Category: Contest

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

I never spend any time on VFYW, except for reading people’s entries. But I looked at this photo and finally felt that shock of recognition. I’ll bet a lot of money that’s California, probably South Bay, somewhere south of San Francisco, near the 101, north of San Jose. Those mountains, the blue sky, the intense construction, the pervasive signs of car culture – it is an intensely Californian scene, possibly SoCal but I’ll bet on San Mateo, Redwood City, something like that.

Good luck to me! I want to appear in the initial surge of people getting it kind of right, another “Another.” ; )

Another:

I’ve never entered the contest before, but I would swear that the view looks like Salt Lake City, UT. I was just there for a convention, and it looks like the area near the Salt Lake Plaza Hotel next to Temple Square, where I stayed. I’m not nearly good enough to guess and provide you with maps or other photos … oh well, so much for my first try!

Another:

The last time I had a feeling about southern Africa and ignored it, I was right (Luanda, Angola). So despite some evidence to the contrary (trees look vaguely northern, parking spots on the left suggest driving on the right, etc) I’m going to throw out Windhoek, Namibia.  I spent a semester studying there my junior year of college, and the mountains in the background, as well as the couple of red-roofed buildings, jumped out at me as being characteristic of Windhoek.

Another:

I feel like the hills and sorts of buildings in the background are similar to Windhoek, Namibia. If not, I’m thinking it’s somewhere in Central Asia, Mongolia, or Chinese desert/mountain provinces such as Inner Mongolia. The statue really suggested to me Mongolia at first, as it seemed somewhat Soviet in style.

Another:

The picture has “Former Russian State” written all over it. I don’t know why. Mainly, I think, because I spent time in the Russian Far East, and my hostess was from Kazakhstan. I thought, oh hell, let’s do a Google image search for cities in Kazakhstan. I came up with some buildings and views that looked almost exactly like the city of Aktobe. If it’s not Kazakhstan, then it has to be somewhere in the Middle East or Central Asia. Kind of has a Dubai vibe.

A professor writes:

The window in question is the capitol building in Baton, Rouge Louisiana. The statue is of Huey Long.

In the statue he is handing out free books to schoolchidren with one hand and blessing a model of the capitol building with the other. Some interesting facts: (1) The building from where the picture is taken is the same building where Long was assassinated. (2) The area used to be the campus of Louisiana State University. Long could not get enough money for LSU from the legislature, so he illegally had the state pay LSU a massively inflated price for the downtown land on which the capitol was built. (3) Long always wanted everything to be the best, so of course the capitol he had built is the tallest in the country and at LSU he had built what at the time was the biggest swimming pool in the country – so big that it could not be practically used for swimming meets. Long also saw to it that LSU had the biggest marching band in the country. He composed the song “Every Man a King” with the LSU band director:

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(4) Long almost certainly would have lived had the doctor who treated him not been slowed down by road construction. So his death was literally brought about by his own infrastructure investments.

For all the good Long did, he left two legacies that have been toxic for the state: (1) corruption, and (2) extremely low personal taxation and over-reliance on unpredictable mineral taxes. For a while, Republican reform governors such as Mike Foster fought against both of these, but Bobby Jindal has been an apt pupil of the second plank of Longism. During a time when oil prices were unnaturally high, and Louisiana was awash in Katrina related aid, Jindal actually reversed Foster’s tax reform which has led to three years of  budgetary tricks worthy of Long and massively strained public services that are not.

Another:

Damn, normally cars are useful in determining the country or region, but no cars here.  All we have is the construction and the hills that suggest a semi-arid region.  This could be Southern California, or it could be Mongolia, for all I know.  I’m going to take a stab in the dark and suggest Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.

Another:

This is taken in the dynamic city of Almaty, Kazakstan. The statue is a memorial to the Kazak poet Abay Ibrahim Qunanbayuli (1845-1904) as seen from the rear.

Another:

So this is potentially a shot in the dark, but I think I’m at least in the right city.  The view looks like a steppe region, and the Soviet-style monument/statue in the foreground, coupled with the construction boom and prosperous-looking (and well-groomed) cityscape make me think it’s a city awash in oil money.  I think it’s Almaty, Kazakhstan, though the lack of any Google Street View coverage has me scanning Google satellite imagery to no avail.

It may be no avail anyway, since half of the city looks under construction in satellite imagery and the cityscape probably changes dramatically on an annual basis.  That being said, I looked at the major hotels in Almaty on TripAdvisor (because you never know) and found a photo someone took from inside one of the rooms at the Intercontinental: the building under construction in the TripAdvisor photo looks an awful lot like the building under construction in the right of your reader’s photo:

I can’t be quite sure your reader’s photo was taken from the Intercontinental (since the parking lot in the foreground of the photo doesn’t match to anything in the satellite imagery above the hotel), but I’d say it’s in the general area of Republic Square in Almaty.  Having never been to Asia before, it’s a wild guess, but hopefully an educated one.

By the way, for what it’s worth, this contest has taught me a lot about Almaty.  It looks wonderfully green, well laid-out and pleasant – pretty much the opposite of what you’d expect of Kazakhstan from “Borat” (though no one ever claimed Sasha Baron Cohen was shooting for accuracy).

Another:

This city scene in what looks like a desert basin could be a whole lot of places, but let’s go for somewhere where they’ve actually got money for construction. The writing on top of the building near the middle is indecipherable, but the closest any of us can get is to say that it looks Hebrew. That puts us in Israel. Why there’d be a Roman statue in an Israeli city or settlement is an exercise left to the reader.

Another:

Funnily enough, my sleuthing today began absolutely on the wrong track. When I glanced at the photograph my first thought was of the American west, and from the scale of the buildings most likely a mid-sized city. And so I spent a fruitless hour or so searching in vain for images of park statues and hillside-chalked Jesuses in Albuquerque and Boise.

At first I didn’t pay much attention to the yellowish sign on top of the building across the plaza. But then figuring it might be the best clue, with a little tweaking I was able to just barely glean the five ending characters: AATAP. Most vexing: while most are Roman letters, others seemed vexingly strange and illegible. Unfortunately Google doesn’t offer wildcard searches for word fragments, though – as I would discover – this I don’t think would have helped me. So I began thinking some about what languages might have double A pairs (for I could make out two sets in the sign) not many came to mind, and of those that did the geography didn’t fit.

And then, oddly, the name Ulaanbaatar just kind of popped into my head. The terrain certainly is appropriate so I looked investigated a little. Bingo! I quickly discovered the name, rendered in uppercase Cyrillic is ???????????, which explains the characters I wasn’t able to decipher on the mystery sign.

From there the pieces fell into place. First I learned that it’s Ghengis Khan’s (“Chengiss Khaan” locally) image you can see on the mountainside off in the distance. New searches for park statues in the city yielded that it’s Lenin, who we see keeping watch over Sukhbaatar Square. This week’s entry was definitely taken looking in a north-northeasterly direction from the front of the Ulaanbaatar Hotel, which is located at Sukhbaatar Square 14, Ulaanbaatar 210645, Mongolia.

About two dozen readers correctly answered the Mongolian capital. One writes:

Immediately upon seeing the image, I thought “Central Asia boomtown.” The bare hills, construction, and Soviet-style statue in the foreground were good hints – and the lack of Chinese characters meant that we weren’t in Inner Mongolia or Xinjiang. My guess, never having lived in Central Asia, but having lived in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, was that we were looking at the back of Lenin. Sure enough, a Google of Ulaanbaatar Lenin Statue led to a picture of a statue in front of the Ulaanbaatar hotel. I’m guessing that we’re on the fourth floor of the hotel, facing down on the statue, and have attached a google image with the window circled:

Another:

Hey, I know this one.  This is from the third or fourth floor of the Ulaanbaatar (UB) Hotel, in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, looking south towards the mountains of the Bogd Khaan National Park, which the Mongolians claim is the oldest national park in the world.  Great hiking in those hills.  The statue down below is Lenin.  The Mongolians tore down most of the Stalin statues with the end of communism but left Lenin (he looks a bit forlorn, and at night is surrounded by streetwalkers).

The construction cranes mean the shot was taken sometime during Mongolia’s very recent resource boom, likely this summer,  since there is actually green grass visible.  The season for green grass in UB is all of about three months, with the last snow often in early June and the first snow arriving in early September.  From the shadows and lack of pedestrians (Mongolians are NOT morning people) I would guess early morning, maybe 7 am, or even earlier.

The UB Hotel is the old communist flagship state-run hotel that now lags behind several newer competitors and survives largely on tour groups that don’t know any better.  It has a certain faded glory to it, but is far more more faded than glory.

I spent four years – or as Mongolians would say, four winters – working in UB.  Mongolians are wonderful people and Mongolia is one of the most beautiful countries in the world.  UB itself is unfortunately not very attractive – a dusty city full of bad Soviet architecture and snarled traffic. The winter is very long and VERY cold, often down below -40, but it’s one of the sunniest cities in the world and Mongolians enjoy winter so everyone is in a good mood, unlike the long depressing grey winters of northern Europe. I highly recommend a visit during the short summer months.  Best time is between mid-June and mid-August.

Pet peeve:  Mongolians spell the name of the capital Ulaanbaatar (red hero, in Mongolian), and that’s the spelling the U.S. government, The UN, and everyone else uses in the diplomatic world. But the AP Stylebook spells it Ulan Bator and stubbornly refuses to change, so the NY Times and most other media (even Wikipedia!) use Ulan Bator, which is just flat out wrong.  It’s as if they were still insisting on Peking instead of Beijing.  I wrote them when I was posted in UB to lobby for the change but they never responded.

Anyway, thanks for featuring Mongolia!

Another:

I started tooling around Google maps this morning at 5am. My partner woke up and said, “Happy Birthday. Are you on Google Maps again? For Andrew Sullivan’s contest? Make your own damn cake.” Undeterred, I ignored a phone call from Mom and 49 “Happy Birthday” Facebook notifications, until around 1 pm, when I finally found it. The clues that helped me were the empty streets and orientation of the sun (must be morning, facing south), the “Lenin-wearing-a-dress” statue, the cut-off corner of the white building on the left, the rounded end of the center building, and the construction cranes to the right.

I believe the photo was taken from the third floor of the UlaanBaatar Hotel, and based on the number of trees to the left of Lenin and the slight inclusion of the entrance roof structure, this room in particular. Here is a screen grab of the view on Google Maps:

Determining this week’s winner was one of the most difficult yet. According to the submitter of the photo, it was taken from the 4th floor of the hotel. Of the Ulaanbaatar guessers this week who have correctly answered a window in the past without winning, three guessed the 4th floor. One of those three has participated in 26 window contests, while the other two have only played a handful each. So awarding the prize to that persistent reader seems like the fairest way to go. The winner wrote:

If I am correct I have nothing to base a “deserving” claim on except for past unrewarded guesses: Tromso, Talinn Trieste, Zanzibar, Cartagena, Galveston, Amsterdam, Sichuan Province, and I don’t even remember. My partner thought that is Cyrillic on the buildings across from the view. I thought it was a Lenin statue, so this was confirmation. After balking at the sheer amount of large Lenin Statues and going city by city, it became a Google Image search. So I guess the 4th floor, on the left side of the Ulaanbaatar Hotel, Sukhbaatar Square 14, Ulaanbaatar 210645, Mongolia.

Congrats to him and everyone else who got Ulaanbaatar. One more email worth reading:

This is the View I’ve been waiting for since I got hooked on the contest with an early puzzle from Yangshuo, China – an exotic locale I recognized immediately but couldn’t quite believe how much the place has changed since I was there (now nearly two decades).  I knew straight away I would waive my “spend no more than 15 minutes on this contest” rule to suss out the exact location and reminisce a little.

We were there on a Beijing-to-Moscow train in 1994 and were excited about a one day stopover in one of the most remote capitals of the world – a place that beckons from its location on the map alone.  There were just over a dozen Western travelers on our train, nearly all booking through Monkey Business, a travel agent based out of a hotel room in Beijing that has been cutting through the Trans Siberian visa and booking morass for independent travelers since the late ’80s.  In those days, the train had something of a reputation for danger, and we weren’t disappointed by the amount of open smuggling we witnessed at the Chinese border (money changing hands, floorboard panels of the train revealing bundles of Chinese made jeans and leather jackets bound for Russia’s emerging black markets).  The amount of drinking and subsequent heated discussions were also remarkable – nine days on trains will do that – but we never saw anything spiral into bloodshed and no one on our trains had anything stolen.

At the time, I likened Ullaanbattar to the offspring of a Soviet military base and inner city Bridgeport Connecticut stuffed into the lovely valleys near Missoula, Montana.  The Russian-designed runway sized streets had barely a handful of cars on them, while the central square was deserted except for a few very fresh faced soldiers standing around the giant statue of Sukhbattar on his horse (“the Lenin of Mongolia” who became the “Red Hero,” the literal translation of the city’s name).  The statue is said to be at the precise location where his horse took a whiz (a good omen among the horse-riding descendants of Ghengis Khan) when he took control of the city in 1924 – a memorable story even if unlikely.

We were there on a Sunday when nearly everything was closed, so most of the Westerners with whom we were traveling drifted off to the biggest hotel bar to resume drinking – I believe it was the very same one from which this view was taken.  The only one even remotely modern at the time, but still pretty musty, with high prices and appalling food.

We elected to wander the streets instead, coaxing a local contact into serving as a translator/guide.  He flagged us a ride in a private car – in the wrecked economy following the Soviet Union’s abandonment two years before, any car was in theory a taxi too – and we were taken out to a very distressing market behind the state department store.  On offer were moldy-looking potatoes, rotting cucumbers, and soggy leeks – we only hoped that the good stuff had gone earlier in the morning.

In the afternoon we got a better look at the “suburbs” of the city – thousands of circular gers or yurts packed along alleys and behind fences that stood in stark contrast to the boxy apartment buildings and factories the Russians had built.  We were invited into several by the nearly always welcoming and surprisingly jovial Mongols.  Perhaps we were a curiosity, or they sensed an economic opportunity, but no adult ever asked for a thing and seemed as eager to question us as we were to question them.  My strongest memory was sharing a bitter tea in a ger with the father of teenagers, who was mystified as to the people in two posters on his walls – the only art in the home were Michael Jordan with tongue wagging in mid flight and a Hong Kong pop princess.  After further quizzing, her revealed rather wistfully that he would have preferred a picture of a man riding on a horse in the countryside.  My romanticized narrative is that older Mongols still pine for the open steppe and the glories of conquering Asia, but their kids will be heading in another direction.

This week’s view and a little rummaging around on the web reveals how things are have gone in Mongolia since our brief visit.  The opposition parties that started democratic reforms in 1990 (with hunger strikes and protests not unlike the Arab spring of this year) finally got control of parliament in 1996, but the communist party won it back control in 2008 and more riots have followed.  Things sound uneasy for now – perhaps other View guessers will enlighten us on the politics of the moment.

From the View, it appears that some Russian influence remains (after all, that is the back of Vladimir Lenin we see, still given great prominence).  However, I’d guess the Chinese economic explosion is the bigger power these days, with newer buildings and those cranes in the background looking like so many other Chinese cities.  It also sounds like China and the multinationals are starting to flock to the country for its mineral prospects.  I just hope the Mongol spirit and Buddhist traditions we barely glimpsed are not getting swamped by the modern and foreign.  Stuck between and serially conquered by Russians and Chinese in recent times, Mongolia deserves to retain at least some of its own rural nomadic identity, no matter how many mines get developed  or its capitol gets built-out.

On to my guess – and sorry for the novel.  I’m not usually in the trigonometry side of things, but I think we are on the 6th floor and east side of the building, because of the elevation and we seem to be set back enough that we can’t see the hotel marquis or those ornate lampposts.  Here’s my  screen capture to show you where I think it was taken:

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

Hmm, the cars, trees, and housing stock say Northeast or Midwest.  It’s also the 10th anniversary of 9/11 this weekend.  This is New York City, isn’t it? Well it’s obviously not Manhattan, but that doesn’t really narrow things down much, since the other four boroughs all have areas that could look like this.  I guess I’ll go with a guess in Queens, which is the borough that most looks like this scene.  If only I could figure out what that hospital in the background on the right is…

Another writes:

I think that reddish brown building in the distance is UMass Boston in Dorchester.

Another:

The cars on the right side of the road indicate we’re in America, and the style of dormer window suggests we’re somewhere in the mid-Atlantic. Based on the lack of high-rise buildings, the gold dome in the top right is almost certainly the State House in Trenton, New Jersey.

But where in Trenton? A bit of Google Earth searching leads me to the new Jefferson School building, more specifically the Evans Avenue facade next to the parking lot entrance. There is exactly one house on that block of Evans Avenue with a tree in the front yard (seen at the left of the photo), the sixth house in from the Brunswick Avenue end of the block. Unfortunately, the lack of Street View on that block prevents me from getting closer, but my amateur google-fu suggests that it’s 90 Evans Avenue, Trenton, NJ, and the height at which the photo is taken suggests we’re looking out the third floor window.

Of course, someone else probably got to this more quickly and has a photo of the window with helpful arrows and such, so I won’t get the book. But my creeper quotient for the week has been filled, and I’m proud of myself for getting it right.

Another:

The tall red building in the back on the left looks suspiciously like the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minnesota.  While I don’t have the time nor the skill that most VFYW pros do, a quick scan of google maps suggests this photo was taken from a house near 8th and 3rd street NW.

Another:

One of those Views where I feel like I’ve been there before, but without a telltale sign that would help me narrow it down.  I’m pretty sure we are in the North East or Mid-Atlantic states, near a college, and in a town with about 100,000 people or so.  Burlington, Rochester, Framingham, Binghamton, or State College all seem sort of possible, but I’m going with the too large Syracuse against my better judgment out of loyalty to a friend who teaches at the university – and because there may be an orange dome-like structure on that far brick building – which fits with the school colors.  More importantly, given that I have no hope of a direct hit, it is geographically central to my other possible guesses, and I’m limiting my potential mileage losses in the household contest.  My wife is going with State College, PA.

Another:

Okay, now I think you’re just being cute.  That’s Andrew’s window in Adams-Morgan, isn’t it?  I don’t even know that building in the background, but I feel like I’ve seen it in northwest DC somewhere on a visit. Anyway, if I’m right, welcome back from P-town…

Thanks, but still in Provincetown. Another:

Without verifying with Google, I was instantly struck at how much that VFYW resembles my hometown of Greensburg, PA.  The streets, the streetlamps, the tightly bundled homes with ample trees and rolling hills, and what sure as hell looks like Westmoreland Hospital on top of the hill in the background.  I’m pretty sure that it can’t be that – I don’t remember the last time you feature a view from a town of 14,000 – but I’d say we’re looking out from on office window at Seton Hill University in Greensburg.   In any event, it made me nostalgic and excited to be quitting DC for a weekend to get home and see the folks.

Pennsylvania it is. Another:

Finally, my hometown!

Using the gold tower of Western Pennsylvania Hospital as a guide, you realize that the picture was taken from north of the hospital.  The only building that is tall enough in the area to take the picture is the new Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.  The picture was taken from its Faculty Pavilion.  Given the height of the tree, my guess is on the 7th floor.  There are so many departments (Safe Kids, Otolarynology, Pediatric Dentistry) – I’m not sure which office – so my official answer is:

7th Floor, Faculty Pavilion, Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh, 4401 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15224

If you follow the link and click three clicks to the left, you will find the building in the picture, 4520 Penn Avenue.  One click to the right will show you an entrance to Allegheny Cemetery.  The tree in the picture is in the far corner of Allegheny Cemetery, final resting place of Stephen Foster.

Thanks so much for including Pittsburgh in VFYW!

Another:

I lived in Pittsburgh for 11 years, so there are far too many stories to tell.  The first thing I thought of, though, was that this is right next door to two huge cemeteries that we used to hang out in. In Pittsburgh, the cemeteries function as parks – I’ve had many dates in those cemeteries, eating take-out thai food and drinking beer from the pizza shop down the street.  We once had a midnight punk show on a secluded hill, and after the groundskeeper got tired of trying to keep people out, he started giving rides to people who couldn’t find the spot.  The cemetery is huge – it’s about half the size of central park – and I miss it so much!

Another sends an image of the children’s hospital:

Another:

I’ve been trying to guess your contest for a long time. Occasionally I was able to get as close as a specific city.  Sometimes my best guess was along the lines of “probably somewhere in Asia. ”  I never sent an entry in; figure I’d wait until I can get a little more precise.

Turns out this week’s window is a quarter mile from my home.  It’s in Pittsburgh’s Lawrenceville neighborhood.  Specifically, the Children’s Hospital of UPMC Faculty Pavilion building.  The view is looking southeast from the window shown.   The large building on the horizon is the Western Pennsylvania hospital.

Another:

I was born in the former St. Francis Hospital which stood on this same site.  This was the first impression I had of Pittsburgh some 40+ years ago, beginning a lifelong infatuation with the city.

Another:

The big building on the right horizon is the Western Pennsylvania Hospital – birthplace of my three beautiful daughters. I am so excited to finally get a VFYW, and as an expat far from home it’s nice to see my hometown. If I were there now I would walk down to Ritters Diner and get something to eat; I’m hungry.

Another:

I have spent way too much time staring out of the windows of Children’s while my three-year-old daughter was having and recovering from heart surgery (all went well and she’s like new now).

Another:

It saddens me that your reader is most likely at Ronald McDonald House under unfortunate circumstances. I hope all is well soon. For some comfort, I suggest your reader travel west on Penn Av just a few blocks to Primanti Brothers, where they put the french fries and cole slaw right on the sandwich. It sounds a bit weird, but it’s great.

No one who correctly guessed the children’s hospital has gotten a difficult window in the past, so the winner this week is the reader who crafted the most detailed and informed entry:

The golden dome of the Western Pennsylvania Hospital in the background is easily recognizable for anyone in Pittsburgh, so I’m betting you’ll get a lot of entries. There’s no way I’m going to beat the competition and win the coffee table book just based links to the Google map, so I’d better try to win you over with some analysis of the political and economic significance of the objects in the photo.

The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (now independent of the university) runs the children’s hospital, along with most of the other hospitals in the city. The building with the golden dome dominating the skyline is one of their few remaining competitors, the Western Pennsylvania Hospital. In response to the collapse of the steel industry, Pittsburgh has transitioned from a city manufacturing goods for export to a city that survives by providing services to the region. Health care and education are two of those services, and the city’s hospitals and universities are major employers. This is best illustrated by the fact that the former U.S. Steel building, the tallest building downtown, is now adorned with a big UPMC sign.

Pittsburgh has a conflicted relationship with UPMC. On the one hand, the company is a key to the city’s new economy, a big employer, and they run the best and biggest hospitals in the region. On the other hand, they don’t hesitate to throw their weight around as a profit-making company. They closed down an unprofitable hospital in a poor neighborhood, cutting jobs and making it harder for people in the area to access healthcare. They’re building new facilities, hiring at existing ones, forcing their competitors to scale back and specialize, and strengthening their ties with independent doctors’ offices.

Most recently UPMC proposed plans to offer their own health insurance program and kicked off a dispute with the Highmark health insurance company about whether UPMC hospitals will accept Highmark insurance. These actions leave UPMC balancing percariously on two axes, between vigorous free market competition and crushing monopolization, and between profitable business and vital public service. If you could figure out whether or not the size and influence UPMC in Pittsburgh is a good thing you could probably answer most of the pressing questions about healthcare in the United States.

By the way, from the guy who took the photo:

This looks out onto the Bloomfield section of Pittsburgh with West Penn Hospital the reddish building to the right. This is the one that I think might be better. In any case, these were taken from the 6th floor of the faculty pavillion at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh in Lawrenceville, PA. These were taken this summer. To be specific, these were taken from the lunch break/kitchen area.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

A reader writes:

A tough one. Modern casement window and the absence of pick-up trucks suggests Europe, but the buildings look North American. The roofs have too low a pitch to handle lots of snow. This, plus the grass, puts it in a relatively warm climate. The doorways are recessed, however, which suggests a windy/rainy area. The lack of people on the street and in the playground, plus the heavy curtains, means it could have been taken on a summer night in a northern latitude. So, because I’m out of time and ideas, while Norway and Scotland were my first choices, I am going to go for Wrangell, Alaska. Go figure.

Another writes:

I spy the Mendenhall Glacier in the background.  Juneau’s public schools and airport are also in the Mendenhall Valley, which would account for the playground-foreground and what appears to be a long, flat concrete space behind that.  As for the precise vantage of the actual window shot, all I can say it’s not from neighboring Douglas Island.  (Fun fact: if the VFYW contest existed 500 years ago, the glacier would fill the shot.  I only know this because I spent the spring of 2005 doing a play at Juneau’s Perseverance Theatre.)

Another:

No time for a detailed search – we’re actually heading out the door in a few minutes for a “crack of dusk” start on a Labor Day river trip up towards the Alaska Range, where I’m guessing this View was taken.  Glacier in the background is the big clue, with the American playground equipment behind some government-issue apartment buildings the other.  I suppose it could be somewhere down in SE Alaska, but my gut tells me we are looking at the back side of the Alaska Range near Delta Junction, which would make this Fort Greely.  My guess is we are looking out toward Trident Glacier coming off of Mt. Hayes from some new apartment buildings they are putting up as they ramp up expansion of an anti-ballistic missile program (North Korea is the apparent threat, perhaps to the nearby pipeline).  I’ll leave it to your Google sleuths to nail down the school or the apartment building and hope we hear from someone who works on base to tell us good stories about 1) how damn cold it gets there in the winter or 2) how damn muggy and buggy it gets in the summer.

A teaser of the correct location (city names are blurred):

Another:

I feel strongly that I’ve been there before. The closest thing I can imagine is a stopover in Rapid City, South Dakota nearly 20 years ago during an exhausting coast-to-coast move. This image looks like what I remember of the area around the Ellsworth AFB Air and Space Museum. The photo has an aura of military industrial complex, so I’m going with the air base hoping an air force lodge or child development center is somewhere on the property – though web searches refuse to confirm. Wish I had more time since this is probably Montana or Yugoslavia!

Another:

This is a photo of the United States Army Garrison Yongsan located in Seoul, Korea. The photo was probably taken on base. The red building might be one of the multiple child development centers available on base. I’m probably not even close, but by submitting an answer I will be forced to take my mind off of the contest for now.

Another:

I know a composer who wrote the soundtrack to a short documentary featuring an outpost in southernmost Chile, called “Das Dorf am Ende der Welt”, and the scenery looks just like the village in the film, which was Villa las Estrellas.  This is a picture from Wikipedia that looks like the village:

Another:

This one seems quite difficult, but I’ll take a guess.

The mountains seem newly formed, particularly off to the right.  The window itself seems simple in design – almost has a modern English feel to it.  The land is too sparsely populated to be England proper.  The cars are small in size, eliminating the US from contention.  It could be a Norway / Finnish area, but I’ll go to the opposite side of the world and guess Greymouth, New Zealand.  I recall taking a train ride across the South Island of NZ a decade ago, and the winding river below looked a bit like the river in the picture.  Worth a shot.

Another:

Window knobs remind me of my Bavarian childhood.  Doubt it is German Alps, so I will go with the Swiss and say Schwyz, Switzerland.

Another:

I’m not spending another damn afternoon google-earthing trying to find this place. Summer is ending here in NH and I want to enjoy what’s left of it. I have no clue where this image is, but it reminds me of the music video for Lifelines from A-Ha:

A-Ha are from Norway. Norway has glaciers. I believe there is a glacier in the distance in the image. The architecture also looks right from pictures I have seen of Norway. The window frame looks like a typical double-glazed European window my parents have in Ireland. Ireland is in Europe. Norway is in Europe. Therefore it has to be Norway.

Hurry up and send me another book. Christmas is coming and I need a new gift.

Another:

I’m sure you’re getting a nice variety of Arctic guesses for this contest, so I thought I’d throw another one in the ring. Not too much to go on here, but the absence of trees, the presence of glaciers, and the fact that you can see the sun means we’re probably somewhere in the far north. And I don’t see any of the tell-tale yellow Alaska plates. So I’m guessing Sisimiut, in the hopes that the Labor Day weekend guesses will be fewer than usual.

Surprisingly not. Another:

I am probably way off the actual city location, but this is definitely Iceland! I never got to go up to the northern part of the country, but everything in this photo (from architecture, to landscape, even to interior decor) is Icelandic. The mountains though are what’s messing me up. I can’t think of an angle around Reykjavik or its suburbs that would provide that view, and the northwest of Iceland has less settlements. There’s a mountain range right outside of Akureyri, and there’s a large body of water in the fjord there that leads up and out to the Arctic Sea, so I’ll go with Akureyri.

Iceland it is. Another:

Keflavic, Iceland?  Just a feeling.  But it looks like the housing that used to be part of the airforce base there.

Another:

The buildings are reminiscent of what one would see in the towns along Iceland’s Ring Road. Certainly the backdrop is as well.  As far as which town – well, that’s hard to say.  I’ll pick Hvolsvollur, which is big enough to have a motel and buildings the size of what’s seen in the photo.

Another:

I feel good about this one. It’s the Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland, shot from a second story window of what I believe is the Hotel Edda Nesjum. I’ve spent a lot of Google hours on some of these, and this one only took my about 20 minutes. My mother and I narrowed it down to a pretty high latitude by the vegetation and types of buildings pictured, we live in Southeast Alaska and have lot of glaciers, but everything else is pretty different. I did some googling and found a picture of the glacier on a National Geographic blog, which only identified Iceland. The curtains in the photo really screamed hotel to me, so I did some searches for glacier view hotels and matched the Edda Nesjum to that location and glacier.

I hope this puts me in the running. I’m about to start grad school and wont have time to get tied down on my addiction to figuring out these puzzles.

It is indeed the Vatnajökull glacier, but wrong hotel. Another:

I knew the second I saw this picture that it was from the window of a hotel in Höfn, Iceland, based on the architecture and the view of the glacier in the background.  From there it was just the matter of finding which hotel is next to one of the two preschools in Höfn. This preschool is Krakkakot, located at Víkurbraut 26. Hótel Höfn is next door. Its website actually shows two rooms that both have essentially the same view. I have never stayed here, but I do believe I had an unmemorable generic Icelandic lunch there 10 or 15 years ago.  A much better choice is to eat langoustine (miniature Icelandic lobster) at Humarhöfnin.

I know I have no chance at winning a book, since I’ve never even entered before (though I did have a view from my window last December), but on the very long odds that few people get this, maybe you could take into account the time that my answer arrived?

The reader was indeed quick on the draw, sending her entry at 12.43 pm on Saturday. Another sends a photo of the hotel:

Another:

This is the first one I actually knew the second it came up! I ended up in Höfn semi-randomly in September 2000. It was 113 degrees in Dallas one day and I just snapped and booked a trip to Iceland. Two weeks and a puddle jumper from Reykjavík later I was in Höfn. I stayed in another hotel just north of this one and was the last guest of the season.

It was semi-random in that I am Icelandic-American and had never been to the old country. Two years later I went back and  took my father so he could visit the farm where his grandmother was born on Vestmannaeyjar island, but it had been buried in the 1973 Edfell volcano eruption. The attached photo would be the VFYW if the house was not buried under 100′ or so of lava:

Another:

This looks just like Hofn, Iceland, looking northwest towards the glaciers Iceland is a beautiful and strange place.  I was on a fishing trip to Hofn in 2007, right before their economy and banking sector completely blew up.  I remember being shocked at how high the prices were for everything, our hotel room in Reykjavik cost $500 a night and the meal prices were like being in New York.  Knowing that Iceland only has three natural resources – fish, volcanic steam (which provide free heat and hot water for everyone) and grass (which is grown during the four long summer months and cut for hay to feed their horses and sheep through the eight dark months) – I didn’t see what could be so expensive about this place.  I hear it’s much cheaper these days.

Another sends the schematics on the right. Another writes:

I stayed in Höfn on June 15-16 of this year and instantly recognized the glacier in the background. Because this place is at 64°N latitude, it doesn’t get dark around the solstice and so we could see the glacier all night from our hotel room.  And when I say hotel room, I mean boarding school dormitory room.  In Iceland, the tourist season coincides with summer vacation and all over Iceland’s countryside, there are boarding schools that convert their rooms to guest lodging from June-August.

I’m pretty sure the glacier is Flàajökull, which is one of many tongues emanating from the gigantic (as in 2/3 of the size of Connecticut) Vatnajökull icefield.  A quick search of Google Maps pointed me to the schoolgrounds in the photo.  The school – I believe it may be both a primary (Grunnskolin) and secondary school (Framhaldskolin) in one complex – is located at the north end of Vikurbraut, one of the two or three main streets in Höfn, and which bascially translates to Boulevard of the Bays (I became somewhat fluent in Icelandic place names during my stay there). Wow, I can’t tell you exciting it is to recount a portion of my Scandinavian vacation.

Another tourist:

In 2009 my boyfriend and I drove the ring road that circles the country. Iceland has about 300,000 people and 2/3rds of them are in the Reykjavik area. Once you get outside of the capital built up areas are few and far between. We arrived in Hofn pretty late in the evening and were very disappointed that after almost two days of eating hot dogs at filling stations (the pylsur is a national staple) all the restaurants in town were already closed. Resigned to yet another gas station meal we bedded down at a hostel for the night. The next morning we were overjoyed to find a proper restaurant at Hotel Hofn. Never have scrambled eggs and toast been so welcome! (Our late arrival in Hofn was due doubling back and forth along the south coast all afternoon to make sure we got to see both the Jökulsárlón iceberg lagoon and Svartifoss waterfall. I’ve attached a few snaps from that leg of our trip.)

To me, this view seems so unique that you’ll get dozens of responses, but I guess not that many people have had encounters with Hotel Hofn. Iceland is an amazing and beautiful place. Thanks for taking me back!

We did get dozens of responses for Iceland, and more than a dozen for Höfn. But here is the winning entry, from the only Höfn guesser who correctly answered a difficult window in the past:

Either I’m lucky, or glaciers really narrow it down, but I found this one in 15 minutes on GoogleMaps. The photo was taken from a window on the north side of the third story of the Hótel Höfn in Höfn (also known as Hornafjarðarbærgives), Iceland. The glacier that gave it away is Vatnajökull (the largest ice cap in Europe by volume, Wikipedia tells me). If you visit the hotel’s website at you can see lots of pictures from inside the rooms, including one that – based on the shape of the window and the view over the playground – looks to be the very room:

Woot!  Third time right … third time lucky?

From the submitter of this week’s photo:

I was delighted to come home from traveling over the long holiday weekend to see my picture of Höfn, Iceland, as this week’s contest.  I noticed that some of my Flickr pictures of the town were viewed over the weekend based on people searching for “Hofn” so I’m hoping those were intrepid Dish readers and not just coincidence.

In case you need further information to determine the winner, the picture was taken from the third floor of the Hotel Höfn (counting the floors American style).  I believe it was room 202, but regardless of the number, the room was on the far western side of the north face of the main building.  The full address and google maps location is here.

One more image from a reader:

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

With a canal and boats between rows of houses, this can only be Venice or Los Angeles. I’m going to go with the latter because that’s the only place I have visited, having lived in LA for many years. To narrow down the location, I’ll just say that the picture was taken from a place close to Dell Ave., between the Venice Blvd and Washington Blvd intersections.

Another writes:

Hmm.  Water lapping up to the first level of homes.  The street inundated with water, impassable by anything but boats.  No subway stations visible. I’m guessing it’s somewhere in Brooklyn.  On Monday morning.

Another:

You gave us a picture of canals to entertain us during the flash-floods, right? I only wish the view out my own window (Somerville, MA) didn’t look so much like this one right now…  No way I have a winning guess, because I can’t do specifics, but I’m sure this is a canal in Bruges, Belgium.

Another:

I don’t know the exact location, but it kiiiinda looks like the River Liffey. Wild guess. I was in Dublin for only a week, and I don’t remember any houseboats, and those look like houseboats, but I’m not going to research this one. I have to get ready for my fantasy football draft!

Another:

I was too lazy to respond to the Budapest contest some weeks ago, assuming there would be many correct answers. Amazingly there were none.  So since I missed out on the contest in the town I live in, I now want to make sure I don’t miss the place I moved to Budapest from. So my guess is Little Venice, in London (specifically Blomfield Road, looking west).

Another:

Over the years I think I’ve wandered along every waterway and walkway in Venice and, since nothing in this photo looks familiar, my guess is any place but Venice. On the other hand, if it is Venice, please disregard the first sentence and accept the area near the Ghetto in the Cannaregio district as my answer.

Another:

The canals here don’t look Venetian.  The architecture reminds me of Amsterdam, but I think that might be too obvious.  Plus, when I was there a few summers back, I didn’t come across any of these houseboat-y things.  So with any luck, it’s a location off the beaten path. Delft, The Netherlands?

Another:

That looks like a canal in Amsterdam!  My memory of the area is hazy (must have been all the coffee from the coffee shops), but I know it when I see it.

Another who correctly answered Amsterdam:

Easiest one yet, but I have no idea about the specific window.

Another:

Last week’s contest was tough on us, but we are no doubt getting our revenge as you wade through hundreds of Amsterdam guesses.

Indeed. Another:

This is only my second time entering the contest, but I think I have a shot. I’m currently bunkered down, weathering out the hurricane, so despite the late hour, I couldn’t help but keep searching for the location of this week’s window. After some serious digging, I think I’ve figured it out … clearly a city famous for its canal houseboats. Definitely not Venice and certainly not Erie. My guess is Amsterdam.  The city has a lot of canals and a lot of houseboats, so where exactly is this photo located? I spent a long time on Bing Maps and on Google looking for the exact right location. I finally settled on the houseboats off of Binnenkant Road in central Amsterdam

Another:

Okay, so I immediately recognized Amsterdam.  And I wondered what was the catch.  I mean, did you really want to wade through hundreds of e-mails with “Amsterdam” in the subject line to find the one that pinpointed the exact window, along with a funny/romantic/embarrassing story to make it interesting?

But I was game, so I wandered around a bit on Google, looking for canals that had houseboats, especially the rectangular arks, on both sides of the canal, then checking for the red brick buildings with the distinctive roof line.  Prinsengracht looked promising.  Then I noticed that in my wanderings the name of the city had changed to Jordaan.  Wikipedia tells me that it’s a district in Amsterdam, not a separate city, but I thought what the hell, maybe that’s the catch I was looking for.  I still didn’t find the exact spot, but I’ve spent enough time looking so I’m going to go with one of the larger canals in Jordaan.  Probably won’t win me the book, but if I’m close enough to right it might count in a tie-breaker in the future.

Another:

This is unmistakably Amsterdam!  It is a house boat that is either right on the Amstel River or on a canal right off that river.  We took a photo from a boat tour of canals and the Amstel River:

I love the flowers all along the boat!  I knew when I saw the photo that I had seen that exact houseboat.  When I checked our photos there it was!  Our photo is taken from the opposite view point – we are looking up toward the river (I think) and the “view from the window” is looking down the canal (I think).   Amsterdam is one of our favorite European cities.  We have been taking our daughter there since she was six years old.

Another:

Amsterdam, Netherlands! My guess is based on my recession obsession with House Hunters International on HGTV. I fantasize about picking up and moving to someplace exotic whilst also being very thankful that my husband and I have jobs a safe place to live and can afford all of those wonderful extras for our kids, dance, swimming, soccer. But the show is cathartic and the Amsterdam episode was great.

Several readers mentioned that episode. Another:

House in the canal,
Architecture alongside,
Must be Amsterdam!

(Bonus points for answering in haiku?)

Another:

There aren’t all that many canals that allow houseboats, especially on both sides. This one feels to me like it’s on the west side of the city, and it has many 19th-century buildings along it but not, as far as I can see, any 17th-century ones. Therefore I will rule out the Brouwersgracht, the Prinsengracht, the Keizersgracht and the Herengracht. I don’t think it’s the Lijnbaansgracht, either – I know that pretty well, and the buildings are very uniform. Also, this canal is wider.  I thought it was the Marnixkade but there are only boats on one side of that. Ack! I am running out of options.

OK, I’m going to go for either the Prinsengracht on the west side, which has at least some 19th-century buildings, or the Nieuwe Prinsengracht on the east side. If only I were in Amsterdam now, I could just ride my bike to these places and check …

Another:

It’s definitely in the Amsterdam area. I just cruised through most of the canals there, thanks to the wonders of Google. Mini vacation, should have done all this research while at least sitting on a stationary bicycle. Can’t make up my mind though as to which gracht  is “the one”, as sometimes there are those pesky trees in the way to make identification hard for the impatient and the not-so resourceful. So I will go with Prinsengracht to make this short (and to finally get some sleep. Spent enough time on this as it is. Damn you for putting up a challenge one cannot resist!)

Another:

Much love for Amsterdam. My partner of ten years and I keep going back. It was our first real trip together and, as far as I’m concerned, Amsterdam is one of the most romantic cities in the world. Perhaps it was the company that made it so romantic for me, but the canals and the restaurants and the people surely played a part.

Another:

My husband and I took a trip to Amsterdam about two years ago. It was in early February and was very cold. We walked through the red light district, visited coffee shops, the Heineken brewery, and ate breakfast at Barney’s (which is perhaps one of the best breakfast joints in Amsterdam). I had the Irish breakfast and my husband had the Champagne breakfast and the rest was a blur. Amsterdam is quite beautiful with its maze of canals and boats. I will have to guess that this picture was taken from a houseboat on the Brouwersgracht canal in the famous Jordaan area. (Brouwersgracht means “brewers’ canal.” I read that its name derived from the many breweries that lined its banks in the 17th and 18th centuries.)

By the way, we were told that  it was dangerous to swim in the canals due to the many bicycles that have been thrown in there, either because of drunkenness, madness, or sheer ecstasy.

From a “prior winner, who is enjoying his copy of the book”:

The third possible intersection I found on Google Maps proved to be the correct location. The large building is the Osira Bernard nursing home. The rental houseboat from which the picture was taken is moored across from 2 Jacob van Lennepkade. Streetview confirmed the details of the adjacent wood-colored houseboat and showed the very window from which the picture must have been taken:

About two dozen readers also answered the houseboat at the intersection of Jacob van Lennepkade and Nassaukade. Three of them have guessed difficult windows in the past but didn’t win. Two of those readers have played the contest just once before. The third, and the winner this week, has been playing from the beginning and has gotten several windows:

Red arrows: window through which the picture was taken (top) or the the location of the houseboat (bottom). My husband used to live in the house indicated by the yellow arrow for three years. My sister-in-law also lived on this street with two of her ex-boyfriends, so we refer to this street as the exen kade. Despite all this, I (lowly American) was the one who pinpointed the location. Ha.

I realize there will be many angry readers out there, given the high number of precise and wonderful entries that didn’t garner the prize. But just know that the selection process can be really difficult and that all accurate answers to difficult windows are recorded for future reference.  Thanks to everyone for their efforts.

By the way, from the reader who submitted the photo:

Your recent View From Your Window contest (#64, Cannes, France) was a bit difficult, and you promised an easier one next week.  Well, you can’t get any easier than this:  Amsterdam.  Specifically, the view is from the first houseboat at the north side of the canal at the intersection of Jacob van Lennepkade and Nassaukade. (Here is a Google link.) The picture was taken at around 6:40 am on 7/3/11, facing east.  I was in Amsterdam attending an international conference on lung cancer.

But of course, you don’t need a reason to be in Amsterdam.  Amsterdam itself is reason enough.

(Archive)

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts.  Be sure to email entries to VFYWcontest@gmail.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book. Have at it.