TheLandTeam: China

with correct att.

2008-10-02T11:43:00.000+03:00

Sorry

--
c! Ï i´ !< __________________________________
Dirk Steenmans
CRA, Biologist &
Water and Coastal Management
http://www.ualg.pt/EUMScWCM/
Universidad de Cadiz, Spain
+41794437690

2008-10-02T11:37:00.000+03:00

Hello EVERYONE,

The last months I listen a lot Rose tatoo is good music!

I guess it means don't think to much, go out there.

Enjoy the lecture (funny soft science)!

--
c! Ï i´ !< __________________________________
Dirk Steenmans
CRA, Biologist &
Water and Coastal Management
http://www.ualg.pt/EUMScWCM/
Universidad de Cadiz, Spain
+41794437690

The ending of a year which is not really the ending of the year - over here!

2006-12-24T17:04:00.000+02:00

Hey people,

We hope that you all may organize a great party, may it be christmas, newyear, winter dumpling festival (22 december - china), spring festival (date depending on lunar month), or another occasion like a barbecue and family dinners. That you are surrounded by people you love and enjoy the higher levels that can be reached together, and that you feel the warmth of it!

We just came back from the christmas party (although christmas is not the tradition here) at the institute.. it didnt last too long - from 18.30 to 21.00 - but people were enjoying it so hard, and many small things were made special. The bravest went to sing a song, and others had romantic moments participating in some funny games like a guy and girl trying to explode the balloon attached to the others waist first without using their hands. Its beautiful and modest, no decadence, but still very special to the people. Haha and of course Dirk performed his guitar act what did you think!

Oh and as a present we want to spoil you with more bride pictures!
Enjoy people!
Koen and Dirk

Quite sedentary life.

2006-12-07T16:00:00.000+02:00

whhuuuuuhaaa

Yes were still eating rice.
Its getting really cold in Qingdao but we fixed the electricity in the house and so the heating works from time to time.
When it rains there is no need to put the shower on so full 'in nature' feeling.
There are a lot of people in Qingdao that stroll aroud in full 'yes I do' outfits in the Wedding-Picture Park (I tell you its really called like that) and there about during the weekends which to us seemed quite strange. Well not anymore, now that we got some valuable info, we even understand it! Next year in the Chinese calendar is the year of the pig and not just a pig (pig is symbol of good luck aroud here) the GOLDEN pig, yeah. So its get married fast and have 1 child in the luckiest year of them all to have a lucky kid. So basically most of the girls are now married in Qingdao, fodes!!

At UNI its crazy, like the rest but the cafetaria, man, thats something else. So we got a Golden Dragon card and Moon Cloud (Sciencia, who helped us so much) got us up to date on campus life. There is like 2 bilion people who come to eat during the 1 hour lunch time, the place is really full. Of course being on the Cadiz and Portugal eating rhythm, we arrived first got cold food and when we wanted to start eating, we were alone again in the cantina. Really something to see, this stream of people, all thinking, all hungry, some with a cat waiting at home, some sad, some happy, some that know anotherone some allone, so many people with 1 mission.
We made some friends at uni too: Clever, Beautifull Red Bird, Moon Cloud, Bright...
Koen has changed his name to Couragous Advice and myself to Ocean Wrinkle to blend in.

We've got a mission too finally, we got a project that we can finish and finish the master with. We will have to put price tags on the environment Koen on fishes and Dirk on services, ha, and who sayed nothing cant be bought. Its crazy that every thing, through the eyes of economy, has a price, you pay you get it.
This in contrast to when we went to this mountain called Laoshan, well infact we went to a Taoist monastery at the foot of it. And like in the streets where we life there are a lot of trees but they are strange. Its like as if they are waching you, they have characters and look like more alive than trees in Europe i guess. There were some MAGNIFICENT trees there even i took 2 flowers from one 880 year old tree that blooms in the winter, its called Red Snow. That's just amazing because all other trees i think bloom in the summer. And there were some old giants one even was older than Jezus. A tree that was planted 2200 years ago, it was so intense to hugg that tree. 2200 years, man that a long time (and such a short time in the same time). I wonder what is the value of that tree its by all just a tree.. BUT it has outlived the vikings the romans, Hitler, The Mongols, The Japanese invaders, the great Chinese emperors, Bill Clinton and will definatly outlive Pinochet Michael Jackson and myself, so??? I really liked that tree, it was so full of something.

The other night I was attacked by a giant 2 meter 120 kg chineze kung foo master who asked me if i wanted to die, I replied no but before i could finish my glasses were gone and the 6 h walk back home was interesting definatly since the house was 30 minutes from the place. Well I had drunk a beer or 2. And talking about beer we found the cheapest one. The tradition here is that the people buy the beer from the tap in 4L plastic bags, its so cool. You can even take your freshly bought item to a food stuff place (even chique restaurants).

I'm getting to the point where the nomad is waking up again and I want to leave but in fact everything is a travel, if you go tomorrow to the park or you cross the street to see a friend or you go to take a piss, thats also a travel, its all in the head. because around you it doesnt change that much. All trees all people all cars and all buildings. There is greater difference between the people who live in your community and those of a neigbouring one, then (when seen through your eyes) between all the other communities in the world, i guess. It's funny this ball racing round a star racing round a black hole full of so many good things and full of money and guns.

--

2006-11-14T12:31:00.000+02:00

PEOPLE ATTENTION

WE UPDATED ALL POSTS SINCE SIBERIA WITH PICTURES

SO SCROLL DOWN AND BACK TO OCTOBER

ENJOY OUR BARBARIAN LOOKS!!!

d&k

The bats are tying up their electric windows - also

2006-11-13T14:33:00.000+02:00

Hello dear friends!

After a long silence, we send out another sign of life! This time, probably more boring. Since two weeks or so - we dont even remember - we r in Qingdao, but still blocked in the process of arriving. We moved from our - to our norms - decadent two star hotel where we cooked alot of noodles in the old part of the city, to the house of fayfay, a chinese emancipated artist girl hospitality club girl. She took us straight to the thai boxing class. We decided to quit it after the first lesson though, as this sports is meant to kill and we are way to strong and too peaceful so we shouldnt practice these kind of movements. The new part of city looks a bit like new york, and herewe finally found the legendary bars! Being mostly boring expat bars and discos, we only had to go two times to get enough of them - the second time dirk got some problems with a kungfu killer, and his newly learned thai box skills were not yet impressive enough. Also a friend of fayfay tequi helped us really alot to find our appartment - right on the beach - OF COURSE - and in front of the sailing club. Its only 700 euro for 3 months and has 2 rooms, all the stuff and a barbecue garden. But we can only enter on wednesday.

So wen are spending our days waiting (a skill we are consciently training and enjoying). Wednesday we will also know if we really have a project in China or not, we hope.

Oh yes and three days ago our hc host took us to a family spa centre slash brothel! For 4 euro u can stay 24 hours and enjoy showers, sauna, baths, obligatory pyjama !!! , great free food 4 times a day, internet, karaoke and there is also a cinema with violent chinese movies with luxury electric sleep seats where u can spend the night between snoring businessman who are getting massages from very young girls in cheerleader uniform (the last part is paying and we didnt try). And then we heard there were also "special" rooms. It all has a really weird baby pampering feeling, There r no windows to the outer world and one hypnotical chinese song is constantly playing while you stand in line together with whole chinese families in pyjama for the food and satisfaction, and these short skirted girls running around from one businessman to another. Is this part of a certain brainwashing program??? But ok for 4 euro u get really clean and ur stomach full...

We got adidasses to run around the big bays, dirk got a new guitar so now just a barbecue and a bucket for the sangria and a sailing boat and we are set! The waves for surfing are a bit too small, but we started excercising our surfing skills by standing without holding fast in the city bus...

very soon pictures we promise!

Becoming black in China and arriving at a Pacific beach

2006-11-05T04:41:00.000+02:00

Hi all!!!

First we want to thank you all for following and motivating us on our trip so intensively, it really makes our little hearts melt HAHAHA

no really its always stimulating to read your comments. Just a pity our Chinese friends cannot read the website...

Our stomaks fully charged with the last Swedish porridge, we left Beijing and started the struggle to get out of the huge city maze. Of course, we got lost and found ourselves driving through the favelas of Beijing, you should have seen the heads of people! But they helped us out, and after the fixing of first breakdowns which are usual for a chinese bike (koen chain broken and dirk pedals broken) we got on the road 104. But the night was falling, and being still in half city we went toask in a farm if we could put up our tent safely there. As people are really friendly here it was of course no problem. After listening some Fito music and 1 hour of sleep, bright light and people around the tent. POLICE

So we wake up the guy ask us a lot of stuff we dont understand so we show the pasports try to explain that we are on private property (a thing that later was explained as not existing in China) and that we explained with our little dictionaries to the *landlords* that we just need to sleep after driving 90 km on small breakingdown pimp mobiles. A guard stayed with us and than a guy arrived who spoke english.

We had to go...

So pach the tent and the stuff, 2 guys took tha bikes to the police station and we were driven there. Finaly, after 2 hours interrogation most profoundly about some dancing styles here, I cannot write the name, the guy drove us to small hotel and we slept there. A thing we notice in general here is that people are of good will even if they say no.

The next day we continued the journey from repair shop to repair shop haha. The road during this part was just hell. Truck racing is the national sport here followen closely by dumping waste. Again, I'm sure that if the government would provide a waste collection service the people would do it but allas this does not exist outside of the huge cities. Due to the many cars, like many many, and the sufficating exhoust fumes we arrived brokendown and 80 years old at a place where after some dictionarying a super guy helped us. Our faces were black!

The family that helped us was just great, food warm sleeping and social company, fantastic.

The next day some more sufficatig and repair shops and so finaly we desided that we maybe should take the train as we were making abour 60 km daily and had 650 more to go...

We pulled over in a small town to go and try to sell the hotrods, my chain broke another 2 times before reaching the station and arriving at the station my tire sayed pffffff.

At the station we were the atraction of the year i think. 50 peoples arrived in 5 seconds to stare. at the next repair shop the guy offered us 65% of what we payed so we made the deal and took train, what a defeat...

After a night without sleep we arrived at qingdao and my god what an emotion, 1 month and 1 day on the road and than all of a sudden your there, you have arrived, you are sedentary. We arrived at 5:30 and saw the sun come up over the Pacific a great moment.

So after taking some sleep we went to see what is the night life here

THERE IS NONE, we asked people for bars or cafes anything with people. One guy working in a hotel with good english sayed *here in Qingdao there are no bars, but we have a bar street*. Our hearts gathered courage and we set off. This legendary street seems unfindable and the few, 5, people we met in the street they did not know. So now we have some stress.

hahaha

No really all is fine and we bought clean pants.

Take care friends

Last transect : Beijing - Pacific Ocean (Qingdao) on a TRICYCLE

2006-11-01T04:04:00.000+02:00

Hello all!

our stomachs are stuffed with the last bit of porridge we had left from our reserves we bought in Sweden, and we are ready for our last but super exciting part of our trip!

the last days in beijing were great, we wandered between the stage (huge avenues with huge buildings and huge lights) and the back stage (the hutongs are really fantastic old little streets where life is still real and with little street restaurants we can only dream of in europe), by foot and by bike that we rented. We ate the beijing duck in the restaurant of Ting Hong One, the fantastic woman we had met in the train. We also had the privilege to enter the once Forbidden city, and watch its splendour ourselves amongst hordes of other barbarians of chinese culture like ourselves. The Lama temple and the temple of heaven were magic.

We think that people here put extreme importance to the health of the body and mind, they eat fantastic healthy food and sing and do excercises in the parcs. European people could learn alot from them, especially because peopel work amazingly long hours here but never complain or are never stressed.

So when we biked among the thousands of other bikes, we fell in love with the ubiquitous tricycle peopel use here. It seemed to us the perfect travel bike (we need to put a picture it has three wheels and a big box in the bac where u can store huge amounts of stuffs, some people or build a tent on). Only with the help of our new friends Moon Fang and Matchja we were able to find the perfect ones we needed, and yesterday evening on our first test ride in the city we were crazy with our new machines! Even the cops said we had to slow down!

OK now we will try to leave this huge maze and find the smaller roads. To Qingdao!!

koen and Dirk

the echo of revolutions... Peking

2006-10-28T10:43:00.000+03:00

Oh my god,

The border was somethimg ridiculous. The people didn't know what Belgium is and they were very suspicious because we had books with us. The border woman she say to me that my passport is false because the picture inside is not the same as I am now, hahaha.

We were really lucky again that the last guy that picked us up took us to Zabaikalsk and because he had been working for the customs he knew how to manipulate the system just in the good way. we had no queus no waiting and we took a kind of border bus that is really efficient. In Zabaikalsk people can cross only with a car not by walking.

So the border was a realy stress thing all very fast and very police interrogations and telephones. In Russia all the girls wear shoes that make tak tak tak sounds very loud and here it are the mobiles every where.

Again there was an amazing sunset near the 3 country point where undescribable vast steppe is everyting there.

Its full of chinese peoples here. We made it to Peking by train finally. On the train we used our english chinese translation book to communicate small things to the people there. One nice woman is a cook and tonight we go to here place to feast our stomaks full.

People are really nice here and the food is amazing, really. Hot here means magmatic and a portion means a meal for two.

Today is an acclimation day the change between Russia/Buriatia and China is huge like the atomium.

The most positive thing is that it is HOT here like 25 celcius, a crude contrast from the eastern Mongolia region where temperatures plumeted to a no-night-sleep -12 ( jes minus 12 ).

The top of my noze is growing new meat after it froze of when walking on the endless south siberian roads and some water-snot kept on dripping down, haha. Emagine to be a salamander...

We are fine here its really zen en feng chui and the buddism stuff is becoming increasingly interesting.

Chinese are funny people where ever we go they want pictures with us we are huge bearded beasts and im the only blond guy haha.

at Chinese border! cold and hungry but finally!

2006-10-25T10:08:00.000+03:00

OK peoples we made it. This is just a very short update on our adventures of last days.

The Baikal

After we left Irkutsk and Marina and Irina 3 and 4 (4 is an amazing singer) in a Elektrikschka super slow train we met Dervish a nice russian hitchhiker so we got off at his village where he hosted us in a Buddist dacha. The next day we were invited to the local youth wrestling championship (to watch of course). We went on after eating a sausage and camped at the amazing baikal lake with probabby almost surfable waves. After our first freezing night we went to swim out of fertility reasons for 30 seconds the next morning and started hitching fresh and powerful.

Land of the falling coins:

Some rides, one of which was very interesting as our driver told us about Buryat culture, brought us past Ulan Ude the capital of Buryatia a magic mix of Mongolia Russia and Buryat culture. This is also where the landscape started to change between Taiga and Steppe like in Mongolia, and where for shamanistic reasons people drop tinkeling coins on the road when driving. By night a open truck dropped us off where we camped. Here we froze even more, in the morning the tent was white and cracked. A quick cup of tea lasted us some hours but we only made a 100 km during that day, with small rides. But we ate well as one of our drivers invited us in Petrovsk village for raw fish and potatoes and tea. Another night in snowing - 11 degrees (by morning) taiga forest followed.

We were saved fronm despair by sasha and mikhail in their super land cruiser that blasted us to Cita on a bump ride, but with warm siberian food and a new hat thanks! The same day we met a friendly pilot who brought us right besides his base in the south of Cita. This is were we derosted this morning. Now we are in Zabaikalsk, and the Mantchurian mounts are waiting.

Irkuts and Irina nr 3 and 4

2006-10-19T04:59:00.000+03:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ROELAND now its time to grow up

we are at the University of Irkutsk, surrounded by some Russian beauties. Yesterday we met up with Marina, the girl who visited us in Belgium all the way hitchhiking from Irkutsk a month ago. She brought us to our two new hosts, Irina and Irina! OK here in Irkutsk its already really freezing cold, we will go to Baikal on friday and honestly the idea of swimming in this cold is a bit scary. There are mainly two kinds of faces here, European russians, and Buryat which are already really asian. In fact we still cannot believe that we are already in Asia, the train was really fast.. but signs are trying to tell us it is true we where pushing this morning to get on old korean buses (in which we didnt succeed). OK the pics r for tomorrow I hope because I forgot the memory stick in the Irinas house. This afternoon we are invited to a siberian Yoga session HAHA

Koen

Aproaching Lake Bailkal

2006-10-18T10:59:00.000+03:00

We made it and men and women, it was difficult. Inside the train the Provodnitsa (the woman taking care of the wagon) was a master burner, she put the train at 35 degrees. It was so hot that we could not sleep for 2 of the 4 non stop days. The first day we slept out of pure fatigue and the second the vodka helped us to relax a bit inside that oven. We were in the best wagon with hugely nice people most of them 65+. They gave us small cakes and a lot of patience for letting us use the dictionary as sole means of communication they did understand quite a bit of what we wanted to say. Our Russian is improving strongly! Allas after the first night there was no more water on the train no drinkable anyway so we were forsed to drink boiling water to stay hydrated. Whenever the train made small breaks like 20 minutes we went out fast ate some of that local food and local beerThe gradient of eastward travel was obvious as the peoples faces changed constantly. Russia is a huge empire with fantastic, really cool and good people. We never saw people respect each other and share things like that. Its also amazing how they have the courage to sit 7 days on a train to visit somebody in Moscow, and then ride 7 days back. Also, with the landscape gliding by in one direction, we really only understood now what the german landscape professor in Estonia wanted to say with linear landscape.

Koen is trying to fix some pictures for the web site.

Now we are in Irkutsk near to the Baikal lake. In 2 days when our forces will be back at operational level well set of for a Baikal swim and to reach the Chinese border in 6-7 days.In the street here we just met Antony Krotoff, world famous hitchhiker and founder of the Academy of free Travels.

Moscow waiting for the train

2006-10-12T18:49:00.000+03:00

Hello all!

we are now in cold and wet Moscow, safe and sound in the hands of our second (local) Irina. After our goodbye party with our Sint Petersburg Irina we sweated our way through the huge stream of subway people towards Moscow road. There we breathed 5 km of ethanol and gasoline gases from the stinking Kamaz trucks and stood there in the russian industrial outskirt for some hours. Still not over our hang over and with the night falling we decided to choose for safety and walked all the way back and practiced our well trained waiting skills in the train station where we took the sleeper train to Moscow. We left the city in a beautiful old fashioned cabin that we shared with George a super friendly russian graphic designer pal. He gave us some good tips about avoiding corrupt Moscow police and when we arrived in Moscow he almost brought us to the adress of Moscow Irina thanks George!!

OK we gave up the hitchhiking for a while and will go on faster mode so we got our ticket for the saturday transsiberian to Irkutsk, where well try htichhiking in Siberia and swim in the Baikal lake. Four days of train ( 6000 km, 5 time zones and it costed only 70 euro) MAN we cannot wait! We chose to accelerate the process a bit because in the end we need to get to China in a reasonable time and because meanwhile here the weather already looks like a Belgian winter.

Moscow is really different from SPB, lower boots, longer and less miniskirts, but very helpful people! Its also possible to see much more different kind of people, since its the major hub of this vast empire and people come from all corners of Russia to try their luck in the city. (This also means everywhere construction of ugly blocks of course)

till snart!
Koen

Moskow, red squares

2006-10-12T18:40:00.000+03:00

hehe

Man is becommimng a great travel. we go fast but slow in the same time. Yesterday infact we were hich hiking for 7 h on the Moskvo chausee and nothign than we went back to center st perersbourg and took night train but we had to wait another 6 hours. Its a lot of waiting and thinking. Basically i start to see some similarities every where. Children laugh and are easily amazed (lucky guys), many people look the same but are not, and a lot of us are to buzzy and dont have time to take time.
The girl that she host us now, Irena 2, is cool, emagine that we arrive in Moskow went straight to here house waited some time more and that inside she explain that flamenco dancing is here passion. We were drinking some beer listening Martires del Compas in russia!!!
Also the ocean is realy far now, we have to cross this huge continent ant than to meet the Pasific.
Im looking forward.
The dream of to go swimmimg in the Baikal is slowly going... its freezing here.
But we went swimmimg in the Finish golf the day before yesterday irena 1, haha.

Dirk

first steps into mother russia

2006-10-11T11:10:00.000+03:00

hello peoples we are still alive. were leaving the house of our really great singer host Irina in st petersburg, and try to find the road to moscow. Some days ago we left Sander in Estonia - this is the bad side of the travellers life bec we always leave every body - and hitched towards this huge country. A bit scared of all the tales we heard about it on the way, we decided to keep it safe and slept in the woods one night so we would arrive in the day in the big city.
The moment of the border crossing was magic. They checked us really hard, and then they let us walk over the river with castles on both sides, one estonian and one russian. We entered the other world and met a really friendly Polish guy who was as scared of russia as we were and together we took great caution in reaching St Petersburg without problems. We crossed the ccoutnryside with the wooden houses and in the huge imposant city we were received with open arms by Irina.
Yesterday we could enter the Winter Palace for free it s the most amazing museum we saw. Again we couldnt resist a bottle of vodka afterwards and after Irina sang bautiful russian songs for us with the guitar we went to swim in the night in the finnish gulf.

OK this was a bit descriptive but with the hangover my head doesnt go past this level. We leave for Moscow NOW.

Koen

And this is Irina 1

On the verge of russia

2006-10-08T13:25:00.000+03:00

Hi

Is Autumn here a lot and many collors that are beautifull.
Also is the mushroom and appol season. in few hours we will be entering Russia. We heared some strange srories from that country.
Living in a constant departure turns things a round a bit. To much time to think and to much air.
Estonia is a lot more Scandinavian than i would have thought.
The people look like elves and have a strange language that resembles a bit Finish.
If you would give the people pointy ears I am sure you could find Rivendell around the corner here somewhere.
There are woolves and bears and last night was the full moon that was so bright that there were shadows and the dogs were howling!!!
With all the visa and tho holes in the clothes fixed we are ready for to affront the huge contry of Vodka.
In a way you are all here passively. Big thanks to the Sander peoples.

OH YES the second picture is in Sanderland, you can see the gypsie wagon of Sander

the fast lane

2006-10-04T23:57:00.000+03:00

Hahaa peoples!

We are alive and well in the student house of our blond musscle friend we know from Portugal, Sander!!! We are in the city Tartu, in Estonia.
in this section we really got amazed by our high efficiency in the hitchhiking sports.

We left on monday 2 october, the first real autumn day in Belgium. After Dirk, (Koens dad) dropped us off at the gas station near leuven, it went really really fast. In total, we waited only 10 minutes to get to Estonia. Two cars got us out of Belgium, right after which a friendly old polish truck driver drove us through the German country. He only spoke Polish but he had a reserve of 20 bottles of white wine we had to taste. NAZDAROVIA it was and all glasses ad fundum! This HAD to finish badly and three bottles later a car pulled us over at a German gas station. We appeared to have driven of his side mirror with our truck and called the cops, so our polish driver lost his freedom, driver licence and job.

Totally feeling sad for the guy we continued our quest, and as a miracle we bumped on this two estonian guys with a big chevy and a corvette! Their mission: take the ferry to Tallinn in stockholm in 24 hours. they didn't go through Poland but through the scandinavian way. So the powerful machines blasted us through Germany Danmark over the bridge and after a short sleep on a parking through Sweden. Many memories came back when we entered Stockholm. But just before we had to take the ferry, MAN the car started to smoke so we ran for cooling stuffs and fixed the problem so we made it to the boat. thank you to the Tallink woman she helped us with a good ticket and back we were on a Baltic drinking boat with all drunken Scandiavians (we had no money for vodka of course...).

Wednesday morning, after Ivor one of our two Estonian drivers dropped us of right in front of the embassy (thank you so much man) we exerced our patience and did the long cue. So now, we have our visa in two days! In the afternoon we found a straight ride over 180 km to Tartu, so now we are with Sander in while our visa is in the bureaucracy process,

ok

Que si! no vamo a china

2006-10-01T20:05:00.000+03:00

Haai,

Thank you to all the people wha were at the nuit blanche!
Specialy the technolodavy, haha.
Was realy the best see you later party ever.
Andrea arrived from madrid and all the friends were there.
Even there was Veerle that is just the coinsidence.
Now we try to find Boris that he could give the first leg.

Leg 1: to Auswisch.

2006-09-25T22:14:00.000+03:00

TheLandTeam: China
There were some party and some big party but we aren't outside the low sky country yet...
We got the Chinese VISA today, the nice lady at the brussels conculate gave a 6 month one with double entry, so I think Japan.
There are some boats to Japan and no VISA is needed. For the Rusian one is more problem so we didn't leave already. Now waiting for invitation letter of russian federation,
whaaa I want to leave. All in due time. I'm already seeing the first hitch and all the people on the way to meet.

Dirk

2006-09-19T13:54:00.000+03:00

hey check out the new links, they are examples and powerfull tools to help all teams.

2006-09-18T22:10:00.001+03:00

So, to start this thing I hope you are all doing well where ever you are.
Let me initiate this electronic stuff with a small legend (to get you up the speed a bit), a moment some 3 years ago. We were in Norway doing nothing and we just arrived back from beating Ben and Boris on an overnight speed hitch from Stockholm to Bergen, where some delinquents were gathered under the excuse of 'Erasmus Exchange' basically ridiculous.
Well anyway, arriving back, quite hungry after passing the night in the Swedish border post and the Hardangervidda (the place where the first seconds of Star Wars were filmed), we went up the Fantoft D block 15 floor to find a hoard of savages with amongst them Alfonso ‘titi and later ‘Ocean team’. Titi warmed some food and the moviement that started years ago in Schotland over a bottle of Teachers got named: The Land Team was back or on it’s way to in Fantoft, safe and sound. After food Maria took great care or us, as always, and than Koen and I deflated while Bo and Ben were still on the road.
We set out to hitch round in Scandinavia again baring the by now famous flag that our Finnish friend Petri made, for world peace. We were 4 Boris 'Bo', Benoit 'Benbot', Koenraad 'Koen' and I Dirk 'Dyc', together often referred to as the Belgian mess, and we were keen on reaching Noth Cape and Laponia.

That’s it, the land team is nothing, and everything, that’s why it is so wonderful, it’s impossible to grasp still its there, the philosophy: there is none. It’s friendship and relativation I suppose.
After Norway we all kind of went our ways Ben worked a bit and is now in big old scary London (sorry I don’t come to visit you man, it’s not you Ben, but the city haha), Boris went to represent the Team in the south America Koen found a death job working for Satan’s’ cousin, and I well I didn’t do much, I looked for a thesis and went sailing.
And now, after the Morocco stuff, is China, again under the excuse of ‘Student exchange’ haha. And so we hope to fulfill some life long dreams of singing some crazy stuff with the Chinese in the karaokebar before going to the 4 o’clock joga sessions in the park and surf in the Baikal lake and drink it.