VFYW: Sunken Ships And Syndromes

For contest #359, we find some warmth in the cold dark north.

(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.)

Last week’s winner gets the location again this week, but here’s the beginning of her entry:

This week’s photo made me think of Vienna, with its wide orderly crosswalks and pedestrian/bike friendly streets. But the building style is not a match. The photo is probably from Western Europe, but maybe Western Canada? I zeroed in on the hotel Dusty is obscuring, which appears to be a short word given the size of the letters spelling “hotel.” The angle brackets after the hotel name are unique, so I focused on them.

Another exclaims: “So many blurry reflections! I still don’t know what the weird arch floating in space is.” Me neither actually, and I’m the one who took the photo. Another is also scratching his head:

European, wet, winter. Street arrows look Dutch. But I can’t figure out what the fuck that black curved thing is just hanging in mid air. I’ll go with the Netherlands.

Our favorite sleuth in Toronto returns:

Long time, no guess. Since I’m working on a deadline to finish a novel and have now reverse-alphabetized all of my books, organized the kitchen junk drawer, and memorized the prologue to The Canterbury Tales, I figure I can take a crack at this week’s VFYW before REALLY getting back to work.

It’s Europe, I think. Northern, rather than southern (no air conditioners). Cars driving on the right, so not Britain or Ireland. Big modern Western city, with 5G towers metastasizing earnestly. The traffic lights remind me of those I knew in Germany. Can’t decide if the protrusion at top-right is a wind vane, lightning rod or maybe a big communication tower — à la the Berlin TV tower, but it’s the wrong shape.

The starry reflections in the hotel windows made me assume there was something big and bright opposite, and given the general “coldness” of the image, I’m going to assume it was shot in December near one of the famous Weihnachts/Christmas markets in Germany. But my editor is calling, so in the interest of time, I’m going to swing for the fences with somewhere in the Potsdamer Platz neighbourhood of Berlin.

Another guesses London:

It seems like a very clean city. And it’s a perfectly designed street intersection. But outside of that, I couldn’t find any other good clues.

Another guesses Brussels: “The buildings look too new, but I feel truthy today, so I’ll go with my gut.” Another goes with Zurich: “Possibly the Bahnhof Str. at the Bahnhof end.” Another looks to the Iberian Peninsula:

I don’t have time for a full guess this week, but I was just in Lisbon for one day in December 2022 on the way to a family trip in Morocco. My boyfriend and I met my aunt, uncle and cousins (all NYers) in Lisbon after an all-night flight and spent the day walking around the city with an incredible tour guide. The street in this week’s photo gives off the exact Lisbon vibes I saw during my 24 hours there, so that’s my guess! More specifically, I’d say somewhere along Avenida de Libertade.

While walking around and taking lots of pictures, at some point the VFYW came up, so I explained the whole contest/concept to my family. They said it was insane and wondered who would/could possibly spend time guessing each week. And my 20-year-old cousin said something along the lines of “this is dumb and makes no sense.” But in case he’s trolling me and actually submitted a photo to the contest after the trip, I couldn’t miss the opportunity to submit an entry.

Chini submits his weekly view from above:

From the super-sleuth in Southport:

For the last two contests I went with my gut and got the country right. It doesn't make any sense to me that you would put windows from Switzerland in contests just a few weeks apart, but once again I have a strong “Swiss vibe.” And the radio tower in the upper-right could be the Swisscom communications tower near Bettingen, so I’m going with Basel.

Another gets to the right region of Europe: