For the past few years Brazilian samba bands have become an increasingly popular feature of our Maastricht carnival and can no longer be dissociated from it. But what exactly are samba bands? Where do they come from? And how did they reach our city? To learn more about this phenomenon Marleen Vara speaks with three members of Passatempo, her favourite samba band in Maastricht. [continued…]

Reinder van Tijen is 76 years old and lives in a squat. A mechanical engineer by profession, he can look back on an unconventional life devoted to finding simple and sustainable technological solutions to today’s pressing questions. An unusual candidate for public recognition, he has now been awarded the Dutch royal Order of Oranje-Nassau. A portrait by Henrik Hartmann. [continued…]

About 9,000 people raced for healthy living in this year’s edition of the increasingly popular Maastrichts Mooiste event, which has evolved over the five years of its existence into a five-day fitness extravaganza. Next year may see the addition of a sixth day, organisers say. Or the event might become biannual. A report by Kathlyn Clore for Crossroads. [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…]

May or may not Africa be viewed as an economic springboard for China’s forecasted rise to geo-political dominance? For its last event of the season, Maastricht Debates on May 20 decided to take a closer look at the Chinese strategy in Africa. A critical review for Crossroads by Eliot Rolen.

très.b is a “a très cool” international band based in Maastricht. A profile by Crossroads writer Hania Piotrowska. [continued…]

“Why is Europe boring? Why doesn’t it sell?” asked professor Ulrich Beck and the audience gathered in the lecture hall of the Maastricht Faculty of Economics went quiet. “The history of Europe is a story of ‘NO’,” answered Beck to his own question, “Europe is a lady in her 50’s, without a name. It’s a reality without theory.”

Is “cosmopolitanism” the missing narrative for Europe, as suggested by Beck?

A review of the annual Schuman lecture that took place earlier this month at Maastricht University, by Misia Furtak. [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…]

Crossroads’ contributor Eliot Rolen discovers first hand the secret recipe behind the creation of what he calls “the delicious and universally welcoming weekly event that is dinner at the Landbouwbelang.” [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.

There are about 7.000 expatriates working in South Limburg. Together with their spouses and possible families, they form a group of 16.000 foreigners trying to live in a country different from their own. Struggling with administrative hurdles, but also with the simple practical details of everyday life. Trying for instance to find out how, when and where garbage is collected. Maastricht has initiated an expat forum to examine the needs and wishes of the international community and learn how the expatriate experience in and around the city can be improved. [continued…]

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon would have been proud to witness the impact of his institution on young people at the recent EuroMun conference in Maastricht. Organised by the small team of the Maastricht United Nations Student Association (UNSA), the event attracted 450 students from all over the globe to the South Limburg capital. All had come with the same goal: take part in a European Model United Nations, simulating real life UN proceedings. A review for Crossroads by Tobias Gerhard. [continued…]

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…]

“I’ve been here two years already but never got to know as much about the city as during those four weeks,” says University College Maastricht student Ingrid Kylstad after concluding the Think Tank assignment commissioned by the city of Maastricht. Ingrid was one of the several UCM students who were recently asked to prepare a policy recommendation report about one of the city’s greatest challenges for the future: how to stop the demographic decline. Crossroads writer Hania Piotrowska takes a closer look at the students’ findings and suggestions. [continued…]

The 26 metre long Mamenchisaurus is the largest of the four Chinese dinosaur fossils currently on display in Maastricht’s spacious Centre Céramique. It is the first time that they are being exhibited in Europe and people from all across the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, and parts of France are flocking to Maastricht to admire the impressive beasts. [continued…]

The newly established Islamic Student Association Maastricht ( ISVM) recently organised its first public event with a “Conference on Islam and the West”. Crossroads writer Henrik Hartmann speaks with ISVM’s chairman Zine Abhidin Zouggari about the perception of Islam after 9/11, Geert Wilders’ controversial statements, and how Muslims are represented in Maastricht. [continued…]

Recently rated the world’s “fairest bookshop” by the UK’s highly-regarded Guardian newspaper, the Dominicanen has quickly become one of Maastricht’s tourist attractions. “After the Guardian article, this place has been a madhouse,” William Remmers, General Department Head of the store, tells Crossroads writer Amrit Dhir. [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…]

Under the heading “the EU and Russia: Strategic Partners or Competing Neighbours?”, three experts participated last week in a hot public debate on the political and strategic relationship between the EU and Russia. A review by Tobias Gerhard. [continued…]

Mr Eickelman, a US professor of Anthropology and Human Relations at Dartmouth University, Massachusetts, and senior advisor to the American University of Kuwait, recently visited Maastricht to share his views on “The Knowledge and Practice of Democracy in the Middle East”. A review by Eliot Rolen. [continued…]

US student Amrit Dhir continues his exploration of those sports traditions that are foreign to his home culture, yet thrive in Maastricht. This time Amrit introduces us to the world of Korfball. [continued…]

Far away in the cold and northern province of Friesland, a 22 year-old young Dutch woman by the superb name of Hille Morel van Mourik is passionately dedicating her free time to unravelling the mystery of the Limburg Goatriders. [continued…]

Crossroads writer and photographer Rosanne Rademaker takes us on a walk through Maastricht’s beautiful public cemetery. [Rosanne’s photo-reportage]

A multi art exhibition will on March 1 open the festivities around the International Women’s Day in Maastricht. Mondiaal Centrum has invited three women artists from South America, Alessandra Siviero, Cecilia Agüero and Amara Valencia, to present their work at its Atelier Mondiale. [continued…]

In the 18th century, while most of Europe was shaking off centuries of superstition and beginning to prepare for the age of reason, the lands which now form the Dutch and Belgian regions of Limburg were terrorised by hordes of flying devil worshippers.

Let’s follow Dutch author Reggie Naus on a fascinating journey into Limburg’s past to find out more about these strange creatures, who were to go down in history as the (in)famous ‘Bokkenrijders’, or Goatriders. [continued…]

Four huge, genuine dinosaur skeletons are currently on exhibit in Maastricht. [More photographs and press release…]

Maastricht’s city website reports that a total of 18.6 million tourists visited our city in 2006. Crossroads writer Hania Piotrowska speaks with Stephanie Hameleers at the tourist information office about Maastricht’s image and assets. [continued…]

“When Luc [Soete, Director of UNU-MERIT] said, ‘Shyama, why don’t you talk about the lessons for the economics of innovation from your Franco-Indian Reconstruction Project,’ I said, ‘Luc, do you really want to know about the economics of toilets?’ He said, ‘Why not?’,” recalls Indian economist Dr. Shyama Ramani.

Dr Ramani will discuss the potential of technology and innovation for development at the 2008 Charles Cooper Memorial Public Lecture and Debate at Maastricht University. [continued…]