New Year’s Dive...

Rather than heading to the North Sea for the big New Year’s Dive, Veronica talked her friends into jumping into the canal in front of our house on January 1.

Luckily Jimmy was there to help pull everyone out of the chilly water...

...and luckily everyone was still smiling afterwards. That afternoon the girls headed up to Amsterdam for a night of clubbing.

New Year’s Eve...

Veronica was very excited to have three friends from Aye-Aye, UEA’s Ultimate Frisbee team, visit to see how the Dutch celebrate New Year’s. While Ashlynn was in The Hague with friends, Veronica decided to stick close to home on New Year’s Eve so Jimmy cooked dinner over a firepit in the front yard.

Kati hated the firecrackers going off all day, but our street wasn’t too crazy that evening so she managed to stay outside with us.

Reinhardt and Inga couldn’t join us for dinner, but they did join us for the big fireworks show in the village.

Even a small village can manage to put on a pretty good show. 

Afterwards we went back to our place for more bubbly and playing with fire. Along the way, we ran into Andrew and his girlfriend and they joined us as well.

Cool Graffiti...

Kati, the Urbex Dog...

 No surprise that we took lots of photos. Here’s a bunch more of Kati.

Introducing Kati to Urbex...

We had no idea how Kati would react to exploring abandoned places, but she seemed to love it.

In fact, she had no fear whatsoever.

She also did a great job scaring away unfriendly spirits. Luckily the only spirit we came across was a young American guy from Chicago who was nervous walking around on his own. He actually wasn’t into urbexing, but loved exploring old forts and military sites. Stupidly, we forgot to have him take a family photo.

More Urbex Pics...

Very Cool Urbex...

Flipping back to late December:

On our way home from Germany, we took a detour to bring the girls to the cool abandoned buildings that we ran through on the last Zombie Hash near Liege, Belgium.

Built by the Dutch, Fort de la Charteuse was used as a fortification from 1823 to 1891.

The Belgians later used it as military barracks until 1988.

During both World Wars, Germany used it as a prison.

The Americans used it as a military hospital from 1944 to 1945.

It is now completely abandoned with easy access for willing photographers.

I didn’t have my camera along during the Zombie Hash, so was happy to go back to explore further and take lots of photos.

Perfect Setting for Zombies...

At the start of the hash, the pack was asked to remember that the zombies were really our friends because there some spots with risks of fatal falls. While there were a few hills to climb up and down, the places that were dangerous were inside...

 ...as there were banisters missing on some of the stairwells. Of course, that didn’t stop us from following trail through the old fortifications.

 There was lots of cool graffiti.

This was undoubtedly the best urbex we had ever encountered on a hash. We felt bad that the girls weren’t with us, but were happy that an opportunity to go back fell in our laps the next month.