Dutch Flowerparade/Bloemencorso of Bollenstreek 2009

It was again the last weekend of April and it was again time.... for the most colourful and most fragnant flower parade, the Bloemencorso of Bollenstreek (between Noordwijkerhout and Haarlem, Bollenstreek=the flower bulb area of the Netherlands)! The topic this year was "Famous books" and one could meet different heroes: like Asterix and Obelix, the last Mohican, knights and wizards and Moby Dick, the huge pink whale with his friends the pinguins...

The fragnance of hyacinths was just everywhere, may be because next to the start point of the parade in Noordwijkerhout there were some flower fields, still in blossom...The Bloemencorso is definitely my favourite of all flower events here! I was very happy to show it to our special visit from Joensuu, Finland: Henna, Lauri and Niilo:-)

Some more pics are available under:
http://picasaweb.google.com/janaaroundtheworld/Bloemencorso2009#

From Tulipland...= the Netherlands!

Its again this special time of the year....MY favourite time of the year in the Netherlands...For three weeks every April the part of land between Leiden and Amsterdam called "Bollenstreek" tranforms itself in a huge, colourful and magnificent carpet of colours & flowers: yellow daffodils, pink hyacinths, red/pink/white tulips....

Did you ever wonder how many tulips grow in the low lands? Its huge amount indeed: the Netherlands produces 4.32 billion tulip bulbs, of which 2.3 billion (53%) are used as the starting material for the cultivation of cut flowers. Not fewer than 1.3 billion of these (57%) are grown in the Netherlands as cut flowers. The remainder goes to countries within the EU (0.63 billion) and outside the EU (0.37 billion). The main buyers outside the EU are Japan with 179 million, the US with 147 million, Norway with 60 million and Canada with 48 million bulbs.

From total of 15 countries being tulip producers the Netherlands is also the country with the largest production area with 10,800 hectares (88%). The next 5 main countries are Japan (300 hectares, 2.5%), France (293 hectares, 2.4%), Poland (200 hectares, 1.6%), Germany (155 hectares, 1.3%) and New Zealand (122 hectares, 1%).

Thats why I like to call the Netherlands the "Tulipland...at least in April nobody will wonder why:-)

Zeehondencreche Pieterburen: getting close to seals ...

On Easter Sunday, after leaving the island, we made our way to the Zeehondencreche (Seals hospital) in Pieterburen, close to Groningen. On the way we were enchanted to discover the open shop of a goat farm, where we tasted and bought different goat cheese sorts-yummy...

After some more km we could say face to face hello to the seals taken care of in the hospital. Most of them are still babys (between 4 and 8 months old) and because of their age their imun system is not strong enough to fight the so called "lungworm"- a virus an adult seal would not get. Due to the increased environmental polution seals get also more often sick in the last years. In 2008 the hospital received 242 patients, which without any help would otherwise die. A team of professional doctors and researchers take care of the weak animals before they are again realeased into the wild.
Another project of the Zeehondencreche Foundation is the collection of fishermen nets from the sea. Till now they have gathered a small mountain of 500 000 t, which are a danger for seals and birds if left in water...

According to the last count there are 3400 seals who relax and live around the sandbanks in the Netherlands! It would be lovely to keep them in the future, but its a big challenge with all the negative effects of the human+industrial activities around....

Northern Dutch beauty: Schiermonnikoog

The sun was shining right into my eyes and it felt almost like summer.
Sitting in the outside bar of the Hotel "Graaf Bernstorff", I was enjoying watching the happening in the tiny center of the (only) village on the island. Busy crowd in front of the only supermarket here and the traffic jam of bikes...
It took us 3 hours drive and 1 ferry transfer (45 min) to reach the furthest northern island of all 5 Dutch Waddeneilanden: Schiermonnikoog...a national park, carfree piece of land (16x4km), and on the top sunshine + 18-20 degrees for the long Easter weekend...

Within 48 hours we biked between sand dunes and 2 lighthouses, met plenty of birds (there are wild pheasants running all over), visited a cheese farm, enjoyed the sun...In the ShellMuseum/Schelpenmuseum we had a great chat with Thijs, the owner of the museum, a local, who collects shells and snail houses more or less all his life. He has very impressive collection of shells from Western Australia too.

I also learned something new that day: the soo common for the Netherlands razor clam/Atlantic jacknife clam/lat. Ensis directus (on the last photo) was brought to (Northwestern) Europe via some big American ships in the 1978-1979. I still regard it with big respect as this specie does not exist at the Black sea coast, the coast I grew up with as a kid:)

Some more pictures from the island (translated from Frisian Schiermonnikoog means "Island of the Grey Monks") are to be found here.