Spanish expat Diana Berdun never misses a chance to go to the market in Maastricht. “I often purposely leave part of my grocery shopping (fruit, vegetable and fish) for the market. There I can find more choice, better prices and it is more entertaining to go from one stall to the other,” she says. Let’s follow her! [continued…]

Big surprise yesterday afternoon in Maastricht: I was just coming out of the Selexyz bookshop when all of a sudden, I saw the two main actors of the popular Dutch police series Flikken Maastricht playing a scene right in front of me. [continued…]

The practice of being naked in nature, or naturism, is not foreign to Dutchmen, discovers American expat Kathlyn Clore in Maastricht. [continued…]

The annual May Fair of the Lions Club Maastricht Mondial is just around the corner. This year, on 25 May, expatriates living and working in South Limburg and their families will be invited to practise their skiing talents at the SnowWorld indoor winter sports resort in Landgraaf. Peter van Dongen Torman, who has been organising the event for the past five years, meets with Crossroads’ writer Sina Spohr at a café by the Meuse river to tell her more about the club and the fair. [continued…]

In a final attempt to get yet another perspective into the world of academia in Maastricht, Crossroads writer Rosanne Rademaker meets with Nancy Nicholson, an American assistant professor at the department of Psychiatry and Neuropsychology at Maastricht’s faculty of Psychology and Health, Medicine and Life Sciences. “Nancy always comes across as a very driven and intelligent person who very much enjoys her work… and hers may very well be the perspective I’m angling for,” hopes Rosanne. Read on to find out Rosanne’s final verdict on life in academia. [continued…]

I’m sitting in the shade on my boat and the weather is just great. Huge carp are cruising around the harbour as the spawning season begins. Boats of all kinds are beginning to gather on the lake, from small sailing dinghies to monster power boats taking a break from zooming up and down the Maas. Swans glide over to snatch some bread before stomping off after the latest unwanted intruders. It’s wonderful to be on the water.

Read on further to get a glimpse of what it is like for British expat Gary Evans to live on the river Maas.

Bulgaria, Bangladesh, Hungary, Finland, Jamaica are only some of the places where Crossroads’ writer Eliot Rolen spent his youth. “Yet,” he remembers, “alongside the immensely varied and inspiring sights and sounds of these countries, lay a place where to a certain extent geographical considerations were largely irrelevant, namely the international school”. Eliot’s path finally brought him to the Netherlands, where a new and different experience was awaiting him at the International School Maastricht. [continued…]

“Strangely enough, Maastricht University’s attractive international atmosphere and broad variety of new, innovative Bachelor programmes can also be very disorientating,” says UCM student Stella Wolters. “Where do I belong?”, “What does the future hold for me?” she often finds herself wondering. [continued…]

© 1982 NEA, Inc.

“Even from far-away Maastricht, the Netherlands, I am and stay active in USA politics,” says US expat Susan Schaefer. “I vote, I continue to pay taxes in Minnesota, and I avidly follow one of the most critical presidential campaigns of our times.”

Read on to see why Susan supports Hillary Rodham Clinton’s nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate. [continued…]

“Nowhere in the world have I come across the magic that is Carnival in Maastricht. The people, the music, the atmosphere, the sheer joy of life make it a magical celebration”, says British expat Maxine Self, who is also the first international member of ProBeerDers, one of Maastricht’s many Carnival ‘drunk’ bands. [continued…]

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Rosanne Rademaker shares her impressions of Maastricht in winter time. Visit her photo-reportage.

Are academics are stuck spinning their wheels? Crossroads writer Rosanne Rademaker continues her investigation into the world of academia in Maastricht with a portrait of Paul Stephenson, a 33-year-old British lecturer in political science at Maastricht University. [continued…]

Maastricht is undergoing a profound metamorphosis. Local media are full of articles and editorials discussing the image of the city, its identity and its future. Maastricht is no longer a small town in a forgotten corner of the Netherlands, but a beautiful and vibrant provincial capital with international ambitions. [continued…]

In her search for the answer to why academia - and academia in Maastricht in particular - is appealing to some, Crossroads’ writer Rosanne Rademaker speaks with Polish-American assistant professor Tomek Grabowski, a Polish-American “rebel” in Maastricht. [continued…]

An ex-lover once asked me why on earth I wanted to become a researcher. He scolded me for aspiring for a life in academia. According to him all academics are stuck spinning their wheels, writing papers that are only being read by fellow academics. Worse still, he believed none of this knowledge ever made it back into the real world.

Ulterior motives aside, his claim covers little ground. Surely advances in science continue to influence societies on a daily basis, in countless ways, both good and bad.

Nonetheless it touches upon an interesting question. What gears people towards a life in science?

Crossroads’ writer Rosanne Rademaker speaks with Marco Zinzani, an Italian researcher at Maastricht University to find out what drove him into the world of academia. [continued…]

With the semester in its initial phase, Maastricht’s student population is in the ‘design your life’-craze again… an annual recurrence, as close observation suggests.

And with enormous piles of new students freshly arrived from high school or from the usual year abroad, the demand for self-definition and identity is outpaced even by the demand for IKEA furniture. [continued…]

Maastricht appeared to me from the very first minute as a little fairy city when I arrived here by train in June 2007. It was the picture of a city that is being loved by its inhabitants and thoroughly taken care of. [continued…]

It’s been two months now since my partner and I moved to Maastricht, but it is in our native country Hungary that I had my first contact with Dutch people. I was working last year for an international Human Ressources company in Budapest and the place was exceptionally multicultural: our trainers came from the USA and Europe, my colleagues were English, Irish, Israeli, Polish, Swedish, French… and one of my bosses was Dutch. [continued]

When I told my husband that I wanted to write down my thoughts about the Dutch word ‘mee’, he looked baffled. “What is there to write about?” he wondered out loud.

My sister in Paris was just as puzzled: “How am I supposed to pronounce this ‘mee’ anyway? To be honest, it sort of reminds me of a flock of sheep!”

Well funnily enough, after living sixteen years in the Netherlands, I have come to view this small and perhaps inconspicuous ‘mee’ as one of the most important words in the Dutch language. I even think that learning to use it has helped me understand some typical aspects of the Dutch way of life! [continued…]

“Why do you bike indoors when the South Limburg countryside is so beautiful?” a Dutch friend once asked me when I told him about my spinning addiction at the local gym. “Don’t you feel claustrophobic in a room packed with sweaty strangers and all that loud music?” [continued…]

They are everywhere. You might have seen them on the bus, biking around or having a beer on the Vrijthof. In fact they might live next door, in a rented room. Sometimes they seem like a swarming plague taking over the town. They are the international students at the University of Maastricht.

For a week I followed six of these specimens, learning more about them, their habits and their personal histories. Becoming one of them wasn’t too difficult… and here comes my secret: I’m an international student too. Keep on reading to know what these peculiar people think and do in Maastricht and find out about their dreams, their regrets and some of their advice for the city. [continued…]

“You live in Holland, oh you must be smoking a ton of pot” is the typical thing I hear when I tell Canadian friends that I live in Maastricht. And I tell them no, I barely know any Dutch people who smoke. I think pot is more visible in Vancouver than in this snazzy shopping town. But I’m obviously missing something since 1,5 million drug tourists reportedly come through Maastricht every year to buy weed and drive home. [continued…]

photo: Stuart Woodburn
The Lions Club Maastricht Mondial this year held its annual May Fair for expatriates and their families at Kasteel Limbricht on Sunday 3 June. [See photo-reportage by Stuart Woodburn and Herman Pijpers…]

Crossroads writer Danya Chaikel tells of her experience with the Maastricht justice system.

I have lived and travelled in many cities around the world and when I came to cobbled streets of Maastricht I felt safer than ever before. I really couldn’t imagine there being much crime in this picturesque ‘village’. My naiveté was crushed on 11 January 2007 when I was attacked and robbed on a bike path off Cabergweg.
[continued…]

Every year on Koninginnedag (Queen’s Day), 30 April, the Netherlands celebrates the Queen’s official birthday. Street parties and other events are held all around the country. This year in Maastricht, a large “vrijmarkt” (free market) was organised in the StadPark (City park) and many music bands performed for the public. [more photographs…]

I can’t really remember when exactly I first saw a computer, or when I began my relationship with them. What I do remember is when we bought our first computer. It was an Apple, way back in 1987. We were living in Sri Lanka and were, proudly said, one of the first expats to acquire such advanced machinery. [continued…]

Apart from being your faithful editor, I am also a member of the International Women’s Club of South Limburg (IWC). Our latest monthly meeting exceptionally took us to the Africa Centre (Afrikacentrum) in Cadier en Keer, just outside of Maastricht. [continued…]

We decided at the end of October that we would book flights to a nearby European destination on one those el cheapo airlines that advertise scarce-as-hens’-teeth seats for one euro cent. We had a good excuse; our baby sitter would celebrate her birthday in the middle of December, which we thought would be a good time to travel. We settled for Venice, but did not tell her, keeping it a surprise. [continued…]

When we moved to South Limburg and heard that Maastricht was THE capital of carnival, we were initially more worried than excited.

I had not particularly enjoyed my first encounter with carnival in the Netherlands back in 1992. At the time, my Dutch husband and I lived above a pub in Hoogland, a village near Amersfoort in the centre of the country, and I remember how the stench of stale beer had permeated the air for weeks after the three days of madness. [continued…]

“We’ve been able to set up interviews with mayor Gerd Leers and Professor Luc Soete, and also with a student from the University of Maastricht who has just written a book about the Maastricht Treaty, but we are still very keen on interviewing you as well,” the young journalist from Radio France Internationale said to me on the phone. “I’m sure you’ve got many interesting things to say about Maastricht as a European city,” she added. [continued…]