While hundreds of thousands of Dutch people were visiting Amsterdam for the Canal Parade, I went to the eastern city of Nijmegen, also for homosexual purposes, which I won't specify. 😁
It was not a sunny day, but I avoided most of the rain. The barge past the bridge seemed to be struggling to go against the current.
Nijmegen looks like a German city because it was bombed heavily in WW2. The HEMA department store showed displays of the damage, as well as the rebuilding, which was also a disaster to be honest, and its own history, including some of its classic products.
This history explains why a leftist university town is also one of the most car-centric cities in the Netherlands. The city center where I took this photos is very walkable though.
One of the locals I talked to said she hated Amsterdam whenever she visited it once a year for an anarchist book fair. What my photos don't show is that I didn't see any luxury shops or tourist traps here. Like other medium-sized working-class cities such as Amiens, Essen or Norwich, the high street included the independent convenience stores, shisha lounges and tattoo parlors that would be pushed to outer districts in larger or richer cities. It's not a bad atmosphere, it made me feel at home.
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I've lived there from 2017-2024 , hated the parking costs if you wanted to go shopping in the innercity :) Nice work on the shopping windows .
!BBH