(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.)
Some highlights from this week’s writeup:
Several movie clips of elaborate fight scenes.
A funny and informative video about bats.
Lots of cool public art, including several inspired by Michael Jackson.
A meal made by a celebrity chef.
The designer of the glass pyramid outside the Louvre who persuaded the French public to love it.
Thank you, Chris, and all the other Dish staff. Made my day. I’ll go for two free years of the Dish. Though I’d take part in the contest for free — well, the views in Europe anyway. Snowy Alaskan scenes and hot Southern Hemisphere anywhere are not in my repertoire.
Here’s all the other Dish staff — lying down on the job during a FaceTime Dish meeting this week:
From a recent winner:
Just to let you know, I received the VFYW book yesterday (preceded by tracking info, at that). Many thanks!
I have a question — something that’s had me, and likely others, wondering for quite some time: Are the regular contributors (the cocktail maven, the ski nerd, the architectural super-sleuth, the food and hot-spring reporters, etc.) provided with the answers in advance? Given the complexity and erudition of those contributions, all of these folks must need a fair amount of time to compose them.
That, in turn, raises a broader question: What options (and potential duties or roles) remain for contestants who’ve already won?
As to the first question, nope — they are just that impressive. As to the second, winning sleuths are always welcome to carve out a niche to cover, for the fun of it. Have some professional expertise to bring to bear, such as our resident biologist who covers native wildlife? Or a personal passion, such as the cinephilia of the Berkeley super-sleuth? Feel free to bounce ideas off me (contest@andrewsullivan.com), or just jump right in. (There’s actually a new opening for the cocktail coverage, as you’ll read below.)
Here’s a followup on last week’s contest from our super-sleuth in West Orange:
Did you know that Lego makes an umgebindehaus piece??? Here it is in my childhood set of Legos, sent by my parents for my own kids to enjoy now:
Wunderbar! Another followup:
The link for the AI podcast last week doesn’t seem to work. (Those links have always worked in the past.) Instead, the link reverts to a generic page. Is there any way to troubleshoot this so that the link brings up the audio file? Those AI “tours” are fascinating (though sometimes a bit cloying or spooky), and I’m sure lots of the contest aficionados would appreciate continuing to be able to hear them. :-)
The curator of the AI pod — our super-sleuth in Sydney — responds:
Thanks for letting me know, and it’s great that people enjoy the feature. So I’ve rechecked the links for this week’s contest in [country redacted]. The slideshow works, but the AI pod link is here. To get to it, though, you’ve got to click over to Audio Overview or Studio … so it looks like the changes Google made to it have made it harder to directly link to the podcast.
I’ll experiment more over the weekend, but we may need a brief hiatus due to technical and AI overlord issues! I think it’s due to Google making it more restrictive and private to access the link. Google also gives me the option to download the audio file, but it’s massive (22 MB). There are some alternatives like downloading it and putting it in a Google drive. The same will apply for last week’s pod for Vysoká Lípa, and here’s the link.
From our super-sleuth in Bethlum:
I just wanted to let you know that I started perusing the fascinating treasure trove that is the VFYW Contest Archive to remind myself of venues to visit. With possible retirement coming up, I’m finally putting a spreadsheet together of places to see so I have some organization when it is Go Time. I have now added the city for which I won my VFYW book, Granada. How could I miss that?
I may not re-read all of the entries, but so many of the views were enticing that I have to make sure I don’t leave anything out of my travel wish list. And when we do visit one of the views, I will be sure to read all the submissions from the incredible VFYW readership before we go. Of course, the early years were quite sparse in narrative, so it is also amazing to see how this side venture has grown in its 10+ years of active existence. Thank you for the work and the joy/challenge it brings to us all.
Andrew and I are chuffed! On to this week’s view, here’s a somewhat vague guess from our super-sleuth in Shiprock:
Somewhere, Anywhere?
I’m too lazy to submit an actual guess this week — just like last week! Which is super-embarrassing, because just a few weeks ago — possibly while last week’s photo was being taken — I was bike-packing with my family along the Elbe River from Prague to Dresden, which puts me right in the middle of many of the locations that other sleuths wrote about, and obviously not too far from the photo location itself.
But I was also interested in the story of the haunted mill in Růžová-Děčín that another sleuth wrote about. The story of the mill is essentially the same story that Albert Camus tells in his play The Misunderstanding, which I read in high school French. Camus had spent time in České Budějovice, Czechoslovakia, which apparently inspired the play. Presumably he heard the story of the mill and adapted it for his drama.
Chini circles the right spot this week:
The super-sleuth on the UWS settles on South America:
I am totally stumped on this week’s View. I wanted to say Asia, but I just couldn’t find it. Although the skyline has a bit of a Tokyo look to it (minus Mount Fuji), it also appears to bear a resemblance to that of São Paulo. So that’s my sorry excuse for a guess. Those unusual markings on the curved road and the one below it must be major clues, but I’m unable to make anything of them.
From the beginning of another sleuth’s entry:
At first I thought it was Korea, because the blue bus in the upper-right corner looks like the character from the Korean bus show that my son loves. The buses from the who do appear to look like typical Korean buses:
But then I turned to the lane markings which, after realizing they were upside down, I was able to translate as “lane” in [language redacted].
Our super-sleuth in Alexandria gets to the right continent:
I love this week’s view so much! (Is that Cyrillic lettering on the highway and towers?) My son got a baby Fulbright when he was a college senior to study Persian in Tajikistan for five months, and we visited him in Dushanbe. It was great! There was super weird architecture mixed with beautiful 1930s buildings everywhere, the people were so so nice and welcoming, and everything was really cheap ... plus great hiking ... plus the world’s largest flag pole. What else do you need?!
According to Wiki, the flagpole in Dushanbe is actually the 5th tallest in the world. — CB
The city planners really loved Sputnik-era-designed towers like the ones depicted, combined with huge beautifully tiles mosques and heroic statues of big golden men. They don’t really go for abstraction there; we visited a huge disco/restaurant in the shape of the region’s most prolific agricultural product: a melon. The latitude is similar to the US East Coast, so their tree canopy is familiar deciduous trees like we have here in the view photo. I read that Dushanbe was planning to build an elevated highway, like the one shown, so that’s my guess.
Here’s the beginning of the entry from our super-sleuth on Park Avenue:
My initial thought was Japan — maybe Tokyo — but then I noticed that the cars were on the wrong side of the road. So Taipei? I spent quite some time looking at TV towers there before giving up. So then I was off to TV towers across Asia …
Our super-sleuth from Santa Monica also thought Tokyo at first:
For this week’s view, I had a vague Tokyo sense with the elevated highway built over the waterway, but then I had a false aha moment as I was watching the really quite bad Marvel movie Thunderbolts on the plane back from Europe: I was sure I saw one of those towers as Florence Pugh wandered around Kuala Lumpur, and the vegetation certainly fit more than infamously concrete-y Tokyo. But, on closer inspection, the exit signs are in [language redacted], and I know Malay uses the Latin alphabet.
A previous winner looks to South Asia:
OK, my wild guess: based on internet searches of the trees, the architecture, that skyline, the elevated and winding roads, and nearby (I think) train lines, along with what I presume are cell phone towers that look like the Eiffel Tower, is in or outside the city of Bengaluru (f/k/a Bangalore), India.
I can’t wait for you to tell me that this is Pittsburgh.
Not Pittsburgh. Here’s our super-sleuth in San Mateo:
I hope you had a wonderful vacation. We missed you, and we missed the VFYW. I have a suggestion: the next time you take vacation, give us a VFYW from the early days of the contest to tide us over. No scoring or reporting needed from you, just a chance for us to practice the craft of VFYW-ing in your absence.
As far as the building from which this week’s photo was taken, I’ve apparently gotten extremely rusty during your absence, and so I’m not even comfortable making a SWAG, or even an UNSWAG (UNScientific WAG). But I can still conjure up the VFYW Reimagined:
Getting to the right part of Asia is our super-sleuth in Riverwoods:
Why is it Busan, South Korea? JUST BECAUSE! :)
I’m tired and cannot continue searching. All the clues appear to be right in front of me: the unique towers with signage, letters on street below highway, skyline, no palm trees, etc. But even those clues didn’t lead me to the window. I’m looking forward to the sleuths who know how to improve picture clarity, and to seeing their reveals on all the signage. That has to be the giveaway, right?
Right:
Glad to have you and the contest back; I was feeling some Dish withdrawal. This week required some brushing up of my very rusty Chinese. Simplified characters suggesting the People’s Republic of China were visible on the street below and on the nearest tower:
机 (jī) — presumably the first part of 机场 (jīchăng; airport)
China it is. The DC super-sleuth notes:
I see that we’re back in southern China just three months after the notoriously difficult contest #467 (Sanya). This week’s contest wasn’t quite as tough as that one, but was a bit tricky nonetheless.
Here’s Brookline again, after translating the writing on the road seen above:
Then there’s the tower:
广汽本田 (guǎngqì běntián) — presumably referring to GAC Honda (automobile manufacturing joint venture between GAC Group and Honda) based in Guangzhou.
Searching for radio and television towers in Guangzhou soon produced a match: the Guangzhou TV Tower (built in 1991) — not to be confused with the newer tower known as “Canton Tower” (built in 2010):
L: the Guangzhou TV Tower / R: the Canton Tower
That’s the city. And here are those towers drawn to scale, courtesy of the Sydney super-sleuth:
We are looking at the Guangzhou TV Tower, not to be confused with the new Guangzhou TV Astronomical and Sightseeing Tower, which has been renamed Canton Tower — partly to help VFYW contestants from ripping out what’s left of their hair. To show you the contrast, here are the two side-by-side:
If you live in Guangzhou, you’ve been getting excellent TV reception since 2009!
Park Avenue gets pretty close:
Attached is an overhead photo of what I think is the building:
Is the window from Guangze Noodle Restaurant??
Nope, it’s from a hotel. From our super-sleuth in Warrensburg:
I’m writing this just as the news breaks about Charlie Kirk. Coming on top of Russia’s drone incursion into Poland and a few days after Israel’s strike in Doha, it’s one of those moments when it feels like the world is coming apart. I can’t quite wrap my head around things just now, and while I know I should probably spend my afternoon reading more on these stories, I just need a distraction before I grapple with everything.
A good time, in other words, for the VFYW.
The key for me was the towers, with the one in the foreground being fairly distinctive. While I can’t read Chinese characters, this had to be China, so I started looking at TV towers in major cities. Guangzhou was fairly easy to identify from here — though my previously noted frustrations with Google Maps in China meant that finding the right hotel was tough. I can trace the rough area by working backward from the TV tower, but is it the Shenghao Hotel at Ziyuangang Rd, Guangzhou?
Nope, but it beats reading Twitter this week. From a previous winner, here’s some visual perspective on the Guangzhou TV Tower’s proximity to our hotel:
From our super-sleuth in Prince George:
Hi Chris, I hope you had a very restful break! I’m not sure how you keep up with everything. Just another quick attempt for this week’s VFYW; I think it’s taken from the Guangzhou Jinfa Hotel (Hostel?) in Guangzhou, China.
Yet another hotel is picked by the Hinckley super-sleuth:
7Days Inn?
We visited Guangzhou with our beautiful adopted darling daughter in week number one, 24 years ago. This sure seems like the right city. Hope someone nails the hotel and the window.
Nailing the right building is our biologist in Milwaukee:
The first clue for this week’s picture was the writing on the roadway, which turned out to be the character 机 (Mandarin: jī, meaning “machine” or “device”).
Second clue was one of the towers near us, which turned out to be the new Guangdong TV tower, or Canton tower; and the Eiffel-tower-looking one to the right of it is the old tower. China’s map offset was a challenge, but the new TV tower being a tourist destination, I was able to find an accurate tourist map. From that I looked at the layout of the roads and figured that we were probably looking at this intersection:
Zooming in on that intersection:
The photographer is in the third building, the white one labeled “China Mobile Wisdom” — but it isn’t either of the hotels in this screenshot. It appears to be the Hui Feng He Hotel, according to this map:
Here’s what the building looks like, courtesy of the DC super-sleuth:
Here’s the married couple in Falcon Heights:
Oh, you want a picture with the window circled? Dream on!
Brookline gets to the front door of that building and sees the address:
Since Google Street View is basically nonexistent in Guangzhou (and much of China), I had to employ other means to confirm the VFYW location. So when in China ... use Baidu Maps! I searched Guangzhou using the Chinese name of the Hui Feng He Hotel 惠风和宾馆 and eventually arrived in the correct building at 1315 Jiefang North Road:
From the Intrepid Couch Traveler:
Ok, I fell asleep on the couch. For like, several weeks. Rip Van Winkle style.
But now I’m back, and the contest this week has forced me to download Baidu Maps to troll the streets of China for HWW (Hard Window Weeks). Thank God for prominent radio towers and simplified Chinese on the roadways. Despite the new mapping technology, I could not find a picture of the windows to even hazard a guess, but it was taken from the Hui Feng He Hotel.
My couch now has a weekend alarm to make sure I do not miss another contest.
Many more sleuths also named the Hui Feng He Hotel, but that’s not right exactly. Our ski-nerd sleuth clears up the confusion:
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