Here in the Netherlands we find a very unusual kind of bridge.

Like many small bridges, the bright blue and yellow Slauerhoffbrug is required to retract out of the way to let boats pass by. Unfortunately the Google Earth images were captured while the bridge was acting as a road, so other than a strange structure bolted on the side, it isn’t yet clear why we’d want to link to it…

Switch over to Bird’s Eye View on Live Maps however, and we suddenly see what makes this bridge so unusual! The middle section of the road is contained on a massive arm that swings upwards, pulling the middle of the bridge through 90 degrees, way up into the air! (Ground-level picture)

You can also see that due to the position of the swinging arm of the bridge, there’s a large gap in the surface of the road when the bridge is in the open position. This gap is filled by the arm when the bridge is open to traffic, and the arm even has road markings on it.

Built in 2000, the Slauerhoffbrug is a kind of cantilevered drawbridge, but skewed to one side. Apparently it was built like this so that the mechanism could be built beside the road without interrupting the flow of traffic – except for a few days at the end of the construction.

Many thanks to Wojtek Kutyla.

“Flocking” is the term used to describe the collective motion of a number of creatures, and is best known as something that birds do together. So much so that the collective noun for birds is of course “flock”.

A group of birds are technically flocking even when they’re not flying. Here on Lewis and Clark Lake, Missouri, we can see a huge flock of geese just resting on the water.

While flocks of birds in themselves aren’t a rarity on Google Earth (just find any fishing boat), in the nearly 4 years since we last featured a “flock of birds in flight”, we haven’t seen that many other sightings of migratory birds travelling in their trademark “V” formations.

They are still occasionally seen however, as here in the Netherlands, and to be honest I feel there’s very little else quite so strikingly simple and pleasing to be seen anywhere on Google Earth.

Here’s another smaller flock flying near Toulouse, France.

Known as “echelons”, these amazing “V” formations are actually better described as “J” formations, because they’re much more likely to be unevenly balanced – as demonstrated in this absolutely stunning image captured over the fields of Arkansas.

These transitory sightings don’t hang around very long (they often disappear during in Google’s image updates), however the geese we posted in 2005 are still visible today, as is the incredible Feeding Frenzy off the coast of South Africa that we posted about in 2007.

Thanks to Eric Alberts and VGT.

Here’s a fairly long train travelling through an icy Moldova, eastern Europe. A train is hardly an uncommon sight on Google Earth – but this particular train will travel from one side of Moldova all the way to the other in an incredible two minutes flat.

The train has just left neighbouring Romania and is passing through Moldova on its way to Ukraine… but as you may have guessed by now, this train passes through Moldova at the exact point where the three countries meet. If the train had been just a little longer, it could have actually straddled all three countries at the same time!

Elsewhere in Europe, we find the Belgian town of Baarle-Hertog – which is in the Netherlands.

Baarle-Hertog is made up of twenty separate Belgian exclaves in the Netherlands, and three other pieces on the Dutch-Belgian border. Even more confusingly, there are also seven Dutch exclaves within the Belgian exclaves!

The Dutch parts of the town are called Baarle-Nassau, and the border is so complicated that there are some houses that are divided between the two countries. Allegedly there was once a Dutch law which required restaurants to close earlier than those in Belgium, which for some restaurants simply meant that the clients had to move tables to the Belgian side.

Read more about Moldova, Baarle-Hertog and Baarle-Nassau at Wikipedia. BLDG blog also has an excellent article about Baarle-Hertog.

Thanks to Eric Hagerman and Nev Stokes.

Visitors to Dubai who suffer in the summer temperatures over 45°C can cool off at Ski Dubai.

The resort offers the full winter experience, from building snowmen to taking ski lessons. There is even the ‘cozy mountain lodge’ where you can sit by the fireplace and enjoy some apres ski … though of course your glass of mulled wine would have to be non-alcoholic.

This however is not the largest indoor ski slope in the world  – that honour goes to SnowWorld in Landgraaf, the Netherlands, while AlpinCenter in Bottrop, Germany claims the longest indoor run.

Still, Ski Dubai doubtless has the largest energy bill as a result of maintaining a temperature around -1°C in the desert!

More information and lots of images at the official sites of: Ski Dubai, SnowWorld and AlpinCenter, and Wikipedia has a full list of indoor ski centres.

Thanks to Roy, Jack Langdon and David Thornton.

Drivers on the A10 ring road in Amsterdam can be forgiven for any confusion experienced when they see this incomplete section of highway bridge.

We’re not sure what happened – maybe the construction crew finished up early one Friday afternoon and by the following Monday had forgotten what they were supposed to be building?

Meanwhile in Tehran, a similar situation seems to be coming to an end. We’re told this bridge sat unconnected to anything for at least 8 years, but the construction currently visible at the north end of the bridge may mean that it will finally get put to use some day. Still a bit of a drop if you were to drive off the south end though…

Let us know if you find any more abandoned bridges.

Thanks to Asmir Babaca and Mazi.