day out on the beach! We are part of the Kavli institute and once a year there is a guest speaker and a fun day out. This year we headed to Scheveningen beach near The Hague for some fun beach activities. The program started with lunch at the fancy hotel where we also had a talk by the guest speaker (the heavy physics stuff is always way above me! lol) and then it was time for the fun to start!
I chose Djembe and Sandcastle Building as my two activities. Djembe is the African drum made of wood with a stretched goat skin across the top and I was impressed to see the pile of real Djembe’s they had! We started off slowly but by the end we had learnt a whole ‘song’. It was very encouraging to hear the people around us clapping! For our sandcastle we chose to build a light house. It was quite fun and I learnt the trick to sand sculpting is use lots of water to make it hard and compact it together! After activities there was a barbeque dinner and more socializing time. While Bron was at Scheveningen, Justin watched SA convincingly beat Namibia at the Irish pub.
Djembe!
Our lighthouse sandcastle! My team was mostly people from Quantum Nanoscience.
Another groups Colosseum sandcastle. On the left in the blue jacket Xander, new post-doc Mina lee kneeling down, our group head Nynke Dekker in the centre with the spade and Jennifer on the far right.
The weather for this weekend was forecast to be warm and sunny so we decided to make the most of it since we are not sure how many good days we have left! A work colleague of Justin’s told us about the Hoge Veluwe National Park so went to check it out!
Hoge Veluwe is in the province of Gelderland near the German border and close to the towns of Ede, Apeldoorn and Arnhem. It is bit of a mission to get to by public transport but after two and a half hours we made it! In the park there are 1700 white bicycles for use in the park free of charge. We had a really nice day cycling around enjoying the sunshine; I think we cycled about 30 km! There is apparently a lot of wildlife in the park but we only saw one red squirrel all day! Lol. We have never seen a red squirrel before so it was nice to see one but it would have been nice to see more than just one squirrel! Some other animals that live in the park include Red Deer, Doe Deer, Wild Boar and Mouflon (type of wild sheep). One magazine article advertised the Dutch Big 5 but we are still trying to work out what that is!
The other main attraction is the Krőller-Müller Museum which has an impressive Van Gogh collection. Helene Krőller-Müller was an avid collector of art and started collecting works by Van Gogh before he became famous. She privately collected 180 drawings and 87 paintings by Van Gogh. Not all the Van Gogh’s are on view, we only saw one drawing and about 30 paintings. Some of the better known paintings on view are The Potato Eaters, Café Terrace at Night, A Meadow in The Mountains, Country Road in Provence by Night, Pink Peach Trees and one of his Self Portraits. Work by other artists in the museum include Pablo Picasso, George Seurat, Auguste Renoir, Claude Monet, Piet Mondriaan, Isaac Israels and others. There is also a large sculpture garden outside the museum with work by Auguste Rodin, Aldo van Eyck, Kenneth Snelson, Mario Merz and others.
Rows of white bicycles!
Views in Hoge Veluwe
Getting some speed!
Van Gogh's in the Krőller-Müller Museum
Bron's favourite Van Gogh at this museum, Café Terrace at Night.
Rodin's Crouching Woman in the sculpture garden
The Needle Tower by Kenneth Snelson
After a busy day out yesterday we took it easy today catching up on home admin and some other things. It was another lovely day though so we went out for a little 20 km cycle towards Delft around some farm areas near Schiedam. Was really nice and peaceful!
Not much planned this week except that Justin has a business trip to Israel from Saturday till next week Wednesday. We were super keen for Bron to join Justin in Israel and then take some time off to explore together but unfortunately it hasn’t worked out that way. Justin’s office took so long to confirm this project, the prices of flights have gone up a lot in that time and Bron would need to get a re-entry visa since her Residence Permit hasn’t come through yet. So we decided to leave it this time round. Maybe for the next trip…
In other news, congrats to our friends Rich and Jen who were married in Cape Town yesterday. Congrats guys! We are super happy for you =)
Till next time! Have a good week!
x
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