BeBlogger

In February BeWelcome went online, the first legal open-source Hospitality Exchange Network. You can find more about it here : www.bewelcome.org</a> or check out my Thorgal67 profile http://www.bewelcome.org/bw/member.php?cid=thorgal67
Whether you are looking to make friends or trying to find accommodation all over the world, BeWelcome caters for all travellers trying to get in touch with like-minded people. At the moment we have about 2200 members and the number is growing.

The first months started quite gently, with a couple of nice socializing activities, for example organized by Anne from Tenderfeelings There was also a colleague of mine who had a baby boy, and I took the pictures for the birthdaycard. And then I met OrElEkE, a girl who introduced me to the wonderful life of Urban Exploration. Urbex as we call it is the examination of the normally unseen or off-limits parts of human civilization. More information can be found on Wikipedia : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urban_exploration . Some of the places we visited (alone or together with friends) were an abandoned theme park, an old hospital, a crypte, a sanatorium, an orphanage and some factories. We only take picture and leave footprints. On some occasions we also took models there for some interesting combination of abandoned beauty.

Some examples of my urbex pictures can be seen here : http://urbex.deviantart.com/gallery/

This year we had a very quiet New Year. Claudia and I went to the sauna, later we spent a nice time at home and watched some movies. And of course we make a top quality dinner with my stone grill. It felt like back in the old days, when men only had a stone, some fire and a freshly killed mammoth…

In August 2002 I visited Delft in Holland with a friend. We took her car (she doesn't like to drive so much) and in less than 2 hours we arrived in the beautiful centre of Delft. We had booked a special arrangement called "A Meeting with Johannes Vermeer in Delft and in the Mauritshuis.
The arrangment included one night in Hotel De Plataan, tickets to several museums and churches, a two-day pass for public transport to The Hague and back, and several reduction vouchers. In total we paid 122 euro for the two of us.

Hotel De Plataan (3 stars) is a stylish hotel with an individual character, situated in the heart of the old historic centre of Delft.