On the Road is a weekday feature spotlighting reader photo submissions.
From the exotic to the familiar, whether you’re traveling or in your own backyard, we would love to see the world through your eyes.
Good Morning All,
This weekday feature is for Juicers who are are on the road, traveling, or just want to share a little bit of their world via stories and pictures. So many of us rise each morning, eager for something beautiful, inspiring, amazing, subtle, of note, and our community delivers – a view into their world, whether they’re far away or close to home – pictures with a story, with context, with meaning, sometimes just beauty. By concentrating travel updates and tips here, it’s easier for all of us to keep up or find them later.
So please, speak up and share some of your adventures and travel news here, and submit your pictures using our speedy, secure form. You can submit up to 7 pictures at a time, with an overall description and one for each picture.
You can, of course, send an email with pictures if the form gives you trouble, or if you are trying to submit something special, like a zipped archive or a movie. If your pictures are already hosted online, then please email the links with your descriptions.
For each picture, it’s best to provide your commenter screenname, description, where it was taken, and date. It’s tough to keep everyone’s email address and screenname straight, so don’t assume that I remember it “from last time”. More and more, the first photo before the fold will be from a commenter, so making it easy to locate the screenname when I’ve found a compelling photo is crucial.
Have a wonderful day, and enjoy the pictures!
Today, pictures from valued commenter Jerzy Russian.
I went of a trip through Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and The Netherlands last summer. In this contribution I wish to share some photographs taken at Madurodam, which is near Den Haag (The Hague). This park is named after George Maduro, who was a resistance fighter during World War II. He was captured and eventually died in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945. In 1951 his parents donated a large sum of money for the construction of this miniature city in his honor. The park contains very detailed models (1:25 scale) of various landmarks in The Netherlands.
This is a model of the Utrecht town center. The famous Dom Tower is on the left.
Unfortunately, I did not keep detailed notes, so I don’t know what this is a model of. Perhaps someone out there knows?
Again, I am not sure what this is a model of, but it is pretty cool nonetheless.
Here is a model of a canal, and the ducks (and the flowers) give you an idea of the scale.
Here is a model of Schipol Airport. The planes in the background move.
Here is a model of the Peace Palace in Den Haag. It (the real one, that is) hosts, among other things, the International Court of Justice.
On the left is the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. On the right you can see the New Church, which dates to around 1403.
Thank you so much Jerzy Russian, do send us more when you can.
Travel safely everybody, and do share some stories in the comments, even if you’re joining the conversation late. Many folks confide that they go back and read old threads, one reason these are available on the Quick Links menu.
One again, to submit pictures: Use the Form or Send an Email
arrieve
I’m suddenly a lot less impressed with the dollhouse I built when I was a teenager. Very cool pictures.
rikyrah
I love models. Great pictures????
Amir Khalid
I think my parents took me and my sister there when I was a toddler, during a European holiday before our return to Malaysia in 1964.
That there in the fourth picture is a huge duck. //
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
LOVE LOVE LOVE detailed models. While I have neither the patience nor the dexterity to do it, seeing great work like that is always a thrill.
Nice!
otmar
I have also visited Madurodam.
A few years ago, a conference I was attending in The Hague held its social event there. I was in winter and there was snow on the models.
satby
You’d think they were the real buildings if not for the full sized people (or ducks). Amazing details. Thanks Jerzy!
mainmata
So I’m back in Indonesia for two months leading a small team of researchers on a retrospective study of 25 years of the US Government’s support for the environment and natural resources management in this giant and diverse country. The largest archipelagic nation in the world at 17,500 islands scattered over an area equal to the distance between Los Angeles and Bermuda, this nation of 240 million+ people is arguably the most biologically and ethnically diverse in the world.
Obviously, what many who pay attention to this country would say about the last 25 years is that efforts to protect the environment have been a spectacular failure given the annual giant forest fires and the illegal logging of irreplaceable tropical hardwood forests and their replacement by degraded scrub or huge palm oil plantations. However, donor country or multilateral institution like the World Bank has been able to seriously penetrate the Asian and western multinational empires. US multinationals are almost exclusively confined to the oil and gas sectors and hard rock mining whose impacts are pretty localized and they’ve actually gotten better over the decades.
Anyway, I am this week in Indonesia’s easternmost province of Papua, which abuts the nation of Papua New Guinea. Indonesia and PNG share the giant island of New Guinea. The whole island and certainly Papua is extremely mountainous and still thickly forested.
Later I will develop case studies, including at least a couple of coastal/marine ones, develop an analysis of what has worked or not and make recommendations for the future. Given that I have worked here for most of the last 25 years and am well-known in the environment community, I am looking forward to getting a lot of input from my Indonesian friends.
Quinerly
?
mainmata
Looks like my photos didn’t make it though I used the tool provided and they certainly seemed to post. Oh well. I’ll keep Juicers up to date. BTW, it should go without saying that the Great Orange Sh*tgibbon is regarded with a kind of shocked contempt if that’s something that can be described, especially after Obama who partly grew up here. But almost everyone knows this is what they hope is a bizarre aberration of what they know (or think they know) America is like.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mainmata:
Keep up the good work!
Amir Khalid
@mainmata:
Like everyone else in Southeast Asia, I still remember The Haze of ’97, some of which I understand Indonesians blame on Malaysian-owned corporate plantations.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mainmata:
Your pictures don’t appear automatically when you send them. This feature is curated by Alain; he will probably put them in a future post.
mainmata
@mainmata: Sorry writing too fast. This sentence should read” However, donor countries or multilateral institutions like the World Bank have not been able to seriously penetrate the Asian and western multinational empires.
mainmata
@Amir Khalid: While Malaysian forestry corporations have been horribly predatory businesses both in Sabah and Sarawak a long time ago they have been much worse in PNG, Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the Pacific but the so-called “haze” is due to the Indonesian palm oil companies paying poor farmers to set fire to lands they want cleared as well as the farmers themselves clearing their own land in the traditional manner. The Government has been trying to persuade the companies to loan farmer groups dozers to clear existing farm land mechanically without much success. Low/no till planting is a possibility too but vegetation here grows a lot faster than in temperate lands so this approach, which is the most environmentally-sound will require some creativity. However, the biggest threat is the draining of peatland swamps (Indonesia has the largest tracts of extremely high carbon peat lands). These are also the main home of Borneo’s orangutan (Sumatra’s population has a different habitat). So stopping the draining of these swamp lands (because they then spontaneously catch fire and burn forever) is the paramount climate priority.
Sorry for going on and on but this is a large part of my career.
debbie
Beautiful models! My dad built a train set for my brothers and took all kinds of pains with constructing a believable town.
Montanareddog
The 1st picture that needs identification is the Rijksmuseum (the national art collection). Not sure about the second
Elizabelle
Madurodam is cool. Had never heard of it. Goes on a “to visit” list. Thanks, Jerzy Russian.
@mainmata: Good luck with your work. Will be interested to see your photos, in time.
Alain the site fixer
@mainmata: good luck and do send pictures!
Alain the site fixer
@mainmata: they don’t auto post, I’ll see if they landed and will reply.
Jerzy Russian
@arrieve: There was a museum I visited there many years ago (can’t remember where exactly) with amazing doll houses from the 16th through 19th centuries. Talk about detailed!
Jerzy Russian
@Montanareddog: Thanks. I figured someone out there would recognize them, given the high level of detail. I am leaning towards some place in Leiden for the second unknown building. Each model had a small sign giving information and an ID, I should have photographed them, also too!
Jerzy Russian
@satby: Yes, either fifty foot people or model buildings. The Dutch are among the tallest people in Europe, but they aren’t that tall…
Jerzy Russian
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: After you drop by Madurodam, head north to Legoland in Denmark. Those models are something to behold. The largest ones (like that of Mount Rushmore) have over a million bricks!
MomSense
This is so cool.
Citizen_X
@Montanareddog: Will confirm: I think that’s the Rijksmuseum, too.
ETA: I’ve never been to Madurodam, now I’ve got to go there.
AnderJ
Local here: the second photo is without doubt the Rijksmuseum. The third photo took me a while, but that is the Magna Plaza Shopping Centre (a former postal office): link to picture; link to wikipedia. It took me a while to figure this out, because your photo was taken from the back of the model, while everyone has the front of the building in mind.
Mokum
@Jerzy Russian: I think the second picture is the former post office in Amsterdam.
They closed all post offices in the Netherlands, because of why not.
Jerzy Russian
Thanks AnderJ and Mokum. We have a firm match it seems. Looking back, I have seen the real Magna Plaza a few times, but the proper neurons did not fire when trying to figure out the model’s correct ID.
otmar
Btw, the Austrian version of Madurodam is call “Minimundus” and features models from all over the world. My kids loved it; let’s see if I find my pictures from the last time we were there.