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Welcome to our homepage

Welcome to our personal website, which offers a lot of information like travel reports, tips and photos, in particular from Kerkrade and our holidays in the Balkans. If you do not like pages containing large paragraphs with text, just click our sitemap containing links to reports and photo albums of our topics.

Carnival in Kerkrade

Kirchroa is the name for Kerkrade in the local dialect and in particular during carnival. Of course we offer a separate page about vasteloavend, as the party is called by the citizens of Limburg in their dialects. Since carnival in 2008 we are members of carnival society Jemuutlieg Beklopd. There will be photos and a report of the annual opening of the fifth season on eleven eleven, but in particular there will be impressions of the children's parade,the main carnival parade and the traditional "wandering of the clowns", which today is called the clowns contest Kirchroa. In Kerkrade there are more carnival hits from Germany played, compared to the rest of the province of Limburg: Joanna, das rote Pferd, hol das Lasso raus, are only a few schlagers. Schlag is the German word for hit. Sometimes the market square and the pubs of Kerkrade look and sound like an open air après ski party, where there is only a lack of snow. Frequently on Tuesday of carnival Kerkrade is visited by a camera team of the West German Broadcasting Company Wdr (Westdeutscher Rundfunk) from Cologne. The Germans pay a visit to Kerkrade to celebrate carnival on Tuesday and the Dutch travel to Cologne to celebrate annual opening of the carnival season on 11 November.

Walking tour Night of Gulpen

Another page that contains many photos from the Limburgish hills region is the one about the annual walking tour Night of Gulpen, that the webmaster started on June 16th 2007 together with Anita. Since our victory we decided to make more longer distance walks on weekend days and we even got a brilliant idea to write them down and publish them on a walks page on our personal website. Most walks start at the Continium Discovery Centre next to Kerkrade central railway station, where the steam train of the South Limburgish Steam Train Company is calling. Of course most Dutch people do know that Kerkrade is a town in the very South of the Netherlands in the province of Limburg sandwiched by Belgium and Germany. Therefore some of our walks will lead through a beautiful nature area in Germany, for example the Worm valley along the river that forms the border between the Netherlands and Germany. All walks are of course shorter compared to the 70 kilometres of the Night of Gulpen, because it should stay amusing and relaxed.

World music contest Wmc - Kerkrade, Netherlands

In Kerkrade every 4 years the event where all is about wind music takes place: the World Music Contest, abbreviated Wmc. Since the latest edition of the event in 2009 we offer a Wmc page containing video's and photos's in particular of the marching and show contests in Parkstad Limburg Stadium PSL and the Wamsb street parade through the streets in the heart of the town.

Holiday in the Balkans

Another subject that we like to give information, tell and write about is our annual holiday in Dalmatia, our favourite destination in Croatia, though since spring of 2009 we would prefer to speak about our favourite destination in the Balkans, because in 2008 we were very surprised by the beauty of Bosnia and Herzegovina and so Anita and the webmaster had 3 fantastic days in Mostar including 3 overnight stays in an apartment close to the old bridge Stari Most. That was for sure not the last visit to the city of the newly reconstructed bridge on Neretva river. Some time ago the three of us wanted to know which trip or tourist attraction was best liked. We chose 10 photos from all 3 holidays and everybody had to assign 10 points to the best liked one and still 1 point to photo number 10. Since that moment we had our personal Balkan top 10.

City trips and day trips, the cheaper the better

On our Holidays page we give information and tips on how to save hundreds of Euro on your holiday or city trip booking, simply by comparing online offers from travel companies and try departing a day earlier or later or from a different airport. Also we show how to get to the airport of departure the cheapest way, which takes to the next interesting subject. If you manage to book a cheap rail ticket to the airport, why not use the same ticket for your self arranged city trip to Berlin? By using screen prints we show you where the offers are to be found and how you can save a lot of money, which you could invest in an exclusive and romantic dinner or day trip, for which we have designed a page day trips. The geographical location of Limburg makes it easy for us to plan a day trip to Antwerp, our favourite city in Belgium (visit the city trips page) lake Rursee in the beautiful German region Eifel and to the annual opening of the carnival season in Cologne on 11 November (carnival page). Lots of people still do not realize that this can be cheaper compared to going by car, if you buy the right travel ticket. Some reports on our pages about an event or a city trip will remind you of that.

Annual cultural and culinary events

On our annual events page are some interesting, culinary and traditional feasts and festivals not only in the Netherlands but also in Belgium or Germany, like mussel day in Yerseke Yerseke, mussel festival in Philippine with our friends in Zealandic Flanders, national costume parade in Kröv on the Moselle in Germany and the culinary festival taste of Antwerp, which happens to be held along with the Bollekes feast, named after the round beer glass in which you are supposed to drink the famous Belgian beer De Koninck.

Camping

Whenever we are not travelling by train or aircraft or simply walk across the beautiful hills in our province, you might probably find us in our backyard. Not connected to our apartment in Kerkrade, is located on camping site Du Vieux Moulin in Sippenaeken in Belgium, where we parked our caravan for the last time. Recovering, sunbathing, playing chess, swimming, inviting friends to a barbecue party. The caravan was standing on  Limburgia square on Camp site Oan'e Swemmer in Westergeest - Friesland. We arrived there more often on Thursday night and did not return before Monday. Now that Anita is scheduled to work on Saturdays sometimes, it is more practically to have the caravan around here.

 

© Jos van der Burgt