Winner

Do you know where this is in Utrecht? I do, and as a result, I won today’s round of Waar In Utrecht (Where In Utrecht), a daily game to see who can recognize random spots around town. If you know the day’s location, and have a Twitter account, you can send in your answer. I [...]

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Foto Vrijdag 1.7

I miss sitting out on the terras in the evening, when dusk doesn’t arrive until 10 p.m. Monday’s burst of sunshine quickly disappeared and doesn’t look to be returning soon.
This is the patio area of a restaurant/hotel on Korte Nieuwstraat, De Rechtbank/Court Hotel. It looks gorgeous, inside and out. Maybe I’ll skip my usual sushi [...]

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Early Expats

On this day in which Americans around the world celebrate Thanksgiving — a case of expats/immigrants trying to make friends with the natives of their new homeland — I thought I’d mention some news about some early expats here in the Utrecht region. It seems that some untouched Roman graves have been found near IJsselstein, [...]

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Foto Vrijdag 1.5

I’ve inadvertently been focusing on various sculptures and statues around town for the past few weeks of Foto Vrijdag entries, so I figured this week I’d intentionally continue the theme with one of the most famous statues here in town. It’s Thinker on The Rock, by Welsh artist Barry Flanagan. There are other versions in [...]

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Then and Now

I’m really feeling awful today, so this is a short one.
Last year for Christmas, I got my parents a calendar of scenes of Utrecht taken around the beginning of the 1900s. I then went around town trying to get shots of the same areas as they look today. Some areas hadn’t really changed much at [...]

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Resurrecting Walls

We went to see Eddie Izzard perform his Stripped show in Amsterdam on Friday. Hilarious as always! His take on the Bayeux Tapestries was brilliant: front-line journalism! In one of his past shows, he did a joke (for a US audience) about being from Europe, “where all the history comes from.” Living here in Utrecht, [...]

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Foto Vrijdag 1.4

This is a detail from one of my favorite sculptures here in town. It’s such a quiet, solitary setting and the sculpture fits the environment so perfectly. I saw the man quietly contemplating the trees when I first came upon him, during a walk with Pippo. I thought it was lovely. Then I saw the [...]

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Foto Vrijdag 1.3

This is a partial shot of a series of three sculptural figures over at the nearby Griftpark. The sculptures — Drei Grosse Figuren (Three Large Figures) — are by German artist Thomas Schütte. They’re one of the many bits of sculpture that seem to pop up in random places throughout the [...]

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Siren Song

We’ve been here for almost a year and a half at this point, but it wasn’t until last month that I finally learned about the loud siren I hear occasionally. It’s an incredibly loud siren, and I remember being startled by it the first time I heard it. However, there was no screaming in the [...]

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A Matter of Perspective

Looking at my blog stats today, I saw that someone got here after doing a search for “utrecht living depressing”. How sad! I’m pretty sure they didn’t find what they were looking for here, at least I hope not. I love Utrecht and don’t find it depressing at all. Quite the opposite!
I know some people [...]

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