LOCATION: Europe

Angelo

EUROPE


Welcome. An introduction to this thread can be found here.

If you live in one of the many European countries we'd love to see a bit of your town in this thread.

If you are uncertain of what to post, here's a suggestion: Choose a commercial center of your village, town or city. Be it a financial district, "downtown" area or other type of market center.

We will finesse these forums as we go depending on the level of posts and participation. But most importantly let's have fun doing this!

Start your post with a title containing a) COUNTRY b) STATE or PROVINCE c) CITY, TOWN or VILLAGE where you live.

example: ITALY; TUSCANY; FLORENCE

Then insert your photo and add a few lines of descriptive text to tell us about the image and your life in that location.


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[Deleted User]

UK - Dorset - Poole
OK not my greatest shot but its the only one I can find at the moment



OK so what are you looking at, you are looking at Poole Harbour, from Studland (a National Trust Nature reserve, Sand Dunes, gorse and heather scrub land and unexploded WWII bombs!!) which backs onto the Purbeck Hills, Swange (with its steam railway) and Corfe Castle. Poole Harbour is one of the largest natural harbours in the world. In the centre of the picture is the cross (English) channel ferry that goes to Cherbourg France. To its left (the small white building, landing castle) is Brownsea Island, a nature reserve and the place where the first Boy Scot camp was held over 101 years ago. To the right of the ferry is Sandbanks Peninsular, one the 5 most expensive place to buy a house in the world and where the building are on the right is the harbour entrance. In the background is Evening Hill, Canford Cliffs and Lilliputt, all very posh but not as posh as Sandbanks.

THe harbour is also home to one of the largest onshore Oil Rigs (not in picture) which actually is pumping oil from Poole Bay (the other side of the harbour entrance).

What more do you want to know??

Tim

GSPeP

Antwerp, Belgium
Antwerp is not the place where I live, but it's the nearest major town (only 20 minutes away). It's best know for having one of the largest ports in the world.

Last friday, we had our annual departemental dinner from work in the old centre of Antwerp. Some colleagues asked to take some pictures and I took advantage of this to take some pictures of the city "by night".

First a picture of the "skyline" (by day) as seen from across the river. In the middle of the picture is the cathedral with on it's right the KBC-Tower. This tower was hit by a V1 during Wold War II and surprisingly had only minor damage.



Pictures taken last friday night:

- The cathedral (123 m. / 403.5 feet high):



- Town hall on the Grote Markt (Big Market Place)



- In front of the town hall you can see the statue of "Brabo". According to legend he cut off the hand of a giant who prevented ships going up the river and threw it away. In dutch this is called "hand werpen". From this Antwerp got its name. The name Antwerp literally means "throwing a hand"



Some old houses on the "Grote Markt":



Some more pictures can be found here: http://steendorp.smugmug.com/gallery/2436579_vdh7z

PHOTOempt

Italy, Umbria, Monte Castello di Vibio
Greetings from an Umbrian hilltop

I think I am adding a reply rather than messing up a previous post! While knowledgeable about photography, design and computers - this experience is new to me...

We used to live in Ottawa Canada, which at this time of the year, is up to their bottoms in snow. Our current view here is like this - We are the town in the foreground and Todi in the distant hilltop across the valley shrouded in cloud

jasonstone

Adliswil, Zurich, Switzerland
Hey everyone,

Not had a chance to go back through all my photos but grabbed a couple of quick ones out of iPhoto. I've realised I need to get out and take some more photos around where I live and stop travelling everywhere else

1. Paragliders over Adliswil - as we're in the valley next to the hills (about 800-900m high) it's a popular place to jump off into the air


2. Zurich Grossmutter (big church) - in Zurich's old town


3. Zurich Limmat swim - every year you can get your bathers on grab a floaty and float down the limmat for the hell of it


4. Zurich restaurant - it's lovely to get down in the alleys and find these shady outside courtyards where restaurants serve up lovely food with nicely chilled beer or white wine


Honestly these are just the quick ones i could pick out - I'll try to spend some more time and get some others at a later date - but then again given that I have no spare time - I guess these will probably be it for a while!

Cheers!

Antonio Correia

Lisbon - Portugal
. . . . .

GSPeP

Ypres, Belgium
Not much "Europeans" posting here, so I'll put some more here:

This time I'm taking you to Ypres in Belgium. Best known for the more than 600.000 soldiers who got killed there during World War One.

The city looks old, but was completely rebuilt after the war. At the end of the war there was no structure left higher than 2 meters (+6 feet) in the entire city.

The market place:



One of the best know monuments in Ypres is the Menin Gate.



Engraved on its walls are the names of almost 54.900 soldiers whose bodies were never found after the war.



... thousands of names ...





Every evening at 8pm the fire brigade plays "The Last Post" in honour of those who fell during the great war. Every saturday evening there are some additional ceremonies. Usual by british armed forces and/or veterans. 75% of the people in Ypres that evening is from the Uk or one of its former colonies.

The region around Ypres counts dozens of military cemetaries where all together more than 300.000 soldiers are buried. Some of them are very impressive.

More pictures from Ypres: http://gspep.smugmug.com/gallery/654437_uXpcW

GSPeP

Belgium, Oostduinkerke (shrimpfishing on horseback)
This time I'm taking you to Oostduinkerke on the belgian Northsea coast.

Oostduinkerke is best known for the "shrimpfishermen on horseback". At low tide they take out their horses into the sea to catch shrimp (The grey Northsea shrimp) This is something unique. They are the last fishermen in the world that catch shrimp this way.

They don't do this every day. The dates and times for this year can be found here http://www.paardevissers.be/gemeenteritten.htm

They gather on the Astrid square ...



... and ride out onto the beach ...



... where they prepare themselves for the job



At last they take the horses into the water, dragging the nets to catch the shrimp ...



... very deep into the water.



Between runs they come back onto land to gather their catch ...



... which afterwards is sorted, cleaned and cooked immediately ...



... and sold to the public



More pictures can be found here: http://gspep.smugmug.com/gallery/3413471_DfgVV

Jeroen

Two hours through my own city by bike (Amsterdam).
Today was the hottest day of the year, but since I didn't feel like staying home, I went for a bit of a cycling tour through my own city.

1 Cycling that is.



2 Through the Jordaan area along the canal.



3 Behind Central Station. Tourists. At least these don't stop in the middle of the road.



4 Shot from the same exact spot, with a 180 degrees turn.



5 Same goes for this one, 3 shots without moving a step.



6 From the roof of the Amsterdam Public Librairy. My bike is down there somewhere between the other 500. Some lady told me I had a lot of nerves locking my bike to the "no bicycles here" sign. When I asked her if she didn't have anything better to do she apologized end left. Some people here are weird.



7



8 The interior of the librairy is almost as good as the view. Everything is Apple Macintosh



9 The Nemo sciense museum. I had never been on top so I climbed all the stairs.



10 Nice view on the IJ-tunnel that goes underneath that building.



11 Along the Post CS building, the former post office head quarter...



12 ...that is obviously being demolished.



13 On to the Passengers Terminal.



14 Big cruiseship as usuall.



15



16 Can of coke at the Haarlemmerdijk.



17 That tasted like more. So I thought getting a beer at our friend Gijs' cafe. Unfortunately he was closed.



18 Back in Oud-West.



19 And around the corner is home.

compur

Some pics from Bulgaria