Road Trip part 1

Camping in Huastecas

A trial version of the big trip: 4 days Xilitla and Sierra Gorda

Guadalajara en Tequila

Last weekend we went to Guadalajara a very big town, close to the famous village TEQUILA!

Our first encounter with the magical agave cactus wich is the basic ingredient for Tequila:

Visit to the ancient tequila factory of José Cuervo

This is the former Palacio del Gobierno, with a very famous mural of Orozco. The big angry man is Hidalgo.

Vocho and final entrega

Finally my first car! I'm gonna make a roadtrip trough the whole of México!!!!!!!

After getting 100% percent score in the final project we went to celebrate it in a nice and cheap fishrestaurant.

Wendy is also feliz with here final score, and with the huge fish.

Johny is less feliz with the spice battle against evil mister Kramer.

mister Kramer after the battle

Pinche Johny and the shrimp after the battle

Michelada really tasty.

Johny, Aurelio, Sabrina, Jimena, Patsi, Pedro, Wendy

biking in Querétaro

Semana santa and Monte Albán in Oaxaca

Old music/ new guitar

Monte Alban, a temple complex close to Oaxaca:

Ancient soccer stadium

Possessed by a zapotecan demon?

On the road México DF to Oaxaca

fotos made by Michel! I was sleeping..

Michel, Judith, Annelous en Niek in México!

My big sister Annelous came to check if I was doing alright here in Mexico! She came with Judith.


Tacos! lekker....... or not

Viva México


Me, Judith, Annelous and Michel

El Arquitecto y su edificio

Michel en Niek in Ciudad de México

Michel, who I met in Marocco came to visit me in Mexico. We started in Mexico city. It ís big, and although it´s infamous for its huge size, with 28,7 million inhabitants in the city and it´s direct surroundings, it has really nice neighbourhoods and a nice historical centre. Oops this might sound like an advertisement, but it seriously is a cool city!









Foreigners are rather popular in Mexico, people asked us if they could take pictures with us!

100% score in our designproject!

Designteam, model and presentation posters

Huasteca de Potosi

Corrida de Toros

Another day in Querétaro

Hola! I have a class about art and arquitecture in México. This means I already know everything about Mayas, aztecas, toltecas and more of that. Also we learnt some difficult words like 'Teotihuacan'.
In the excursion we made to the historical, baroque, centre of Querétaro, we visited some of the richly decorated churches. I don't like too much decoration I have to say, but I am a dome-person.
There are loads of domes in Querétaro.
So after all it wasn't too bad to see the churches.






one of the domes



Jardin del arte

I already explained that the TEC de Monterrey campus Querétaro really looks like a high school, here I've put some evidence to proof this:





But it's not completely like an american movie, because sometimes they have mariachi in the lunchbreak!!!



The landlord of Wendy, Benjamin offered us a fly through the skies of Querétaro! We went in a pick-up truck to the top of the mountain and flew away!


Benjamin









Como un pájaro en el cielo!



On the way back from the sky, I got off the bus in the centre, where there's live music every night!










My mother has a long distance reach on my actions.
Mama, I finally went to the hairdresser, do you like it?

Fiesta de mi cumpleaños

Last week it was my birthday! I organized a party together with Grahm the Gringo, who had his cumpleaños a day before me. Unfortunately we didn't have any electricity at the day of our party (friday the 22th). So we had to party outside with some romantic candles. We expected some people, because we were already talking about our party whole week.
In the end there were a lot of people in my patio, about 100. So that was gezellig!!!
Thanks Wendy for the pics( my camera didn't have electricity as well)

Wendy and Grahm



Roman and Hector: mi compañero de cuarto

Aurelio , Sophie y Pedro



Micky and Hector

The french: Victor and Sophie


The day after: Hector, el depa, and el Jeep.



We live in the third/ top floor

Wat schaft de pot vandaag?

let's ask the mexican what we eat today:

Weekend Zihuatanejo

Last weekend I escaped from Querétaro! The harde hand of the TEC left behind for three days.. We were a strange group of strangers, as you will see in the pictures.
There are two dutch, two french and one gringo (try to guess from the pictures who's what). We rented a red car, drove to the beach and had good time.
Also I tried to gently touch a rock with my head.
Unfortunately the rock was a bit to tough, so that's the reason for the cool head strap.


Remy and Graham and the Mexican Petrol Woman

Here I just found out that all tropical beaches in the world look perfect..


I wás really careful mama.
ok, this is what happened:


Who looks cooler?

(Graham, Wendy, Remy, yo)

Mafkezen

Not only my head, also my board was hurt.




Sofie is a professional horserider, and I'm from the Paardenmarkt, so we went horseriding on the beach, a bit less dangerous than swimming at this beach.

raar?

We neede some good chilling in a good place.


I was really lucky that there were two mothertjes that took care of me. Here Wendy helps me out with my cool strap.
This crocodile is not made of rocks, but is at least just as dangerous























This is the car I drove on the way to the crocodiles!

Back in Querétaro we needed a lot of tacos.

Querétaro and los arcos

On the sign you see México, which means the red camion goes to Méxio City.
I haven't seen México City yet, cause I've come directly to Querétaro a little bit to the north of México. There are some historical arcs which provided water for the city of Santiago de Querétaro. Because they are really cool I am doing my first design project about these arcs. We had an excursion with our design team.
These designers are here(left to right):
Jonathan, Aurelio, Wendy, Pedro y Niek

You can see that we're happy.
Here are some more pictures of the puka arc.

(Please take note of the fact that the weather is really great in these pictures.)
And an old to be renovated hacienda,
también you can see my teacher in the corner:

And ther's a lot of junk/trash/troep building here in Querétaro as well, so here is what you see when you don't take a close up of the arcs:

Where is Santiago de Querétaro?

Mexico

Hello!
I am in Mexico now! So no more pictures of elephants and buddha's. Though there might be a chance for some tropical beaches. I am starting my architecture classes tomorrow morning. I've already tasted some of the wealthy Mexican life: the tortillas, tacos, tortas (cant tell the difference yet) driving around in a jeep, and of course the tequila.
Pictures are coming soon!

Back in the netherlands

Delft blauw in Sri Lanka: next saturday rtl5, 16.00u

the last days in Unawatuna.. the temple

the ship that is always there and doesn't go away

last days in Colombo with chyna and tanya

last beam of sunlight

the holiday 'gangers'

unfortunately, I had a few kilo's too much luggage. I had to wear a lot of clothes and then I could check in. This was already the second attempt to get on the airplane to the netherlands, as the first time I missed it because of a traffic jam in Colombo..
After the work of Ward, Sjoerd and me, Duuf en Robert will continue the work. They are already in Sri Lanka for a month now and you can follow them on duufenrob.blogspot.com

scooter

The last two weeks I made a scootertrip trough the east side of the island. I started to like this strange tropical island even more, especially after I saw live my first wild elephant.

First stone

Last friday we put the first stone with all the ingredients for a healthy living in the ground. This was a nice ceremony with three munks, a lot of people, pictures and of course a billboard that had to be revealed.
We had been working on this billboard for a week, and the day before the ceremony we had to print it out. Also we wanted a picture of a baker on it, and I was the chosen one! Already one hour after we took the picture, I saw my own head coming out of the printer in Galle.

Here you can see a movie about a bakery in Sri Lanka. This movie is made to give people a short impression of bakeries in Sri Lanka, and about the project that is going on in Baddegama.

Fishing

Last week we went fishing with a traditional catamaran.

Tomorrow we will start with the building. We are now staying in Baddegama, far away (45min.) from the real world or internet.

Bakery Project

Here are some pictures of the bakery we are designing. The computer rendered images were made a few weeks ago. The 2-d drawings are more recent. We are now working on the realization of this design. We will hand over our work already next week to two other dutch architecture students. Robert and Dieuwer we really hope you like our plans, you can post your reactions on this blog, but only when the reaction is positive!
Tomorrow we move to the building site in Baddegama, where we will start the work according to the astrological data as I told here: niekkramer.blogspot.com/2007/04/astrology.html

Untill so far we have been working in Unawatuna, on the balcony of our guesthouse surfcity. We can see monkeys and the sea from that spot. If you want to know more about the project and the idea behind it you can visit www.dutchconnect.org

Introduction of Ward

Ward is also a really nice guy. He only has one problem, but I managed to hide it from the viewers.

Jungle-, golf-, market-, bus- and beachboy

Introduction of Sjoerd

I work together with Ward and Sjoerd (Stuart). I forgot to give them a proper introduction on my blog! I will start with Sjoerd. He is a nice guy, sometimes. The pictures will tell the rest, although he is not from Germany but from the Netherlands.

Important, hippie, backpacker, player, bbq, ophir, fisherman, cricketsupporter

wife and children part of Sjoerd:

Astrology?

Never heard of that? Me neither, haha! That’s crazy! is my first opinion. Maybe I shouldn’t write it out too loud, because some Sri Lankan might be reading this strange story. In Sri Lanka astrology(with stars etc) is considered to be a really important part of life. A lot of different types of astrology exist, and one of them is WASTU. That’s the astrology about building. Ward Sjoerd and I all thought this to be something funny, but still we thought it would be nice to consult a good astrologist about our building plan.
Basically, the plan sucked badly.
The biggest mistake to be made in a building is to put a column in the exact middle of the plan, and we did that. We are now looking how much we believe in this wastu, and if we can adjust our plans to make a nice wastu-building for the same price. At least we will start levelling the ground on the correct astrology wastu starry date: next Monday the 23rd of April at 6.49am.
We will start digging for the foundation next Friday the 27th of April at 6.36 am,
And we will put the first stone the 27th of April at 7.38 am!
I will now tell a nice story to convince everybody that astrology makes sense. A few years ago, a couple lived really happily in their new house. They had really good jobs, the man
was a docter and his wife a teacher. Their children got a very good education. BUT, after they moved into their new house, the parents lost their jobs and the children couldn't find a partner nor a job.

What to do?

The wastu master we talked to, came to the rescue. He noticed that a construction beam rested above the main entrance door. After the people followed his advice, and put the door somewhere else, they got their jobs back and found really nice partners to marry with.

grandson of the wastu master the wastu master
(from left to right) Sjoerd, Nimal, Wastu Master, Ward

explanation of some basic guidelines

Golf in Kandy
Last week we had another business meeting in Kandy. We were again staying with the assisting architect Mahanama, called Hanamahama by Ward. He lives in a very nice house, on a hill overlooking the mountains, with a beautiful sunset. We celebrated the Singhalese new year at this house, and we built a nice swimming pool for the occasion.
We heard that the best golf course of Asia could be found in Kandy. So in the weekend Ward and I took the morning bus of 6 o’clock. For me it was the first time to play golf on a real golf course. And I did quite good as you can see on the pictures! We got our own caddy, and mine taught me how to play golf.
It is a bit strange to play a game that is played by the most high society, rich, posh and snobbish people in the Netherlands. And especially to play it here in Sri Lanka that is considered to be a development country and subject to a civil war. Well, whatever about these things because it was probably the most fantastic view you can ever get while playing sports. And I liked the game!

what to do?

In Sri Lanka it is easy to find things to do, like swimming, surfing, partying, sun bathing, etc. Still a lot of people here say 'what to do?'. Maybe they don't know what to do, because they don't have a job. Unemployment is a problem in Sri Lanka. The bakery school we are designing will offer jobs to local people, and create opportunities for them to start their own business.
So that's the reason!
This means we really have to work here, because we can help the local people with that. We work in our guesthouse, where we have internet, and others (voluntarily) working in Sri Lanka. To see their pictures and websites, you can click on Pippi Lanka, Johan or Ulli.
For one week we worked in Kandy, because the assisting Sri Lankan architect Mahanama lives there. We had a very productive time over there, and learned about the way Sri Lankans build. Concrete/masonry/simple foundation/costs rizing every day. In the weekend we went to Sigiriya, a rock where a king used to have his castle, with one hundred naked women. And pictures of naked ladies on the rock.
We left Kandy by train because we had a very important meeting in Colombo with a minister of the Sri Lankan parliament, Gamage. To show him that we like Sri Lanka, we decided to go in the national dress. Eventually the chairman of the minister signed the agreement, so that we get the building site for free! After that we went back to Unawatuna, still dressed up as crazy people. We thought everybody would laugh at us in our Saaron and Batik, but when we walked on the streets, nobody even mentioned us! We will take the clothes to the netherlands to check the reaction there..
What to do?

the big and dangerous Yala national park

With a three-wheeler (3wd!) Ward, Wasantha 'Crocodile' Korale and I went to this park inhabiting the most dangerous animals of Sri Lanka: elephants, crocodiles, leopards, wild pigs and next to that some funny looking birds! We went looking for crocodiles in the night with a big torch, but we had to return to eat curry for dinner, before we could see one, or one could eat us. The wild pigs and the stekel-pig really like rice and curry so they came to visit us in the night. The local people there really like rice and curry too, so we also got it for breakfast and lunch.

After all the visit in Yala wildpark was a really dangerous experience, comparable to the dangerous experience we had with a crazy guy, who thought he could easily scare away demons by throwing around with fire and dressing up like a woman.

surfing in and from Sri Lanka

These fotographs are taken in Sri Lanka, the first week I arrived there with Ward. Two weeks later Sjoerd joined the design (and surf) team. Right now we're already in Sri Lanka for a month, and a lot of crazy things already happened. I'll try to post as soon as something special happens, or else when I made a nice picture or movie.

I included a nice Sri Lankan MTV- movie, all the locals in our guesthouse are listening to this all day long, so i'm already starting to like it!

Now I go and come back! Gihin ennahm!