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Smaragd01 — Monumental Arch
Published: 2006-05-07 20:13:16 +0000 UTC; Views: 1367; Favourites: 15; Downloads: 10
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Description
Monumental Arch with Colonnade, TadmurRelated content
Comments: 42
This is so beautiful! I love the Corinthian columns!
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Tadmur / Palmyra is (was) beautiful. Fortunately the civil war in Syria left Tadmur predominantly intact but it's impossible to visit anymore 
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Things like that make me so sad! I always wanted to visit some
of those old places but now everything is in chaos. I guess we know
who to thank!
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Jordan is still relatively safe to visit ... and Jerash and Petra are beautiful too
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Jordan is indeed very beautiful! Have you been to Petra?
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Yep, when I was a kid (when my father was stationed in the Middle East for the UN). But I surely want to re-visit in the near future.
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You are very lucky to have seen it! I bet you still remember it!
It would be fantastic to visit it now as you will have more
appreciation of the place!
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Indeed, but sometimes those places became more touristy over the years which could be a bummer sometimes
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Tourists ruin everything! lol I try to disguise as a local.
Most times it works!
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LOL ... but sometimes it's confusing.
In Brussels I apparently look like a local Wallon as people approach me all the time to ask directions in French. In London they think me a local and ask directions or public transport schedules / lines in English. In Israel they treat me like an Israeli (which isn't always nice, particularly in the Palestine area). In Muslim countries they treat me like I'm a Jew (which isn't always nice either 
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That's pretty amazing and very varied!
You can pretty much pass for anyone! lol Very cool that
you can surprise people in Antilles by knowing such a rare language!
In France I was mistaken for Dutch(by the Dutch) and
German(by the French). In Italy they thought I was German
or Austrian. I've also been asked if I'm Swedish a few times by people.
London is great. I don't think I look British but no body acts like I'm out of place.
I'm pretty mixed so I'm not really sure what to actually call myself! lol
I have a third cousin who is part Norwegian and part Indonesian!
I'm not related to him on that side but I am about 5-6 percent Asian.
Not that anyone can tell
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Ah, I guess for a majority of people it's safe to say to be a cosmopolitan with a certain nationality ... I mean, by now so much 'foreign' blood is moving through our veins. Though my nationality is Dutch and adept easily to other places / cultures, I mostly feel a (West) European.
Btw. if they perceive you Dutch, German, Austrian or Swedish then you're probably a blond
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Everything is so global now that it is easy to feel at
ease in most places! Yes, I am a blonde! lol
I mostly have Finnish and German ancestry, but
with some others thrown in for good measure.
I do have some Dutch as well, but about 400
years ago
I'm the stock girl in these photos. They are from a few years back.
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Now this was a difficult comment to react upon.
Not about your photos ... I like them 
There are just 2 pics of myself in my gallery, but they're not really portraits (one sitting with my back to the camera 
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Thank you for the compliment! In my opinion it is better to be interesting than
beautiful. I think that the only proper self-portrait is one that is done with a
tripod! I'm not into the "selfie" craze, seems too superficial.
For Belgian: Flemish or Walloon? I find both fascinating! When I was a
teenager I read a really great book about the area called,
The Legend of the Glorious Adventures of Tyl Ulenspiegel in the land of Flanders and Elsewhere.
That's quite a title and quite a book! Well, I'm really happy to have a Dutch friend on here as
I would love to learn a little about The Netherlands.
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Going back to the 16th century: Flemish but from a town in the northern part of France which belonged to French-Flanders (Belle in Dutch or Bailleul in French). From there they to Leiden early 1600. At the end of the 19th century a couple moved to the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) and part of those descendants returned to The Netherlands after World War II (with some of them moving through to the USA and Brazil)
And yes, Tyl Ulenspiegel was a great character a real shrewd trickster. My mother told me those tales as bedtime stories and later on I also read the book myself. His legend still lives on but more pronounced in Flanders than The Netherlands. I also find it great to have a friend in Ireland ... though my visit was short I found it fascinating and I'm still reading books about Ireland's rich history.
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Wow, you have really fascinating ancestors, and well traveled too!
I guess it's kind of strange that they would come back to the Netherlands
after moving somewhere so far away. Not many people that settled in America
came back to Europe. Maybe you have the exploration bug from your ancestors!
You seemed to have lived in and visited just about everywhere!
Great! Someone else that read about Tyl Ulenspiegel! I think your the first person that
I know who read that! I used to have the book but it got lost in one of the moves ;(
I always like learning about other places so meeting people from everywhere is fascinating!
(Sorry about the delay in my reply. I had some family matters and didn't have a chance to be
on here.)
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Hey, stop apologizing ... don't feel obliged to reply immediately. Hope those family matters weren't anything too stressful. Anyway, family is important and I'm a patient guy
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Thanks! 
sometimes not as quickly as I would like!
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No problem ... social media should remain a fun, not a stressful, experience
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Thanks for the understanding! I'm getting there!
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Thanks for the compliment and those 
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I was going to say beautiful, but it seems that everyone else has already said it! I will say simply wonderful then, I love it
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Thanks, glad you like it ... Tadmur is simply amazing
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Yes, it looks it! The weather looks so nice and the place looks really interesting!
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Uhmm, well if you can stand real heat
It being August when I shot this and the fact that Palmyra is situated in the middle of the Syrian desert it was 41 C in the shade
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Wow, that's hot. But at least then I'd stand a chance of getting a hint of a tan. I went to Spain for three whole weeks in the middle of summer last year, came back, no tan at all. Life's not fair
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Yes, I was so sad leaving the lovely heat in Spain and coming back to rainy (in the SUMMER) Britian
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Dunno where you live in the UK but I got burned during a UK summer whilst walking the Dorset Coastal Path (there was even a sprinkler ban).
So much for climate change ... you don't know what to expect anymore
And Scottish weather is just plain weird
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Yeah, Scotland weather always seems to be different from the rest of Britian's, it's quite strange. One day it's raining the next day it's so hot you're wearing shorts, that's typical Britain
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Indeed, I got a taste of that [link] From freezing cold to feeling a grilled chicken sitting behind a sun blazed window on the bus
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Wow, I feel for you. You've almost been battered by the elements
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Enough cozy places in Edinburgh to shelter from those elements though 
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Thank you
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Thank you
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yup...i have seen it... nice work..
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