Maastricht, Netherlands - There are no tulip fields, windmills or canals in Maastricht. If you are looking for Dutch stereotypes, you will not find them here. The Netherlands' southernmost city and the birthplace of the euro is worth a visit. Positioned at the interface of several European cultures, it is a blend of Burgundian lifestyle, Rhineish cheer and French cuisine. Located on a finger of the Netherlands wedged between Germany and Belgium, Maastricht is a 20-minute drive from the German city of Aachen and about an hour from Cologne.
It is also a 20-minute drive from the Belgian city of Liege, where French is spoken, and about an hour and a half from Brussels. Germans, French, and Spaniards have all ruled Maastricht, and all have left traces.
The city's inhabitants have the same singsong in their dialect as the nearby Rhinelanders. Signs at Maastricht University are only in English because almost half of its 12,000 students come from outside the Netherlands.
"For the Dutch, Maastricht is almost a foreign country," remarked Stephanie Hameleers of the Maastricht Tourist Office. Its hilly landscape is not the only reason. The city is Burgundian in the sense that its inhabitants attach much more importance to fine clothing than do the Netherlands' Calvinism-steeped Northerners, who are renowned for their understatement.
So diverse is Maastricht's restaurant scene that the city is considered the culinary capital of the country. The prices are accordingly steep, but visitors do not have to dine at a place that employs an award-winning chef. To find the best French fries in town, for instance, just look for the long queue at Reitz on Markt square, in the city centre.
The city suddenly became world famous in 1992, when the Treaty of the European Union was signed there. Also known as the Maastricht Treaty, the agreement was a blueprint for economic and monetary union that led to the introduction of the euro. It also attracted many international institutes, companies, and organisations to the city.
Maastricht has seen a strong upswing as a venue for conferences and fairs as well. The European Fine Art Fair/TEFAF, to name one, is among the most important art fairs in the world.
The city's strongest trump card is its stock of old buildings, thousands of which are protected as historic monuments. The architecture of some of them is more typical of France than of the Netherlands.
Maastricht, it is said, has a church for every Sunday of the year. Not all of them still serve as houses of worship, though. The Gothic-style Kruisherenkerk, for example, was converted into a luxury hotel with a glass lift in the nave and red plush in the chancel.
A former church on a street called Bonnefantenstraat is now a university auditorium. And the 800-year-old Dominican Church has been converted into a bookstore that the Guardian, a British newspaper, dubs the most beautiful in the world.
High saddle roofs are characteristic of Maastricht's houses. Earlier, every resident of the city was required to have enough supplies on hand to last several months of siege. The supplies were often stored in the spacious attics.
Among Maastricht's most popular attractions is the labyrinth of underground passageways used by besieged inhabitants to sneak up on the enemy. Guided tours through the casemates with domed vaults, powder magazines, and bombproof hiding places are only in Dutch, however.
The Town Hall, built on Markt square in 1665, consists of fully identical halves. The city was under dual sovereignty at the time. The curved main stairway leads, on the left side, to the Dutch wing designated for the dukes of Brabant. On the right, it leads to the French wing for the prince bishops of Liege.
A German designed the tower, Flemings supplied the tapestries, Italians did the ceiling stuccowork and the French provided the furnishings.
On Fridays, Town Hall is surrounded by market stalls. Many Germans and Belgians flock to the city then. On Saturdays, too, many visitors from Aachen, Cologne, and Germany's heavily industrialised Ruhr Valley stroll through Maastricht's crowded city centre.
Everyone sits outdoors when the weather is sunny. A favourite spot is the Vrijthof, a square over an old Roman burial site that is dominated by the 70-metre-high tower of the Church of St. John as well as the Basilica of St Servatius, the oldest church in the Netherlands.
Maastrict remains very Catholic. Some 10,000 candles are lit every week in the Basilica of Our Lady. The city is also a centre of the region's pre-Lenten Carnival celebrations. As in predominantly Catholic Cologne, Carnival is known as "Vastelaovend" in the local dialect.
More than a few visitors to Maastricht no doubt conclude that the European Union, which agreed to the Maastricht Treaty, should adopt the Maastricht way of life too, namely opting for the best of all worlds.
Internet: www.vvvmaastricht.nl, www.niederlande.de.
