Places Around Maastricht: Selexyz Dominican Bookstore

Type of Place: Bookstore

Location: Dominikanerkerkstraat 1; 6211 CZ Maastricht

Website

The Selexyz Dominican bookstore is located in a beautiful refurbished cathedral and features a nice Coffeelovers cafe and a moderately large collection of books for sale. The English collection is small, so you may have to dig if that’s what you’re looking for. Watch the video to learn more.

As promised in the video here are a couple pictures of the bookstore’s interior:

This video needs a transcript. If you’d like to help, please drop me an email.

About the Maestricht.nl & Mtricht.com merger

Maestricht.nl and Mtricht.com, two local social networks, have recently merged in the hopes of creating a better, bilingual whole. Since I’m having trouble typing today, you get the first ever MM Vlog today instead. Enjoy!

Please share your thoughts in the comments below. The video will eventually be transcribed, if not by me than by someone else.

A Suggestion for an Informal Symbol of Maastricht

Hopefully I’m not out of line here, but I like having a little something to point to that symbolizes a place. Sure sometimes these things turn into stereotypes, but there’s something nice about having an object or image that invokes memories or thoughts of Place. In Vermont, for example, maple syrup and fall maple leaves are important informal symbols of my home state.

Holland, naturally, has lots of these sorts of symbols: wooden clogs, windmills, cheese, tulips, etc. But here in Maastricht those things are not entirely appropriate. I don’t know if farmers use wooden shoes much anymore around here, but we don’t have many windmills and the round cheese we usually associate with Holland is from Gouda. Besides, the only tulips we have here are planted in private gardens (or on rotunde).

My suggestion: the humble cherry vlaai.

Why?

Vlaai is a Limburgish dish. It is sweet, and it is associated with relaxing in a café along the Muese river or on the Vrijthof in the company of friends. Cherry would make the vlaai red, the color of Maastricht’s official crest. There is something a bit whimsical about vlaai that makes it more approachable than Maastricht’s shield (a great symbol in its own right. I use it on this site.). It also lacks the religious overtones of Maastricht’s angel (again, a fine symbol but not right for everyone).

What’s more, a slice of vlaai can be combined with other visual elements to emphasize particular aspects of Maastricht. Add a small coffee to bring out the sociable aspects of the area, or place against a stone wall to evoke the historical nature of the city. You could even stick a little EU flag out of slice to represent the regions relationship with the rest of Europe. See? Fun.

Other Symbols

Of course the great thing about informal symbols is that we don’t need just one. Limburg could probably reasonably adopt some sort of grape symbol because of the local wine production. Or perhaps a stylized building that looks more like our local architecture that the homes along Amsterdam’s canals.

And if you’re curious, here are a few “official” symbols of the region:

Do you have ideas of fun and informal symbols?  What reminds you most of the city you live in?

The photo of Vlaai is licensed under a GNL license. This article is not, but you’re welcome to play with the idea all you want. The official symbols are all copyright/trademarked their respective owners.

Places Around Limburg: The Raren B&B

Type of Place: Bed  & Breakfast

Location: Rarenderstraat 19; 6291NC Vaals

Website

As hands-down the best bed and breakfast Dan and I have stayed in in the Netherlands, I thought the Raren and it’s owners deserved a special mention here on the blog.

The Raren B&B is a small pension in Vaals located in the home of the owners Ad & Lenny. This beautiful converted farmhouse has three bedrooms upstairs, as well as private bedroom downstairs with its own entrance to the home. The beds are pretty comfortable and the double bed is actually a single piece mattress (shocking if you’d ever slept in a hotel in the Netherlands). Outside the B&B is a lovely private garden with small orchard of many different types of fruit and a fish pond. A pool and sauna are also available for guests to use. Oh, and wifi.

The entire space is decorated in a mix of African and Germany antiques (as well as some Asian touches in the garden), which I imagine reflects the owners tastes very well. The entire effect was cozy and more like staying in the home of a couple of friends than in a B&B.

Ad & Lenny, the owners of the Raren, were wonderful hosts to Dan and I. Upon arrival they welcomed us in with open arms, allowed us to select our room for the weekend, and enthusiastically gave us the grand tour. When we mentioned that we were staying for our anniversary, they gave us a bottle of white wine as a gift and later sent us home with walnuts and jam from their own trees. We had a great conversation about the Netherlands (Lenny is from Chicago originally), jobs, and discovered a mutual interest in comics. They even showed us their massive collection of 1950s German pottery, which they sell online.

Both men were an absolute font of information about Vaals and the local amenities, as well as about Aachen (which is just 5 km or so over the border). On their advise we ate at the Boscafe ‘t Hijgend Hert, which was delicious and gave us a great starting place for hiking on day two of our trip.

Breakfast both mornings was what I consider to be “typically Dutch” with bread and rolls, fruit, yogurt, lots of spreads and a hard-boiled egg. Ad fussed over us as we tucked in, making sure we had everything we needed.

The Raren is located outside of Vaals, so you probably will want a car to visit, and you should know that they have a large, energetic chocolate lab. But with all the amenities we could hope for and frankly two of the friendliest hosts we’ve ever met, I heartily recommend you all to try the Raren for a night or two. You’ll be glad you did.

A Blogging Challenge Plea

As you know I’ve been working on the Problogger 31 Days to Build a Better Blog challenge. Today’s challenge is a reader “Call to Action”, but Day 17′s challenge was to watch a first time user read my blog. Since I haven’t done Day 17 yet, I’m going to combine the two. This is a plea, to you good reader, to visit my other blog and give me some feedback.

Please visit Fallen Kitten and just surf around a bit, noting anything you like or don’t like, as well as anything you can’t find that you’d expect to find. Here are a few ideas of things to look at:

• Content itself.
• Do you find the categories helpful?
• How easy it is to browse or search for a subject?
• How do you like the design?
• Etc.

Then send me an email with your comments. I will post a thank you post later with the names and urls of everyone who helped me out.

A bit about Fallen Kitten

Fallen Kitten Productions is the name we use for all our comics publishing activities, digital and print. In addition to the publishing our webcomic under the name, I also run Fallen Kitten Services, a web design and support business. The blog itself is focused on web design and website issues that concern webcomic creators.

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