in Tartu (picture by Aili)

http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/n59DcKH1zI

http://ilga.org/ilga/en/article/n59DcKH1zI.

I crossed the Alps!

Just use the link to go to the new pictures… this computer here doesn’t want to add some pictures on my blog…
http://picasaweb.google.it/lauris.l/BicycleTripInEurope#5475119480070121458

The first day in the mountains I arrived at the house of my friend Jos. I planned to stay there for 4 days, but finally I left already after 2 days. I continued with the plan not to make too much kilometers in a day. But after a couple of days cycling on too easy roads I started to feel restless and wanted to move on faster. Actually I wanted to pass the italian border by a quiet road and a mountain of 2700m high, but because of the strong winter this year the highest mountains are still full of closed and therefore their roads are closed. So I had to change my plans and took the national road climbing the col de Montgenevres with the top on 3 km before the Italian border. A not so difficult mountain, but 1850m high and a climb of 8 km. On the top I met a retired man from London coming on a bicycle from the other side. He shared his big enthusiasm for cycling in the french Alps…

Arriving in Italy the road went down again untill 1400m, where I put my tent for the night before climbing probably the highest peak of this trip. The “colle delle Sestriere”, 2035m high, probably the highest village of Italy and the second highest of Europe. From my camp place I started to climb this mountain during 11km… The day that I stand on top in Sestriere was a day of contrasts. In the morning I woke up with ice on my tent, being still in the middle of the high Alps, and only half a day later I arrived in a flat Italian landscape with the sun burning and temperatures till 30 degrees C.

Yesterday and today I stayed in the small town Casale Monferrato. Tomorrow I continue for 5 other days of cycling in Italy and then I’ll be near the Slovenian border.

View Larger Map

new bicycle trip

I have a new plan to make a bicycle trip in Europe… on the map you can have a first look on the route that I have more or less in mind and wish to start on 1st of may 2010:

View Larger Map

keep on smiling …

the camera is a mirror …

Informatie aan zee

Yesterday I went to ‘informatie aan zee’ organized by VVBAD (Vlaamse vereniging voor bibliotheek- archief- en documentatiewezen). The whole morning I followed lectures about the development of e-books in the dutch-speaking world. In the Netherlands there are already a couple of public libraries offering e-books in their collection. In Belgium we still have to wait, but at least there is already a partnership between flemish public libraries (represented by bibnet) and the section of bookpublishers. I am very curious to the further development and hope that the first belgian e-book collection in a public library will appear soon. But since last week we can buy already very easy dutch-speaking e-books. one of the biggest book distributors on the internet, bol.com started to sell e-books.

In the afternoon I followed a long lecture about setting up a digital depot (to archive digital documents). A lack of ICT-knowledge in many archive institutions makes from digital archive a big challenge for the future. But also in digital world the preservation of documents is still important if we want to make the production of documents today available for (historical) research in the future. (uhuu, isn’t it a fancy sentence…)