Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembou

ISBN 10: 0679000607 / ISBN 13: 9780679000600

Edité par Fodor's, 1999

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. N° de réf. du vendeur 00103572488

Synopsis :

Provides travel information and tips on local attractions, and includes a list of important contacts for visitors.

Extrait: This excerpt from the essay "Reflections in a Pewter Bowl," by Nancy Coons, in the Destination: The Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg section, gives you a taste of what The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg have to offer and the sights and scenes that make them great places to visit.
Slate-color skies curve like a pewter bowl over an undulating landscape, the long, low horizon punctuated by blunt steeples and a scattering of deep-roofed farmhouses that seem to enfold the land like a mother goose spreading wings over her brood. Inky crows wheel over spindle-fingered pollards; jackdaws pepper the ocher grainfields; and a magpie, flashing black and white, drags a long, iridescent tail through the damp air. These are the 16th-century landscapes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder -- stained-glass planes in sepia tones, leaded by black branches, crooked spires, dark-frozen streams.
And these, too, are the 20th-century landscapes of Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg -- a wedge of northern Europe squeezed between the massive and ancient kingdoms of France and Germany, bounded by the harsh North Sea to the northwest, defined by the rough, high forests of the Ardennes to the southeast. No wonder so much of their appeal, past and present, is interior -- bountiful, sensual still lifes, the glowing chambers of Vermeer, the inner radiance in the portraits of Rembrandt: Their weather-beaten cultures have turned inward over the centuries, toward the hearth. Indoors, Bruegel's otherwise sepia scenes warm subtly with color -- earthy browns, berry reds, loden greens, muted indigos, coral cheeks. So it is today: The Netherlanders gather in gold-lit, smoke-burnished "brown cafés," old bentwood chairs scraping across weathered stone floors; the Flemish nurse goblets of mahogany beer by candlelight in dark-beamed halls, a scarlet splash of paisley runner thrown over the pine tabletop; red
-vested Walloons -- French-speaking Belgians -- read the newspaper in high-back oak banquettes polished blue-black by generations of rough tweed. In Luxembourg, the glass of light beer and drüp of eau-de-vie go down behind the candy-color leaded glass of spare, bright-lit stuff, or pubs, where village life finds its social focus, day in, day out. In each of these small northern lands, so often lashed by rain, soaked by drizzle, wrapped in fog, with winter dark closing in at 4 pm and winter daylight dawdling until 9 am, the people live out the rich-hued interior scenes of the Old Masters.
Yet the skies do clear, come spring, and at last the light lingers until well after 10 at night. Then the real pleasure begins -- an intense appreciation that residents of moderate climates would be hard-put to understand. As if the people's gratitude took physical form, it manifests itself in flowers, a frenzy of color spilling from every windowsill, spreading like ocean waves across tulip fields, over rose trellises, through wisteria-woven archways. Fruit trees explode like fireworks, and whole orchards shimmer pink. Chestnut branches sag under the weight of their leaves and the heavy, grapelike clusters of blossom that thrust upward, defying gravity.
Then café society, and home life with it, moves lock, stock, and barrel outdoors, to bask. Terrace cafés on the Grote Markts and Grand'Places rival any piazza in Italy. And when there's no café around, the family simply sets out a cluster of folding chairs, perhaps a checkered-cloth-covered card table, whether smack on the sidewalk or behind the barn door, to make the most of fine weather.
The Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg -- as diverse within themselves as they are to one another. And yet all this diversity has been thrown together by the dominant cultures pressing in at the borders -- France and Germany. Having been conquered and economically dwarfed for generations, the three little countries felt compelled, in 1958, to form an alliance, an economic union that served as a foundation for the European Union. Since then, "Benelux" has become a convenient abbreviation for a small, independent wedge of northern Europe where even fruit juice is labeled in French and in Dutch.

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembou
Éditeur : Fodor's
Date d'édition : 1999
Reliure : Couverture souple
Etat : Very Good
Edition : 4ème Édition