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The time trail
The time trail At the start of this millennium, the Swiss city of Neuchâtel created a trail through time in the nearby woods – Le Sentier du Temps. The starting point was intended to mark the formation of our planet Earth, and the end point our present day. Each one-metre step represented one million years,…
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Patriotism
Patriotism I was once given a serious telling-off by a young boy in India about my alleged lack of patriotism. Everyone in India always wants to know where you’re from. As soon as they heard I was Dutch, they would often tell me the story of how a little boy in the Netherlands had saved…
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The raising of the flag
The raising of the flag I was born after the Second World War in a liberated Netherlands. The country had just emerged from five years of occupation by Nazi Germany. I still remember very clearly the annual celebrations during my childhood on 5 May, the day in 1945 on which the country was liberated from…
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Statues of horses
Statues of horses Statues of national heroes on horseback – I’m not much of a fan. Not of the statues, and not of the heroes either. They usually make me yawn with boredom, or at best, prompt me to mock them. So when I saw this equestrian statue in Vienna, I felt the urge to…
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Kind-hearted nationalism
Kind-hearted nationalism Swiss alpenhorns are relics of the past. Just like the smoke signals of Red Indians, they once were used to communicate swiftly with inhabitants of nearby valleys and mountain slopes, long before the invention of the telephone. But their main purpose seems to have been for herdsmen to call their free-grazing cattle back…
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Ah … Holidays!
Ah … Holidays! Sometimes you receive a picture postcard – although less and less in this digital age – that arouses deep inside you an instant longing to be there; to see the scenery with your own eyes; to take it in with all your senses. That is of course the whole purpose of a…
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The friendly army
The friendly army What an impressive army of identical little figures! That was my first reaction when I came across them on the grounds of the Buddhist Hase-dera Temple in Kamakura. On closer inspection, however, some of the faces do display slightly different features. So there must have been a few different moulds used to…
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Wishful thinking
Wishful thinking I wonder if I should reconsider my stand on religion somewhat. In earlier posts of this blog I have spoken – illustrating my point with pictures – of the ‘folklore of faith’, implying that apart from its popular forms, there is also a more serious and fundamental side to religion. The latter would…
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Jai Golu Devta …
Jai Golu Devta … So what are the requests like, that the worshippers of Goludev ask from him? They write their petitions on paper, which allows us to take a closer look at some of them. “Jai Golu Devta! My name, Priyanshu Gagola! Make me successful in finishing the 12th standard! May I get a…
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Goludev the bell lover
Goludev the bell lover I have never been able to really understand the meaning of the word ‘praying’, or maybe I should say ‘the act of praying’. One prays to god – at least according to my catholic upbringing – but since I can’t imagine anything when hearing or reading the word ‘god’, praying to…
καιρός remembered
… the right moment, position chosen, shoot …
καιρός remembered 