Something different (2)

 Doodling around with sepia ink and watercolour.

Gertie Retired.

 

My wife retired last Thursday. She has worked as a primary school teacher with 10 to 11 year olds, and has been doing it for over 35 years.

The school treated her like a Queen: they organized a day full of festivities: all groups performed plays, dances and musical intermezzos, she received numerous gifts and was told touching stories. A fantastic but also emotional day.

My children and grandchildren were also present. We made this "painting" for her: each of my grandchildren decorated a panel with a flowerpot, featuring a little cactus. (Cactus? for the last 10 years her classroom was themed "Cactus"; she had al least 50 of them spread all over the classroom).

Sittard Pumpstation

 

Made a nice bike trip today, came across this old 1915 waterpump station, decided to draw it. Sepia ink in a Pentel parrallel fountain pen.

Concentration camp Bergen Belsen

 

 

I made a trip to Laboe, at the Ostsee, in the north of Germany. Driving back I decided to make a little detour to visit Bergen-Belsen. That is the location of one of the worst Concentration camps of the Germans. Anne Frank was brought here from Auschwitz, and spent a few misearble weeks here, before she died of Typhus, in March 1945, just a few weeks before the camp was freed by the Allied troops.

Even though there are almost no remnants from the former camp, it is still an eerie place, with large massgraves in a parklike setting. And a solemn and quite impressive musuem. I was glad I did the detour.