Category: Contest

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book, courtesy of Blurb. Have at it.

by Chris Bodenner

We added a new feature to the window contest today if you missed it below the fold:

If you know of a cool and relatively easy way to present this information a dynamic way, please email us at VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. A free window book to the reader whose idea we use.

by Chris Bodenner

This week’s puzzle was the least participated yet, likely due to the August lull, Andrew’s absence, and the level of difficulty. A reader writes:

Not an easy one, is it? The roofs and shutters suggest southern France, or possibly northern Spain. I am gonna go with southern France, and just to make a guess: Languedoc region, possibly Corbieres mountains.  Lezignan?

Another writes:

Now, we’re talking.  I’m still waiting for an image of such obscurity that no one possibly could imagine what it is.  This is close, but there are clues…

The blue sky, shingles on roof, water in the background, and well-made wood doors indicate Mediterranean origin.  I was tempted to choose a Greek island, given the blue laundry hanging in the background that matches their flag.  (Europeans do not like displaying flags after the wars, but perhaps there is a subliminal draw to the color.)  But I’ll have to choose Spain.  The wood doors and black shudders look old-Spanish.  Low vegetation in the background would seem to indicate one of the Balearic Islands.  For an English readership of the Dish, I’d have to lean towards Eivissa.

Another:

I have no fuckin’ clue. Although, I will say the thing that came into my mind first was the courtyard/rescue seen from the In-Laws with Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. I think they were in Honduras … so I’m going with Honduras for this very valid reason. Wikipedia tells me the capital is Tegucigalpa, so that will be my city.

Another:

This is a tough one for sure. My gut feeling is that this photo was taken on a Greek island.  There is a hint of water in the background, indicating a rocky shoreline.  The place is obviously arid, hot and sunny, with scrubby vegetation.  It could be any number of places along the Mediterranean, but Greece seems most likely.  However, with some 9,000+ miles of coastline, I don’t even know where to start. So I’m just going to throw Crete out there as my final answer.

Another:

I wasn’t far off on Sarajevo. I had Savannah within a few blocks. But when I looked today, I had no blessed idea where to start. My husband leaned over, took one look at my screen and said, “Sicily.”  So hey – I’ll go with that.

Another:

Architecture and landscape suggest Italy. There’s a beach in the background, and based on the shadows, I’m going to guess that the beach is on a northern coast. The hills don’t match the southern Adriatic coast, and the architecture lacks the Venetian influence of the northern Adriatic. That leaves Sicily or one of the smaller islands nearby (just doesn’t feel like Sardinia). When I went into Google Earth, I couldn’t find any towns on Sicily that quite matched the orientation of the beach shown in the picture. But I found one on Isola Lipari, so I’m going to take a stab at this and say Acquacalda, Italy.

Another:

It looks just like a building from a spaghetti western, so I’m going to guess suburban Granada, Spain.

Another:

Mallorca, Spain? The un-whitewashed shallow-sloping buildings look like solidly southern European farmhouses, or at least buildings that have been constructed in an old farmhouse style. The landscape – rocky, arid and treeless – looks more like Spain, and I think the complete lack of trees suggests one of the Ballearic islands. I found a few pictures using Google, of similar buildings in Mallorca. Even if I am right, I don’t have the local knowledge or the fortitude to really dive deep and identify the exact location using Google satellite view, so will leave that to someone else!

Another:

This is the hardest yet!

Perhaps I’m missing some locality specific clues?  Stucco and red tile roofs; dry summer weather but not tropical vegetation. Compound is raised a little above a bay.  Where do they have such compounds these days?  That’s not clear.  The housing seems rudimentary though it has modern electricity.  But old buildings and water trough.  Is that a laundry cart on the balcony on the left?  A hostel or inn at some Mediterranean beach – but the grounds aren’t very well kept.  I spent at least ten hours touring what seems like every bit of the coastline of the Med with Google Earth – as well as the close-by islands (and Mexico!). Since Google Earth is insufficient in some areas to identify specific house types, I know I didn’t cover everything.

In the end I found little evidence of compounds like this and it seems to me that the modest beach buildings of yore in Europe have given way to relatively upscale housing.  At some point, my mother, who has been getting quite involved with these contests, called to say she had seen a travelogue of Madeira and it reminded her of this picture – the same types of houses, hills, etc.  Unfortunately, the travelogue was probably from the ’50s.  So, even though I did not see this site on my several trips around the island, I’m going for the island of Madeira, which belongs to Portugal.

I hope “ten hours” was hyperbole. Another:

Very typical Corsican shutters and red tiled roofs. Rough Mediterranean terrain is from the northwest part of the island. I’m going with Calvi, Corsica, France.

Getting warmer. Another:

Sardinia!  Buildings look Italian, roof tiles look Italian, shutters, windows and doors look Italian, hinges look Italian. Landscape in the distance looks like rocky, low lying green brush, thorny, sun-drenched Mediterranean. Angle of photo could be looking north, which would put us on the west coast because of the slightest sliver of water to the right, which clearly puts us smack dab…

WAIT! Suddenly, Sardinia seems too wealthy for this photo. Something about that shack in the center middle-ground says Sicily instead of Sardinia. And the windows on the two foreground buildings – a little more worn, a little more closed up, a little more weary of life… But something about the portal in the courtyard wall seems more Roman that Sicilian? Google maps along the southwestern coast of Italy are too poor to conclusively pinpoint the location.

So I’m heading back to Sardinia. And since I have to get back to work, I’ll say Buggerru.

Oh so close. Another:

Such a sad little courtyard! I hope the potted plant on the right makes it through the summer. I’ve toyed with a few island and coastal locales along the Mediterranean, but I’m going to have to go with Sardinia, Italy, near Alghero.  I know, I know, I’m a zillion miles off!

About 80, actually. Another:

I am a sailor in the U.S. Navy, and I lived in La Maddalena, Sardinia for 11 years, from 1995 to 2006. I was stationed aboard the submarine tenders USS Simon Lake (AS 33) and USS Emory S. Land (AS 39). (The Navy no longer has a presence there, as everything was shut down and the ship sent back to the States in 2007.) La Maddalena is a small island in the Maddalena Archipelago located at the northeast tip of Sardinia; the largest town on the island is also called La Maddalena. The sub tenders were actually located on another small island, Santo Stefano, which is less than a kilometer from La Madd.

Anyway, as soon as I saw this week’s window, I felt homesick. The terrain in the image is identical to La Madd’s, and the building looked familiar, like one I used to pass while walking to the beach. After some googling and Google Earthing (which made me even more homesick), I believe the view is from Residenza Cala Francese, 07024 La Maddalena, Sardinia, Italy, looking north-northeast. Some better pictures of it can be found here.

I feel pretty confident about this one.

As you should – congrats!  We’ll get a Blurb book out to you shortly.

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to find a good way to display everyone’s guesses, particularly in a dynamic way, but I haven’t had the time or know-how yet.  If any readers have suggestions, please email them to VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Here is what I whipped up with Google Maps (“A” marks the answer):

Money zoom:

See you Saturday for the next installment.

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book, courtesy of Blurb. Have at it.

Update: We switched out the first photo (from Delft, Netherlands) because of a revealing file name accidentally left it.

A reader writes:

Hmmm that’s a tough one.  Could be a number of American cities.  At first glance, it reminded of my old Atlanta neighborhood of Inman Park, but the houses are a little too close to the road.  I just got back from Rochester and it looks similar to some neighborhoods there.  Or it could be in Midtown Memphis, or Savannah, GA or just about anywhere.  Well, let’s just go with Rochester then.  It’s kind of a randomly nice place.

Another writes:

I think I’ve been down this street.  My guess is Washington, D.C. – Takoma Park.

Another:

The moment I saw this I knew exactly where it was.  The 19th Century French Architecture turned into cheaper apartment housing, the narrow streets, low hanging power lines, sleepy trees, tropical looking plants on the bottom right of the screen – all of these clues point to New Orleans.  Just imagine some beads hanging from those power lines to complete the picture.

Another:

ADT sign – USA
Ditto the huge, roll-away trash can
Ditto the architecture.
Big front porches – warm climate
Apparent lack of basements – high water-table, ergo seaside.
Palmetto trees.
Palmetto state?
South Carolina.
Charleston?

Another:

The “free classic” Queen Anne architecture is typical in the U.S.  (This style of architecture was popular in the U.S. from the 1880s through the 1910s.)  One of the houses has, at one time, been converted to have an apartment upstairs.  This was commonly allowed for in U.S. cities through post WWII zoning changes made to address the housing shortage at that time.

The one item that narrows this down is the plant material.  I think that is a small palm tree in front of one of the houses.  This limits the search to the coastal areas of the Carolinas Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.  It also includes most of California and all of Florida.  I’m going with Jacksonville.

Another:

Palm tree suggests southern or possibly West Coast. There appears to be a crepe myrtle, which we have a lot of here in Texas. It’s been over 30 years since I was in Galveston, but I seem to recall that it had lots of similar cool old houses. My guess is Galveston.

Another:

Okay, the first item to narrow the search is the Live Oak, which is present from Texas to Florida and up to Virginia.  The next clue would be the Sabal Palms, which would suggest the Southeast.  Palms are typically present in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.  Live Oaks, however, aren’t present in South Florida, so these two clues narrow things down to Central Florida up to South Carolina and west to the Gulf Coast. (What appears to be a maple leaf doesn’t help much because maples are present in too many places.)

On a hunch I’m going to narrow the area down to either Savannah or Charleston.  Given the age of the homes, it would likely be in South Charleston but the topography would indicate not on the water. Radcliffeborough neighborhood of Charleston is my final answer.

Another:

Ah, if only I’d seen this sooner.  I’m sure I’m the thousandth person to email this: Savannah, Georgia. I only know it because you’ve run a photo from the same window before.

Great memory (a better one than us) – and among only a few readers who noticed.  Others were more intuitive in their search:

The obsession item in this pic for my wife and I became the black recycling bins with the yellow lids.  Throwing in search terms yields a ton of results for Australia, which would have been a nice curve ball, except for the car and street sign giving away right-side drive.  No  front license plate either, so cross out Virginia.  So you’re back in the Deep South and googling municipal recycling programs on a Saturday night  (thanks for that, by the way).

I don’t love love love this answer, but based on what I can tell, a little location bias, and their use of black recycle bins (although I couldn’t confirm those stupid yellow lids!), I’m going with Savannah, Georgia.

Another:

My first instinct is that this photo was taken in Savannah.  And after Googling “yellow trash can lid,” I found this article about a new curb-side recycling program in … Savannah!

This one wasn’t so difficult.  And I’d love to while away the afternoon searching Google Earth for the specific address, but instead I’m going to go enjoy this beautiful day, confident in the belief that — even though one of your readers will no doubt be more specific — I finally got one right!

Another:

I’m going to go with 21 E 39th St, Savannah, GA.  My first thought was a street somewhere on the Charleston, SC peninsula, but Spanish Moss isn’t very common in the heart of Charleston.  The architecture and foliage still indicate somewhere in the South though, so Savannah was my next guess.

But I figured I wasn’t going to be the only one to guess Savannah;  I’d have to find the exact location to have any chance.  So a brute force attack using Google and Bing maps was the plan – Bing’s Bird’s Eye turned out to be the most useful.  I had some clues from the picture: a south-facing two story, adjacent to another two story, close to the street. The style of roof helped as well.  Having visited Savannah before, I knew a little about the city’s layout and started my search south of Forsyth Park and somewhere between Broad and MLK, thinking that was the area most likely to have homes like the ones in the picture.

Bingo. Found them on E 39th Between Drayton and Bull.  Only took up about 45 minutes of my lunch.

Another:

Aargh!  This contest is as frustrating as two weeks ago, when I nailed Lausanne, but couldn’t find the exact spot in town on the ‘net.  I wonder if a decade from now there will be VFYW Anonymous groups spread across the country, helping each of us overcome our obsession.

So this week I’m using Google maps to virtually “walk” up and down street after street, crossing my fingers that A) I’ve got the right nation/city and B) I’ll come across the exact address before someone else does (probably someone who lives on the flippin’ block or something).

Another:

Oh, you couldn’t of made this any easier!  A couple of hours in the car looking in the Victorian District of Savannah and I finally found the house. The blue house is located at 16 East 39th Street, between Bull and Drayton Streets.

The house is in an area that has become know in recent years as the Starland District, owing to the fact that a dairy, the Starland Dairy, was located on Bull between 40th and 41th street. I grew up just south of this area. My earliest memories are of the horses and milk wagons leaving the barn and clopping down the street outside my bedroom window in the morning and returning in the afternoon. My brother went to the movies at the Victory theater, we brought gas at the Gulf station and I loved going to the Franklin 5&10 cent store all on Bull Street. Good memories from a long ago place. Thanks for the challenge and the stroll down memory lane.

Thanks to you – and everyone else who played this week.  As far as the winner of a free window book from Blurb, we have to go with the admitted VFYW addict who also correctly guessed Lausanne (one of our most difficult contests to date). Congrats!

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. Country first, then city and/or state. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@theatlantic.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book, courtesy of Blurb. Have at it.

This week’s contest was quite a bit easier than last week’s. A reader writes:

OK, this is now getting fun. I see snow on the ground, so it has to be somewhere cold enough in July to hold that kind of precipitation. I don’t believe there is much snow in anything habitable or urban right now in Europe, which would be my first guess given the architecture (new and old) and bullet-spangled buildings. So I want to shift to the southern hemisphere as I do not believe this is anything Himalayan or former-Soviet. There is only one country I can think of with similar architecture, flora, and weather and that is South Africa. I’ll go with Cape Town.

The snow is a red herring; the photo was taken in the winter (though emailed to us in July). Another writes:

The snow on the ground eliminates a lot of possible locations (it ain’t Africa, Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank, etc.), and the location is hilly as well.  I have to think it’s in the former Yugoslavia, and I’m going to go with Pristina, Kosovo.

Another:

Grozny, Chechnya?  Looks like heavy gunfire pretty recently with time to rebuild. Snow on ground shifts time of year from present, but that’s my guess.

Another:

This was difficult (as usual), but I’ll put my money on Tskhinvali

in South Ossetia. My initial guesses (based on the bullet-ridden wall) were Kosovo, Chechnya or South Ossetia. The buildings suggest Eastern European/Caucuses-region architecture. There are a few modern apartment complexes in view, so I discounted the possibility that it would be Chechnya (which was heavily damaged and impoverished after the conflict). The fact the main building still remains damaged suggests that any conflict was recent (so discounting Kosovo). The only town in South Ossetia that could be as built-up as this picture suggests is Tskhinvali.

Another:

Tskhinvali? Obvious bullet holes first made me think of Africa, then I saw the snow.  The buildings seemed to represent Georgia better than the Balkan damage of the last decade.

P.S.  I’m not just participating for a copy of the book; I teach 7th grade Social Studies and have offered a reward if any of my former students wins the contest before I do.  So my reputation amongst “my minions” is at stake.

Another:

I was going to guess the Republic of Georgia, but something made me change my mind. I’m going to move a little westward and guess Turkey. The picture brought to mind the novel “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk, so I’ll go ahead and guess the city that the novel takes place in: Kars, Turkey.  Can’t wait to find out I wasn’t even on the right continent.

Not the right continent. Another:

This is a depressingly common sight in Croatia and Bosnia fifteen years after the last shots were fired, too common for me to make anything more than a wild guess of which town or city this house stands in. Unfinished three- or four-story houses are another all-too-common sight in this land of big dreams and poor planning. My guess is Karlovac, Croatia.

Another:

Tropoje, Albania? Clearly European architecture. Impacts indicate ordinance less than .50 cal. The size and disposition of the houses indicates a city less destroyed than one would expect in Chechnya, and greater in population than what one finds in South Ossetia.  I don’t think the caliber weapons and the type of engagement indicated thereby fit with either of those either.  Tropoje is a guess based on the assumption of a conflict related to Kosovo.

Another:

My best guess is somewhere in Bosnia & Herzegovina.  Sarajevo fits the bill, but that is too obvious.  You like your views a little wonky.  Tuzla was a major flash-point in the ethnic wars of the former Yugoslavia and very close to Serbia, making it my best guess.

Another:

Srebrenica immediately came to mind when I saw the photograph, so this a gut-feeling guess.

Another:

Because everyone and their mother is going to guess Sarajevo, I’m going with Germany, East Berlin.

Everyone and their mother were correct. The following is the most impressive entry we received (and since the reader also correctly guessed Lausanne last week, he doubly deserves this week’s prize of a Blurb window book):

Oof, this is much harder to pin to down than last week. OK, start with clues:

Bullet holes = former war zone, recent enough to have not been fully repaired
New buildings in mid- and background = war over sufficiently long enough for some rebuilding
Snow on ground and pitched roofs = somewhere it snows/rains regularly
Architecture = Europe

So we’re clearly in the Balkans, and either in Kosovo or Bosnia – Dubrovnik and Osijek (the main Croatian towns that might still have war damage) would not, I’m guessing, have this kind of dense modernist residential area. A Google search for “bullet holes Sarajevo” returns this photo of a mortar-damaged wall, taken in 1997 by Masaki Hirano, that has the same colour paint as the wall in the contest photo. Photos of Pristina suggest different architecture (also, the fighting in Kosovo lasted for a much shorter time, making it, I guess, less likely that there would be extensive damage to non-strategic residential areas – no siege, so no entrenched front lines). Then, with a little more digging, I found this photo – of the same building, taken from a different angle. Unfortunately, the blog post isn’t entirely clear where it’s of – could be Sarajevo or Mostar – but based on the Hirano picture, I’m going to go with Sarajevo, Bosnia as this week’s answer.

Unfortunately, having never been there, I don’t know the city well enough to figure out the exact location on Google maps. I also have never asked anyone to marry me there, nor do I have time to get there and back for a photo before Tuesday. However, if it swings the prize my way, I can link the city to Kevin Bacon in three moves:

1) The 2007 film, The Hunting Party, directed by Richard Shephard, starred Richard Gere as Simon Hunt, a TV journalist who goes into a downward spiral reporting on the Bosnian war
2) In 1990, Richard Gere starred in Pretty Woman alongside Julia Roberts
3) Julia Roberts appeared alongside Kevin Bacon in the film Flatliners, also released in 1990.

Gotta be worth a try, right?

Well worth one. Some honorable mentions:

Sarajevo? This is the best I’ve felt so far regarding the contest, but there is no way I can compete with folks who actually travel to or google map the exact location to the actual coordinates. Gosh, you would think Dish readers could find Bin Laden if you made it into a contest!

Another:

This is clearly from one of the war-torn countries of the Balkans. I was in Bosnia last summer, and this photograph definitely remind me of Sarajevo, where the “Sarajevo roses” – holes in the sidewalk from mortar shells that have been filled in with red paint – are next to gleaming new buildings, which in turn are side-by-side with buildings covered with bullet holes, even to this day, 15 years after the war ended.

Another:

The bullet holes in the concrete wall make me think of this video of Russian dissident, writer and crackpot Eduard Limonov hanging with accused war criminal Radovan Karadzic and firing rounds from a sniper rifle into Sarajevo.  So that’s my guess.

From the YouTube caption:

Episode from “Serbian Epic”, by Pawel Pawlikowski and Lazar Stojanovi?, 1992.  Evidence exhibit at the Hague International War Crimes Tribunal, ICTY