Guus Bosman

Every now and then I read the website of the Haarlems Dagblad (the local newspaper).

Today I saw some good news: the cacoa-factory will close in September 2004. They are moving to Amsterdam. The factory sometimes causes a nasty smell in the whole city; it's especially bad in the summer.

Also, the Draaiorgelmuseum seems to have found a new location, in the Waarderpolder.

The bridge is closed -- boats waiting in line at the Spaarne.

Click on Read More... for some pictures.

It's the 3rd big fire in that area within a few months.

A few minutes ago a huge rainstorm came above Haarlem. A big difference compared with last Friday.

At Chess I work on the highest floor so it's very noisy now because of the rain.

When I started smelling smoke, my first thought was to look at my monitor. I had a computer monitor on fire once, many years ago.

The smoke came from outside, there's was a huge black cloud coming from the Waarderpolder. I didn't have a lot to do, so I went to take a look. There's a building on fire on the Waarderweg, near the Vomar but at the other side of the river. The smoke smells a bit like that from the steam-trains in Opperdoes. Only there is a lot more of it, of course.

It's seems like quite a large fire, let's hope nobody gets hurt.

I went to the Grote Markt in my lunchbreak (it's just a regular working for us). I wanted to have a look at the weird tent -- it turned out to be from Oxfam.



We arrived there perhaps 10 minutes after the official start of Liberation Day but there weren't a lot of people. The weather is the same a last year: really bad.

I was looking at the website of Haarlem.nl to find out where the commemoration service tonight will be, when I saw this picture of the Grote Markt:




As you can read here it's the tent for tomorrow's festivities.

Saturday evening we went to see the Bloemencorso arriving in Haarlem. This is a big annual Flower Parade.

The Haarlems Dagblad has put some really nice pictures online.

One of the most beautiful cars was the one with the swans (from the Keukenhof).

Today was the funeral of Mr. R. Knipper, one of the three volunteer firefighters who died last Sunday when the Koningkerk burned down.

I was at the Grote Markt (went to get a haircut after lunch) and there were many people gathered. A lot of busses too, many firefighter crews came from all over the country.

It was the first time ever that firefighters died in action in Haarlem. Two of my collegues also work for the volunteer firebrigade.