Good luck and as they say in Holland “Lef!”

Kevin Blanking
Editor
The Blank Channel

Are you a photographer? Do you get hassled by the police and the council? Are you accused of being a paedophile if you point your lense in the general direction an area where children might be playing? Been detained under the section 44 of the Prevention of Terrorism Act (2000)? Well, give yourself a break? Hop on a ferry or plane and spend a few days in Holland.

That’s what I did. If you want to take someone’s picture in Holland, you just ask. I had about two polite ‘no’s’ in the space of a week, but plenty of “yes’s” and “of course’s”. One lady even let me take a nice photo of her dog swimming with a stick in it’s mouth. I had a few tut tuts when taking pictures out of the window on the tram heading towards the south side of Rotterdam but that was about it. I tend not to take photos with people in when I’m in Britain, so it was strangely liberating to practice taking photos of other people.

Of course I let other people take photos of me too, which is also fun.
I came across other photographers too, and swapped notes with them. To cap it all, I got invited to watch the Scottish Korfball team play Turkey in the European Championship where I took plenty of photos and video parted of the game. In a nutshell, a good photographic experience, and enough photos for two books. Now all I need is a publisher.

Here below are extacts form Kevin Blanking’s
new e-book:’The Kralingse Bos: Rotterdam’s best kept secret’, available from www.article48.com/books

“7 Plasmolens: the dark satanic mills

There are two octagonal windmills at the Kralingse Bos which are known as Plasmolens. There is De Ster (The Star) and De Lelie (the Lilly). I shall refer to them from now on.as the Ster and the Lelie to avoid any further confusion.

The Lelie was built in 1740 in Kralingen. In 1840 it was transported to the eastern shore of Lake Kralingen. The Ster was originally called the Stier (bull) but its name was changed after the restoration following it burning to the ground in 1968.

The Ster is sometimes adorned with purple sails. Both these mills were used to make spices and snuff. There was another windmill known as De Hoop (pile) but that burnt down in 1932.”

’10 The woods

The woods are full of hidden danger. They are a notorious for being a pick–up place for gay men and sometimes straight couples looking for a sex partner.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IO0lp87k8k&feature=related]
You may even find young women posing about in provocative lingerie.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoVvwKX5NAU&feature=related]
On the other hand there are a hundred hectares of woodland to choose from, so hopefully you won’t be molested.’

’14 The dark side of the Bos

There is a dark side to the woods. There is the star in the east, the east facing beach, strange goings on in the woods, and lots of strange stones. First there was the giant phallus-shaped stone around which an adventure playground had been built. Then there is this, the Steen der Welsprekenheid. The good side of the Bos is very good, but the dark side of the Bos is very dark indeed. ‘

To the North-East of Rotterdam theres lies a wood by a lake. It is a popular recreational area open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. It has got cafes, restaurants, sailing clubs, cyclepaths, footpaths, roads, windmills, adventure playgrounds, bridges, piers and a beach with a nudist section. This place which has something for everyone is known in Holland as the Kralingse Bos (the Kralingen Woods) and the lake is known as the Kralingse Plas
(Lake Kralingen). It is easily accessible by public transport (Tram 7, metro Gerdesiaweg or Voorschoterlaan) by bike, car, boat or by horse.
You would think that the city council and the Tourist Office (VVV) on Coolsingel would have some promotional literature about the place.
Well, you would be wrong.

To help remedy this situation I am wriitng a book about the Kralingen Woods. I am up to page 25 and it should be out by the end of the November 2010. It will be avaialble from my website (article48.com) just click on the books section on the menu at the top. In the meantime I would like anyone who is reading this who lives in Rotterdam to contact the VVV and ask for information about the Kralingse Bos (pronounced Krah-ling-sir Boss). When I went in there they told me that there was a booklet about this area but they didn’t have any in stock. Also I want as many people as possible to make use of this area. That way the lake will never be filled in and built on. Use it or loose it Rotterdammers. It’s your choice.

What I have found is that you can use the EU to your advantage. I took part in the Erasmus exchange programme which allowed me to spend a relatively easy year in Rotterdam as a student. I had to take some classes in Dutch as I didn’t want to have it too easy. Last week I had the opportunity to revisit some of my old haunts like the Kralingse Bos with its windmills and its lakes (Tram 7 from Rotterdam CS or take the metro to Voorschoterlaan and walk north), its joggers, its waterside cafes ande lost tourists like myself, Cafe Jospehine up by Oostplein with its comfortable interior and shelves full of books, not to mention the Lijnbaan (Ropewalk). At present I’m thinking I might take a leaf out of the UKIP MEP’s book and start living the euro-dream. Of course I won’t have their 64000 a year plus 250000 expenses but I don’t need that much money.
Its jsut as well, as I’m sure writing guide books is a little more precarious.

NB The guide book will be available in e-book format by the end of the year, provisional title:
“The Woods at Kralingen: Rotterdam’s best kept secret”

I also had fund torturing people asking them about the euro. I guy I met was off for an hour about how bad the euro is for Europe and for Holland. I wan’t the guilder back too, but I’m not going to vote for Wilders, even if I did live over there. Sigh!

On 28th October 2010, an unexploed bomb of some 250lbs was discovered on the Kruisplein near Rotterdam Central Station where some major building work had been taking place. It was taken away in a van around midnight and made safe. That’s according to the Volkskrant. Earlier reports in the Volkskrant had indicated that the bomb was of English/British origin.

I arrived on the scene about 20:30 as I had agreed to accompany a friend back to Rotterdam Centraal after a convivial drink at one of my old student haunts.The police had already cordoned off part of Weena and made it clear that we had to go around the long way to Central Station. It was on my way back via Hofplein around 9pm that I took these pictures and started talking to some of the locals, namely Sara, Ilma and a lady who did not want to be identified. I was informed that there were no trams running along Weena and certain other routes and no trains running in or out of Rotterdam Centraal. A three hundred metre exclusion zone had been placed around the site of the WWII bomb as a precaution. Apaprently unexploded WWII bombs are not an unusual occurence on building sites in Holland and every site has to be checked thoroughly at taxpayer’s expense (BBC website, 2006)

It was a strange experience for me. A minor inconvenience for those living or staying in Rotterdam but obviously a major headache for anyone who wanted to leave Rotterdam after 20:30 hours that evening or whose tram ride home went along Weena.I had not intended to be in Rotterdam at all as I had been planning to volunteer on a smallholding in the Hoge Veluwe region but that did not work out. I had decided to spend a week working on a photo-based guide book about the Woods at Kralingen but did not expect to be mistaken for the press by turning up at excactly the right time camera in hand.

I am now back in the UK and hopefully a quiet smallholding in the Scottish Highlands. But you never know…

Will we ever learn the truth about what happened on September 11th 2001? I doubt it. I don’t think there will ever be a proper enquiry into 9/11, just as we Brits will never get a referendum on EU membership. The elite don’t want either of those things to happen. 9/11 lead to very costly and pointless wars which result in millions dead. It also had an economic impact, positive for the industrial-military complex but negative for other sectors of the world’s economy.

I remember one guy at work saying on September 11th: “how do you know Bin Laden isn’t having tea with George Bush in the White House right now?” Actually Bush was up country at the time but now I can see his point. For me I wouldn’t be surprised if 9/11 didn’t turn out to be a False Flag, just like the Reichstag Fire in Germany.
I wouldn’t rule out MOSSAD involvement either. If you still think it was Arab terrorists who did it all by themselves I have a few questions for you:
How come 7 of the alleged hijackers were seen alive and well the next day?
How come 5 of the alleged hijackers lived on US Air Force bases?
How did Tower 7 which was not hit by any plane collapse at the speed of gravity withn its own footprint?
How can burning jet fuel melt steel?
Would the US and British governments have been able to gain popular support of the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq if this terrible event had not happened?

Clegg strikes me as being part of an emerging Euro-elite.He speaks Dutch like a native, and he speaks fluent French, Spanish and German as well. His next obvious move might be back to Brussels. As a former MEP and member of the Vice-President’s Cabinet, you could see him re-emerging either as an MEP like his Belgisn colleague Guy Verhofstadt, or a Euro-Commissioner, or even President of the European Council. Perhaps then he could spend more time with his Dutch relatives.