The Taelemans´ Blog

These fire jugglers were part of the stage show of HeksEnVuur in Laarne. Playing a bit with the shutter speed gave me the this result.

A member of the night watch at HeksenEnVuur 2007.
I leave the interpretation of which night watch open for your own imagination.
Quick imagination tips:

• Night Watch
• Night Watch
• Nightwatchman
• …Your own?

I didn’t see anything at all of the actual show because the crowd was just too dense to get through, but standing back for the fireworks produced this interesting point of view. On the left you can see the town hall of Laarne (Anno 1767) and on the right, hidden behind the enormous tree, a part of the church.

Exactly 400 years ago, six “witches” were put on trail in Laarne (small town near Ghent, Belgium), four of them were burned at the stake. ‘Heksenvuur‘ is the memorial of these events which occurred in 1607.

The memorial included an historic market, fireworks and a large scale theater show on the grounds of The Castle of Laarne.

I will be posting several pictures of the event in the next couple of days whenever I find the time to post them. I will group them in this Flickr set.

Another picture from Efteling Theme park. This time of an attraction called “Langnek” (Longneck in english). Guess why he’s called that way

Holle Bolle Gijs is a character from a Dutch children’s verse, but is best known as trashcan in the theme park “Efteling”.
On this picture you can see the biggest version of his trashcan appearance in the park. (You can feed him with trash)

Normally I don’t like theme parks, since most rides are too extreme for me. I like to be in control and most of all, I don’t like the tension. I used to be kind of fond of roller coasters, but over the years it started to get worse.

Anyway, last week I went to Efteling , which is one of the leading and oldest theme parks in the world and is located in the Netherlands. Since this park doesn’t have to too much extreme rides and is considered to be one of the more beautiful parks in my neighborhood, I decided to give theme parks another try. I guess it’ll never be my favorite activity. (Except for Disney World and Universal Studios, which have a huge nostalgic value for me)

The ride on the picture is a monorail ride in the village of “The people of Laaf”, which is a fairytale created by Ton van de Ven.

What do you get when a bird notices a window just a wee bit too late?

I know… I too feel sorry for the bird, but I still find it very amusing
I discovered this one yesterday at the office in one of the unused rooms in the back, but forgot my camera at home. Luckily it didn’t rain and I was able to take the shot.

My hometown (Heusden, Belgium) is currently holding its biggest festivities of the whole year, namely the Heusden Fair. One of the more famous events of the fair is the “Heusden Koers”, which is one of the last fair-bicycle races in which professional cyclists participate. The 2005 edition had Peter van Petegem as one of the participants. I have no idea though who is participating this year…

Anyway, this picture shows one of the more traditional kids games, Duck Fishing. Ok, I admit, I have no clue at all how this game is called in English. Please enlighten me if you do.

The Isère is a 290 km long river in southeastern France, in the Rhône-Alpes région. It originates in the Alps near the border with Italy and is fed by several glaciers.