The non-Holland Netherlands

07/01/2010

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I may owe some people an apology. There's probably not many of them, but still. The thing is, I distinctly remember using the word Holland for the country with Amsterdam as its capital. But in reading stuff after Stephanie and Sarah left, I ran into this. So apparently, "Holland" and "the Netherlands" are not interchangeable terms. Holland is merely a province (nowadays 2 provinces, South and North) of the Netherlands. Oh and to think that here in the Balkans we just about kill each other over names... [Shudder]. 
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Photos from a White City, Full of Color

06/03/2010

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The home city of our guest Tal, Tel Aviv, is 101 years old and its name literally means "hill of spring" (Aviv or Abib = spring, in Hebrew). Tel Aviv is the first all-Jewish city in modern history, first founded by some 60 families as a Jewish neighborhood near Jaffa.

A part of Tel Aviv is known as The White City, a reference to the many Bauhaus/International style buildings built in the city in the 1930s by German Jewish architects. As a result, there are more Bauhaus buildings in Tel Aviv than any other city in the world (Germany included). Whole neighborhoods were built in this style - a total of around 4,000 buildings, of which only about a quarter have been renovated. Tal tells us that many of them are dilapidated and you wouldn't think they're a part of some architectural site of interest. But not this one, I guess...
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