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irisbe   
diversity colours the world, and we? We are all but a shade of grey


Real Name: Dannie: "A smile is priceless. Just think about it next time you run out of money"
Lives In: Antwerp, BE
Birth Date: February 25, 1960
Member Since: May 27, 2001
Last Login: Nov 05, 2009   08:46 UTC
Member's Time: Nov 08, 2009   01:56 CET
VT Rank: 159
Deals Rank: 229
External Page:www.geocities.com/irisbe
Travel Interests: Budget Travel, Beer Tasting, Historical Travel, Arts and Culture

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Antwerp, BE  194  826
Brussels, BE  151  408
Belgium  72  295
Brugge, BE  75  138
Laeken, BE  66  107
London, UK  76  92
Mortsel, BE  34  126
Leuven, BE  49  96
Lisbon, PT  18  120
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Page Views: 85,184            

New updates? Yes I have added a few!

by irisbe - last update: Aug 7, 2007

♪ Isn't she lovely? ♪♪

Safi and Eve
It seems that real life is still preocuppying me very much.
I hope to find more free time but it seems that time itself is playing a trick on me !
Little Safi already passed her 7th month! Where as all those days gone too?
Ofcourse our cameras do keep a record on her :)
You are free to visit her albums named Safi.
Enjoy! :)




Stranger of yesterday.
becomes my tomorow's friend,
he who ever comes to visit,
Be welcome!
I don't know if I ever make it to your place.
But then I did not invite you to be returned the same gift from you.
Just promise me to remember what I did to you,
and if any other stranger comes across your path,
then do what I did and pass on the hospitality I showed to you.
Maybe then someday,
when I start my travel,
I will harvest the fruits
of what I once planted in your heart
and has been passed on
and some one will open his door to me.

This way the world will turn into a much better place to live.

P.S. I am on Hospitality Club now! :))
It is a website where you can find other travelers, try to look for host on your travels or be a host yourself. Try it out. You do have to register first.


the full VT Verona meeting group!


Why don't we start to live together...

It was fun, it was fabulous it was unique... but let's not keep it unique, lets do it more often! and let's not keep it to ourselves `-)

What? Having a super European meeting I mean!

How to look at all the pictures, save them or add yours?
got to FOTKI ALBUM and view the folder with Virtualtourist meetings.
Choose the one you want to view (they are ordered by day). You will see thumbnails so you can have a quick view easy.
Seen one you like? click on it and it will appear in medium size, excellent to send through little mailboxes or to use on VT; want to save it at best size? Click on the link underneath the medium sized one and you will be able to save the big one.
How to save? just right click and "save as"on your pc.
Sure you can leave comments if you like, or read other's comments too.

Want to add yours? You will be in a special album of other vt-ers like Brad brown pictures. Your website will be put in the copyright space so people viewing can also take notice where your VT site is. So don't forget to mention what your nickname on VT is. My e-mail irisbe@fotki.com can take at least 4 to 5 mega's each time.

Let's make a great compilation album!
thank you already Bradbrown; Sandysmith; Roggeveen; JLBG; metamihelcic; Matcrazy1 !

Welcome to my little place on VT. I hope you will enjoy your visit here and can find some good tips while making your travel plans.
To know is to love they say. There for travel to learn and to love and respect.
Have luck and love in your lives and use your wisdom and skills in a positive peaceful way!



Friendship (statement written for Moh)
Friendship has much more value than any money on a bank account, and although it
can't help pay the bills and heat your house, it sure can warm up your heart and give you a wealth of happines.
Dannie


Yuroba wisdom:
If kindness of one man gives you worries, let it not stop you from doing kindness to another. For if you close your eyes because of a bad person, you also not know the time when a good man is passing.



some quotes:
Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!



Where does my name derives from?

My nickname: IRIS was the winged goddess of the RAINBOW and the messenger of the Olympian gods. (I wonder what message I am bringing to you?)
She carries the same name as the flower Iris; this was named after her because of her multitude of COLOUR in which this flower comes. I consider myself related to the Dutch iris: bleu/purple leaves ,as picturing my feeling for drama and mood sometimes, surrounding a yellow (golden?) heart. Am I not modest `-)

My moto: diversity COLOURS the world


Maybe a little introduction would be best

I am born and live in Belgium. I live near Antwerp in a city (since 2000 we became city instead of village) called Mortsel.
At that occasion we got a Belgian beer named after a district in Mortsel...
"Oude Godje". Mortsel became a city because of it's urban city-like characteristics...
I was active in a pressure group, preserving a nearby farm.

I have a seat at the city’s family council and we give our local government advices if needed or we discuss certain family topics during our meetings.
Each year in September we organise a local toy exchange market for the children.

A small travelogue about the market.



Where I work:


I have an adminstrative job in the
University of Antwerp and that is a fulltime job.

What I do for fun at work:

I am member of the voluntarian group called
Karibu, who organises activities for our foreign Phd and guest students / lecturers / professors and their family. I am maintaining a website that I started a little while ago and where I try to report (mostly with pictures) about our activities or trips. If you want to have a look, feel free to do so:

Karibu website

From 2004 on I participated at the new Personel organisation at our unified university called
Personeelsvereniging Universiteit Antwerpen. Another occasion to organise events and trips.

It begged for the development of another picture archive at Fotki. Sorry if you can't read the Dutch explications and comments but do enjoy the pictures!



What else I just love to do:

Meeting people and guide them around if they like too and if I have the spare time to do so.

I have met a lot of people so far and it is always a very nice experience! I just love it!

If you scroll down you will notice the tlogues about meetings and things that kept me busy.
It is difficult to keep them up to date but I try, honestly I try `-)
You might find some of the meetings in tlogues kept at the location of the happening.
Each meeting will refer to a fotki album if there is one but I am sorry, I could not keep up with commenting :)
But be free to add yours!


Revisit my pages regularly as they are constantly updated. New tips are added and old ones are revised.

What I still need to do!

I will update the pages whenever I can.

What would be lovely for you to do:

Visit my pages again occasionaly! Especially those of Belgium will grow in time and will give you more and more information when time goes by.
And if you can't get enough of all this `-)
then feel free to have a look at my pesonal photo album at Fotki where you can see all the wild VT meetings pictures!


What I do if I have less then nothing to do:


I fill internetpages with little writings.



Please take a moment to sign one of my guestbooks! Thank you! Use the "back"-button to return to this page

Sign My Guestbook

I am as Irisbe on:
ICQ
ExciteMessenger
MSN (irisbe@yahoo.com)

irisbe4@yahoo.co.uk
irisbe@yahoo.com
on yahoo messenger]

Sleeples in Mortsel
oil, next water


What is eating me?


Peace!
I took the dog on the Brussels's rally of peace;
I took the flag, waving in front of the Brussels?s stock market building;
I took the boy at our vigil
but I borrowed the earth
as I would hope more would realize: we are just borrowing it, we don't own it!




What holds the future for me?

No one knows what is in front of us... but we sometimes have wishes we would like to happen.

My travelwish list:

Africa: Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana
Asia: India (meeting up with friends), Thailand, Malaysia (elephants, bicycles and friends!), China
USA: California with San Francisco, Houston, Tex meeting up some old friends!
Eastern Europe: Sint Petersburg, Moscow (checking on Marianna hehehe)
Europe: Italy because I still need to meet Chiara !

so Babu... what do you read in my hand? where am I going next?




Visiting, visitors, young (at heart), curious about other cultures? Want to meet the world at your place or theirs? Then I can recommend you a nice website for adventurous travers Hospitalityclub on which you can find me as Irisbe!
You need to register before you can use the information. Several members of VT are members of HC or CS. See if you can spot them?
Hey Babu, reading the future?
VT friends are special!


VT friends are special.

VT friends are special and when some one is gone, it always hurts because you miss your friends.
Some friends get deleted, like (Lucille), some friends don't log in anymore (Jackfruit; Imbi...) and sometimes a friend deceases (Ersal).
What ever happens to our friends, they are maybe out of VT but still in our hearts.

In memory of my friend Ersal:
He is gone for ever but will remain in our hearts.

My lovely friend,
if your heart has failed you,
then let me lend you mine.
It is big enough to support the both of us!
The way you could turn a smile on our face is legendary!
When my tears are dried up
I will search for that smile again,
and let it crack the salt traces on my face.

I will treasure your memory.

We will miss you, unmeasurable much!

Feel free to visit his homepage

If you want to know what happened, then pls read this Malta page
or look at the rememberance page his friends made for him and where you can add your contribution if you would like too, send an e-mail to ask instruction.




~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~&

Always on the outlook for Lucille:

Lucille, you are missed since you are in exile from VT.
I respected you always for being such an honest and open person.
It is sad that sometimes your words were considered too hard by certain members and brought you into troubles.
However it is great that you managed to stay in touch!
It is a real comfort to know you are still there!
picture of Lucille by Tompt.


A new proverb was born on the toilet!

The Leuven toilet proverb:

If the toilet doesn't fit, then fit the door to the toilet!

What a big knowledge one can find in such a small room!
I think this picture just reflects how we should face life!
Sometimes we see a huge problem, like this little room that was too small to fit the toilet.

Do we have to knock down the walls in order to make the room bigger?
Or worse: how quick would we give up the idea to make a toilet at all?

To realize the solution might be found in a whole different direction then the obvious way of our logical thinking.
Sometimes we have to give up our old rusty way of thinking and open our mind and look further then the lenght of our nose or the size of a toilet pot `-)
A minor solution can open doors!
at last... that was the fact for this one!

I think that maybe the astmosphere of this Leuven university city is a fertile location for the mind `-)

%c*Thank you Gini (Cadzand) to have helped me by taking this picture.


Huge problems can be solved by minor solutions!
Equilibrium


Equilibrium

Equilibrium
You have to read the painting from where all begins: from the roots on.


The roots, the basics on which all the rest is built and from where all ideas and thoughts are born, are painted in blue.
Blue: the colour of truth, wisdom, spirituality, dynamism and inner peace. It is the colour of reason and mind.


The green when going over in the stem captures the blue. Entwined almost with the colour of reason, green represents nature, Spring, renewal.
To me it symbolises all that is new, and offers hope.
The first leaves in an attempt to look too perfect reveal being shattered if you take a closer look. They try to hide the imperfectness but nothing in life is faultless and we are often living behind facades or masks to keep our pains hidden for the world outside.
However moving up a little higher you will find no longer "perfect looking" leaves. With growing up we no longer wish to act towards what is dictated by the world outside. We no longer wish to live towards dogmatic expectations of society. The hectic shape of the upper leaves symbolises the "self outing", or breaking out might as well be a description, let loose.


It is necessary to be able to be yourself when you want to be open to the passions of life.
These passions are symbolised by the multi-flower, it is not just one, it is many and they are all in different shades of colour.
The main colour is the red one that symbolizes love and warmth, sensuality and passion, but also revolt and blood, diabolical and devouring fire.


Above the orange shade reveals sunshine and light in our live, stimulation and youth,

while at the bottom the purple shades rather refers to the wisdom or experience past passions offer, ignorant to if these were good ones or bad ones.

The compilation of these passions are our life's weight and help us to bend over in reach of that happiness we all want to escape too.
The happiness is pictured by the yellow colour that resembles to the sun, blocked by the head of a white bird The yellow colour of the sun represents the joie de vivre, the optimism, hope, joy.


The white bird's head represents our "flight" towards that pleasure, the white colour represents the "lightness of being", the ultimate contentment.

It ends where reason started, and so the circle is round.

But, and there is a but, no matter how your colours run in your life, you should always seek for an equilibrium: if the roots were not firm enough, it could not bear the stem, if the stem were not flexible enough, it could not bear the flower and break, if the flower would grow too big for the stem, the same would happen and the way to joy and happiness will for ever be out of reach.




My first and only painting made on the 24-25th February 2001 at my friend's place on a session of "painting out of your guts", that means, you get water a few colours 1 paper and two days you spend with other people listening to your favorite music, sharing breakfast and lunch, and just paint wathever comes up in your mind, without thinking figurative, just experiment with colours along your mood and at the end find out what you have painted and what idea's you have put on paper.

irisbe's Albums
Title [Click to view]Travel YearPictures
meeting friends, meetings & visitors (in update)- 8
What fun stuf kept me busy lately?!- 7
What kept me busy again?the Summer of Meetings- 8
me's :-) and personalities test results!- 8
let there be love, let there be peace- 7

Comments for irisbe
RoscoeGregg Sat Oct 24, 2009 14:47 UTC
 We are just borrowing it!! I try to live that thought. When do you sleep? Happy Trails
ViajesdelMundo Tue Sep 22, 2009 00:04 UTC
 You are Featured Member right now! Still love that sweet little 'Black & White' in your photo!!
Boniunia Sat Sep 5, 2009 12:39 UTC
 "Hello" Dannie:) Yes, real life is much more demanding then virtual(tourist) It's hard to find time for everything, but when we finally find time then we enjoy the 'missed' activities much more intensively:)right? hugs!
hasanhanks Sat Aug 29, 2009 03:52 UTC
 Dannie......No....No one ever told me.... It is with hope that all is well with you and your loved ones....
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