VFYW: A History Of Darkness

For contest #342, we find ourselves in country with a particularly terrible past.

(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)

A quick heads up: the contest will return after Labor Day, using the photo at the very bottom of this post.

Our super-champ in Berkeley is bummed by the change of scenery this week:

Every Friday morning when the new photo arrives, it becomes the new wallpaper on my iPhone’s screen, and there it remains until it gets replaced upon receipt of the next photo the following Friday, ad infinitum. By the time the photo for Contest #342 appeared, I had been enjoying the rich, red, rough symmetrical beauty of my current wallpaper and I wasn’t at all happy to give it up, especially after I got a look at its replacement.

A quick followup from our sleuth in Bend:

Thanks so much for using my dog Perla’s photo last week! Interestingly, her DNA report showed that she is part Aztec Xoloitzcuintli.

a hairless and coated version via Wiki

Turning to this week, here’s our Coloradan super-sleuth in NJ:

You are KILLIN’ me. This week is even worse than last. I’ve got nothing.

This next sleuth goes with Mumbai:

All the clues point to India — the vegetation, the bizarre crumbling down apartment building. Exposed rebar is so attractive. The builder would call this “superficial spalling,” only in need a little patching and touch-up paint. No, this building is like a rock, would never crumble and fall, like all those other identical apartment buildings that fall down seemingly every day in India.

But could this be Miami Beach? It too has both palm trees and crumbling condos. Naw, I don’t think anything in Florida looks quite like this (yet). It has India’s signature all over it.

Another India entry, from a sleuth in Alabama:

Challenging entry this week, so I’ve got a WAG: Port Blair on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands off the coast of India. I’m basing that on the palm trees, which could be Areca Palms, which are not native to India, but according to indiangardening.com are found in these islands. From there, I’m going with one of the largest cities and a place that apparently struggles with Internet access, hence all the satellite dishes. That’s all I’ve got. 

Here’s a “last-minute guess” from our UWS super-sleuth from NYC:

Yangon, Myanmar? For no reason other than a) this looks like Southeast Asia; and b) there’s teak furniture on the balcony. Yep, that’s the extent of my sleuthing this week ... if you can call it that.

Another sleuth jumps to the other side of the globe (and pens one of my favorite VFYW lines in a while — “I poured leftover wine from book club into a Gandalf goblet”):

I got nothin’ this week. Not even sure I’m in the correct hemisphere. Palm trees. Low roofs. Sky more white than blue. Someplace warm. We can glance a couple vehicles behind the chair and the balcony rail, but not enough view to make a guess what they are. I can’t even tell if we are driving on the left or right side of the road.

The sign mid-view appears to be Latin alphabet, making me think we aren’t in Southeast Asia or the Middle East? I can’t quite read it. This is like a bad eye test. I tried an assortment of guesses, to no avail.

There are many satellite dishes on what appears to be an apartment building at right. I tried “satellite tv logo Africa,” “satellite tv logo South America,” “satellite tv logo Latin America,” “satellite tv logo India,” “satellite tv provider logo -directv -at&t -United -States.” I tried various versions of “satellite dish on roof XXXX” in Africa, India, Caribbean, etcetera. Can’t find the logo or, if I've seen it, I didn't recognize it.

I poured leftover wine from book club into a Gandalf goblet and scrolled through pages and pages of “orange balconies” and “orange arched balconies” and “orange balconies high rise.” I tried “balcones naranjas” in case searching in Spanish would help. I tried "balcons oranges" for French.

Over the week I poked at this view off and on, probably spending 4-5 hours with nothing to show for it. Grrrr. At this point, I’m hoping everyone else who hasn’t won previously gave up and I’ll win simply for being willing to look the fool with a bad guess.

Here’s Chini with a better guess: