Portraits

Apremont-sur-Allier (France)

Apremont-sur-Allier (France)

On a graceful bend of the Allier River in central France lies Apremont-sur-Allier, a village that feels lifted from a storybook. Golden-stone houses draped in roses and cobbled lanes that lead to the river create a setting so perfect that it belongs to Les Plus Beaux Villages de France. Once a medieval quarry village supplying stone for great cathedrals, it was lovingly revived in the early 20th century by industrialist Eugène Schneider, who restored and rebuilt it in a harmonious neo-medieval style.

The heart of Apremont is its Parc Floral, five hectares of ponds, pavilions and rare trees that change colour and scent with the seasons. Though the château itself remains private, its towers and ramparts frame the gardens like a painting. The village cafés and the gentle rhythm of the river invite slow afternoons and quiet walks.

About 20 kilometres from Nevers, Apremont-sur-Allier is easy to reach by car yet blissfully far from crowds. Come in spring or summer, when flowers explode and the gardens are open, and you’ll discover one of France’s most enchanting hidden retreats—a place to wander, breathe and simply stay.

The Guardian Angels of Notre Dame de l'Assomption in Apremont-sur-Allier (France).

Ukrainians in search of safety: Hanna and family

Hanna and her family in The Netherlands.

My name is Hanna and I’m from Dnipro, a large industrial city in eastern Ukraine. Until early 2022, I lived a full and successful life. I ran my own marketing and advertising agency, worked with major international brands, and was involved in social projects and campaigns. At the same time, I taught marketing, communication, and public relations at the university – something I truly enjoyed. Together with my husband and our three children, we lived a comfortable life. We were entrepreneurial, creative, and engaged in our city.

The unrest began already in 2014, during the Maidan Revolution. It affected me deeply. Young people flooded the streets, dreaming of a European future for Ukraine. That dream was violently crushed. I still remember crying every evening while watching the news. The deaths of young protesters felt personal. That was the moment I understood: we are a people who must fight for freedom, for justice.

When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, everything changed. Our whole family — sixteen people in total — took shelter in a basement. We didn’t live far from the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, and when it came under fire, the fear really hit us. There were rumors of a possible nuclear disaster. Doctors gave instructions on television about how to apply iodine to children’s skin to protect them from radiation. My children saw the panic in my eyes. On the ninth day of the war, I made the decision: we had to flee.

We left Dnipro in five cars. Normally, the drive west would take ten hours — it took us five days. The roads were packed with people like us — desperate, afraid, heading into the unknown. We taped signs reading “CHILDREN” to our car windows, hoping Russian pilots would see we were innocent civilians.

Eventually, we made it to Roermond in the Netherlands, where an old friend offered us shelter. My husband stayed behind at first, to take care of his parents and our business. He only joined us in Roermond nine months later.

Once I arrived, I couldn’t sit still. That’s not who I am. I volunteered at my children’s primary school, working as an interpreter and piano accompanist. Later, I became a coach for Ukrainian employees at La Place, taught at Stedelijk College, and began working as a project leader at the Ukrainian House in Maastricht.

Since October 2023, I’ve been working as a counselor for Ukrainian families in Limburg. I help people integrate, with paperwork, schools, doctors, and government agencies. The work is intense, but rewarding. I know where they come from. I know what it means to leave everything behind.

I feel happy here. In Ukraine, we lived well, but life was stressful and competitive. Here, we’ve found peace. My children are integrated at school, my husband works as a chef, and we are slowly building something new. Still, the future is uncertain. I don’t know if we’ll be allowed to stay. That’s hard, but we do our best, we work, we contribute. We are happy here.

What I’ve experienced is not unique. Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians carry stories like this. But I hope mine shows just how deeply war affects a human life — and how much strength it takes to start over, in a foreign land, with a foreign alphabet, but with the same hope: a safe life for our children.

Ukranians in search of safety: Sofiia

Sofiia and her mother in The Netherlands.

I’m Sofiia, 18 years old, and I’m from Kharkiv, a city in eastern Ukraine, close to the Russian border. Until February 2022, my life was what you’d expect for a 15-year-old girl. I went to school, played sports, had friends, made plans. My world felt safe and simple — or so it seemed.

That all changed on February 24. My mother woke me up that morning and said: “Sofiia, the war has started. You’re not going to school today. We have to pack.” At first, I didn’t understand. As a kid, I even thought: no school, maybe I can stay in bed a bit longer. But then we spent days sleeping in the bathroom, between two thick walls. I heard bombs. I saw tanks passing by. We lived on a major road from Russia. Anything could happen at any moment.

My parents and I fled westward. What should have been a one-hour drive took eighteen hours. We slept in gyms, schools, and in places where strangers opened their doors to those in need. Eventually, we arrived in Chernivtsi, near the Carpathian Mountains. That’s where we made a decision that split my life in two: my mother and I would go to the Netherlands, while my father stayed behind. He couldn’t abandon his company or his employees. It broke our hearts, but there was no other option.

Through a friend of my mother’s, we ended up in Roermond. My mother didn’t speak any English, so I took on all the responsibility — documents, meetings, housing. I was fifteen, but suddenly I was no longer a child. In Ukraine, I had never been especially ambitious. But something shifted. I started school at Nt2 Mundium College in Roermond, a school for newcomers. The teachers saw me, supported me, and believed in me. They gave me confidence. I began learning Dutch, took extra courses, and became interested in marketing and international business. Things started to go well.

I now work part-time in an outlet store and volunteer at the Holland Ukrainian House in Maastricht, and a volunteer social media assistant at Meet Maastricht. I’m also doing an online university degree from Ukraine while preparing for a new chapter: I’ve been accepted to Maastricht University to study International Business. The admission process wasn’t easy — I didn’t meet all the requirements, had to submit extra documents, file an appeal, and prove my motivation. But I made it!

And still… everything I’m building here, I carry with mixed feelings. My father still lives in Kharkiv. His company is still running, our old apartment is still there — as if an angel is watching over it, because several bombs have fallen nearby. He lives under constant stress. When he visits us in Roermond, he even says he misses the adrenaline of danger. “You get used to it,” he says. But I also see what it’s done to him — how his thinking has changed, how heavy it all is for him.

My mother struggles. She’s trying to learn the language, but with no clarity about whether she can stay in the Netherlands, it’s hard for her to make decisions about her life. She doesn’t know whether her future lies here or back in Ukraine. Everything is uncertain. I try to support her — as I’ve done from the beginning. But I see how hard it is for her to live in this world of insecurity, without her home, her friends, her husband, her sense of certainty.

My older sister now lives in Spain with her husband and three children. They happened to be there on holiday when the war started, so they didn’t have to flee in a panic. They’re building a new life in Valencia. My cousins are scattered across Europe. Our family has been torn apart.

I don’t know what the future holds. I’d like to stay in the Netherlands — I feel at home here. I’m learning, growing, and I want to give something back. But for now, I only make small plans. After the war, you learn that everything can change in an instant. You become flexible — maybe too flexible. I always need a plan B.

War doesn’t just change your country. It changes your mind, your heart, your family. And still, I try to look forward. Because I’ve learned to. Because I have no other choice. Because I believe that building — even in small steps — is the only way not to break.

Young Bordeaux: Open, Curious, and Surprisingly Fluent in English

On an ordinary weekday in November, I found myself talking with a few students in Bordeaux. The weather was unusually warm for the season, giving the city a light, almost weightless atmosphere.

What struck me most was how effortlessly they shifted to English the moment I asked if they spoke English. They were open, curious, and happy to talk—and even happier to be photographed. Many carried actual books rather than screens, a small but refreshing reminder that reading in public is still very much alive.

They stood for portraits with an ease and confidence that surprised me. No posing culture, no hesitation—just simple human exchange. I walked away with images that feel honest, warm, and grounded in the everyday rhythm of the city. Sometimes the most ordinary moments offer the clearest glimpse of a place and its people.

Ukrainians in search of safety: Svitlana and family

Svitlana with her husband and son in The Netherlands.

My name is Svitlana. I’m 40 years old, married, and the mother of a four-year-old son. Until February 2022, I lived a quiet and happy life in Chornobaivka, a village in the Kherson region in southern Ukraine. I owned my own nail studio, had worked as a manicure and pedicure specialist for seventeen years, and held a master’s degree in management. After my maternity leave, I dreamed of working in government. My husband and I were building our future: a beautiful, light-filled home for our family, full of plans and hope.

But everything changed on February 24, 2022.

That morning, the Russian invasion of Ukraine began. In the first few days, we didn’t understand how serious it was. My son was almost one year old – his birthday is on March 1. We decided to move in with my parents, as their house seemed safer than our fifth-floor apartment. But the violence reached us there too. We heard bombs, saw helicopters flying low overhead. Our house was hit by a rocket. The windows shattered. We had to flee to the basement, where we lived for three months.

That’s when the Russian occupation of our region began. It became a blockade. There was almost no food, no diapers, no baby formula. My parents and I ate only once a day, so my son would have enough. We slaughtered chickens, geese, and ducks. One neighbor found a small piece of turkey in her freezer – I cried with gratitude that I could give it to my child.

After three months, I knew we had to flee. I knew people who had tried and died, their cars hitting landmines. I was terrified. But staying might be even more dangerous. My husband was already in Europe and kept asking if I could come with our son. We tried to leave the occupied zone eleven times. Ten times we were stopped – there were no safe corridors, no green routes, no guarantees. On the eleventh try, we made it. When I saw the Ukrainian flag waving again after three months, I cried. The pain and fear of that time are still with me.

We stayed in the free part of Ukraine for another month. I arranged passports, saw doctors, took care of everything. Then we traveled via Moldova to Amsterdam, where my husband was waiting for us. Since July 2022, we’ve lived in Roermond. The municipality helped us – with food, diapers, a small bed. The kindness of the people here touched me deeply.

In the beginning, it was hard. I didn’t speak the language, didn’t know anyone. Everything was new, and I fell into a depression. But people helped us – with their hands, with pictures, with gestures. I started learning English, and now I’m waiting to start a Dutch language course. My husband has a permanent job at an outlet in Roermond, and our son goes to school. He’s doing well.

In the meantime, I do volunteer work at the Ukrainian school “Kryla” in Maastricht and sing in “Ptaha,” a choir of Ukrainian women. We sing, share our stories, and show that Ukrainian women are strong.

My parents still live in Ukraine. So does my brother. I miss them. I send gifts, try to help. Ukraine is and always will be my home. But here in the Netherlands, I feel safe. We want to stay here, build a life, rent a house in or near Roermond. My greatest dream is peace. No more war. No more sirens, bombs, or fear. I believe in a future with blue skies – for my son, for Ukraine, and for the whole world.

Encounters at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, The Netherlands)

Rafael Edem Kouto, Gwladys Gambie, and Rouzbey Shadpey in their studios at the Jan van Eyck Academie (October 2025, Maastricht, The Netherlands).

In the heart of Maastricht, the Jan van Eyck Academie stands as a quiet yet potent sanctuary for contemporary thought and creation. It is not an art school, nor a gallery, but something in between: a place where artists, designers, and thinkers from all over the world come together to reimagine what art can be when given time, trust, and tools.

Walking through the studios during the Open Studios days feels like entering parallel worlds. Each resident unfolds a vision that stretches beyond their discipline—woven through questions of history, identity, and repair. Among them this year: Rafael Edem Kouto, Gwladys Gambie, and Rouzbeh Shadpey — three distinct voices united by a shared urgency to heal and reimagine.

Rafael Edem Kouto

Rafael Kouto, a Swiss creative director and fashion designer of Togolese and Ghanaian origin, builds his practice on the ethics of reuse and cultural continuity. His work, deeply rooted in West-African material culture, embraces upcycling as both method and message. By transforming discarded textiles and objects, Kouto turns what was once waste into a vehicle of memory and renewal.

His ongoing project Artefacts & Notes from Altared Futures – Temporarily Closed for Healing examines portable artifacts that once travelled across the Atlantic with the slave trade — talismans, fabrics, small objects that survived displacement. Through these, Kouto forges an emotional connection between craft and spirituality, between what is lost and what can still be made sacred again.

Gwladys Gambie

From Martinique, still formally a French colony, Gwladys Gambie brings to Maastricht a dreamlike yet defiant visual universe. Her work explores the representation of Caribbean black bodies and the female condition under the long shadow of colonialism. Through drawing, painting, writing, and performance — and lately through embroidery — she builds an oneiric space where fantasy and critique meet.

In her project Metaphor of the Coconut Tree, Gambie confronts “doudouism,” the exoticized image of the Caribbean perpetuated by literature and tourism. Her hand-drawn portraits of trees and textile installations challenge the coconut’s lazy association with paradise, instead revealing the violence of history embedded in its trunk and leaves. Each stitch, each line, becomes an act of reclaiming narrative — turning ornament into testimony.

Rouzbeh Shadpey

Physician, writer, and artist Rouzbeh Shadpey brings the language of the clinic into dialogue with the language of poetry. His research unpacks the aesthetics of chronic fatigue and the colonial legacy of medical power. Through video, sound, and text, Shadpey transforms the experience of illness into a site of resistance — a way of thinking that honours those whose suffering has been dismissed as “medically contested.”

In his installation Musique Chronique, he stages a scenography that may or may not unfold into performance — an unfinished ritual about the transformation of pain into music. Elsewhere in the academy, a second intervention mirrors the first: not music as healing, but music as illness, a meditation on the dissonance between harmony and violence. His work resonates as both a lament and a call for empathy — an appeal for recognition of human vulnerability in times of devastation.

A house for multiplicity

Together, these artists exemplify what the Jan van Eyck Academie does best: it shelters voices that speak from fracture, from history, from the desire to mend. Here, discarded fabric becomes altar cloth; embroidery becomes resistance; sound becomes protest.

The academy’s studios are not quiet after all — they hum with the slow, persistent work of reimagining the world.

Jan van Eyck Academie

Between Despair and Hope: The Sound of Ghanni Maastricht

Ghanni Maastricht performing at the Jan van Eyck Academie Open Studios Days (October 2025).

At the Jan van Eyck Academie, voices rose in harmony — soft at first, then firm, like a tide refusing to retreat. The choir Ghanni Maastricht, a collective of “Musicians for Palestine”, filled the air with Holm — Arabic for Dream.

The song, originally by the Tunisian artist Emel, speaks of imagining a world rebuilt from pain — a place where love and hope can grow again. Its words were written long before the present war, yet in the shadow of Gaza’s devastation they resonate with unbearable clarity:

If I could close my eyes and the dreams take me by the hand,
I would rise and fly in a new sky and forget my sorrows.

Since the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s two year devastating response, Gaza has become a symbol of suffering and endurance. Today, amid a fragile ceasefire, peace remains elusive — the future of the Palestinian people uncertain, suspended between grief and survival.

Ghanni’s performance did not pretend to offer solutions. Instead, it offered a space for compassion, a reminder that art can keep our humanity alive when politics fails. In their voices, sorrow turned into resistance, and music became a fragile bridge between despair and hope.

From the Archive: La Dama at the Lange Voorhout with Zoë Wijnsouw (The Hague, The Netherlands)

Zoë Wijnsouw with ‘La Dama’ from Manolo Valdés (2001) in The Hague, 2010, by Barend Jan de Jong.

In the summer of 2010, the stately trees of the Lange Voorhout in The Hague looked down on a remarkable guest: La Dama (2001), a three-metre-high bronze sculpture by Spanish artist Manolo Valdés. With her majestic circular headdress and calm, archaic face, she evoked one of Spain’s greatest archaeological treasures — the mysterious Dama de Elche, a limestone bust dating back to the 4th century BC.

Valdés did not attempt to copy the ancient figure. Instead, he reimagined her presence: monumental yet human, classical yet modern. The bronze surface captured the shifting Dutch light, turning gold in the morning sun and deep green by evening. Between the linden trees of the Voorhout, she seemed both visitor and guardian — a piece of Mediterranean memory grounded in northern soil.

Two Souls in Awe of Venice

Two Asian girls in Venice.

We came from far across the sea,
 With phones and dreams and time for tea,
 Each bridge, each boat, each golden dome,
 Feels like a story far from home!

 Oh, life is full of wonders, see —
 From gondolas to gelat-i!
 We click, we pose, we laugh, we cheer,
 Europe feels like magic here!

 The pigeons dance, the waiters smile,
 We’ve walked in style for half a mile,
 We tilt our heads, the photo’s right —
 Two wandering souls, what a sight!

 Oh, life is full of wonders, see —
 From bridges old to the wide blue sea!
 With selfie-sticks and joy so clear,
 Europe feels like magic here!

 So if you see us grin and spin,
 Just smile — and let the cameras in!

The Pieterpad: A Journey Through the Heart of the Netherlands

A group of friends hiking on the Pieterpad near Roermond.

Imagine standing in Pieterburen in northern Groningen on a crisp morning in northern Groningen, looking out over flat polders, salt air on your skin, and maybe a seal in the distance. Somehow, this quiet shore is the beginning of something grand: roughly 500 kilometres of trail winding south through woods, heathland, rivers, villages—finally ending at Sint-Pietersberg, just south of Maastricht. This is the Pieterpad, the most famous long-distance walking route in the Netherlands.

A Bit of History

  • The idea was born in the late 1970s, when two Dutch women—Toos Goorhuis-Tjalsma from Tilburg in the south, and Bertje Jens from Groningen in the north—grew frustrated by the lack of long-distance walking paths in their homeland.

  • From about 1978 to 1983 they explored, plotted, tested stages, connecting existing paths, picking landscapes that showed off the diversity of the land.

  • The route was officially opened in 1983. Since then it has slowly evolved: slight adjustments of stages, small detours when infrastructure shifts, and improvements to signage and accommodation.

What You’ll See & How It Feels

Walking the Pieterpad is rarely rugged or remote—it’s not about trail-blazing, but about experiencing the changing Dutch landscape up close. Northern flatness gives you wide skies and polders; heathlands and woodlands in the centre; then gentle hills, river valleys, even vineyards, in Limburg. You pass through small towns and villages where time seems slower, where B&Bs, farmhouses and local cafes offer rest and character.

The trail is marked well (with the white-red markers of Dutch long-distance walking paths), and is divided into 26 stages of approx. 15-25 km each, so it’s accessible even if you can’t walk nonstop.

Estimating how many people walk the Pieterpad each year is tricky, because many people do just part of it, or break it up over many trips, and there's no central registry of walkers. But here are the best figures we have:

  • Some 30,000-50,000 people annually walk one or more of the 26 stages.

  • With the COVID-19 pandemic, interest and usage spiked: guidebook sales doubled, and people booking lodging on popular stages reported full occupancy more often.

So, safe to say: tens of thousands of people walk parts of or the whole Pieterpad every year.

The Pieterpad is more than a trail—it’s a mirror of the Netherlands. It shows you its history, its many landscapes, its rhythms. It brings people out into nature, connects rural to urban, past to present. After 40+ years, it continues to grow in popularity—not just among older walkers, but among younger people, couples, families, foreign hikers—especially once people discovered how beautiful and varied “Dutch wilderness” can be.

For More Information

Without Knowing, on the Camino

Each morning he walks the same stretch of the Meuse — unaware that he follows the ancient route of pilgrims bound for Santiago de Compostela.

Every morning, as the mist still clings to the Meuse, people set out from Roermond for their daily walk. Some follow the dike for exercise, others to clear their minds — yet without knowing, their footsteps trace one of Europe’s oldest pilgrim routes.

The Camino de Santiago passes quietly here, unmarked by fanfare or faith, just a worn rhythm between river and sky. The man in the photo has walked this path for years, greeting the same geese, watching the same current. He may never carry a scallop shell or reach Santiago, but his devotion to the road is its own kind of pilgrimage.

Mores and Christians Festival in Bocairent (Spain)

Early in February, Bocairent bursts at the seams in honour of its patron saint, San Blas (Sant Blai). For six vivid days, fireworks crackle, pasodobles and comparsa music swell, parades roll, processions wind, and gunpowder booms through the streets. Everyone with a tie to Bocairent comes home—students, emigrants, cousins, the old guilds and new cofradías—crowding balconies, drumming in doorways, marching beside standards stitched by their mothers. At the castle, captains parley and boast before the mock assault, the old rivalry reborn in pageantry. By night, lanterns and drums fold the town into a pulsing heart; by day, Sant Blai crosses streets. Half theatre, half memory—history retold on foot to the rhythm of trumpets and gunfire—leaving your ears ringing.

More on Bocairent

Keepers of Time and Stories

The Keepers of Time and Stories.

Wandering through the bustling Flachsmarkt at Burg Linn, I stopped to watch a stand with some antique clocks, their soft ticking almost lost in the hum of the crowd. That’s where I came accross two friends from the north of the Netherlands — strangers at first, but quickly united with me in conversation by a shared curiosity.

They spoke about clocks the way my eldest brother could — with affection, reverence, and a twinkle in the eye. Their hands traced the shapes of ornate cases, their voices lingered over the details of intricate mechanisms, and every so often, they would pause to listen to the chime of a restored timepiece as if it were a voice from the past.

For them, each clock holds a story: of the craftsperson who built it, the families who lived by its hours, and the quiet persistence of time itself. I left our meeting feeling as though I had been shown not just clocks, but the heartbeat of history.

Urban Echoes from Ripoll (Spain)

Urban Echoes from Ripoll (Spain).

Ripoll is a charming town in the heart of Catalonia, known for its rich history and welcoming atmosphere. It is home to the world-famous portal of the Santa Maria de Ripoll monastery, a stunning example of Romanesque art. But Ripoll is not just about history – it plays a vital role in shaping the future too. The Institut Abat Oliba is a key education center for young people from the region. Many students travel to Ripoll by bus or train to study here, as the school offers excellent programs in administrative, sports, and technical fields. This makes Ripoll a hub of learning and opportunity for the next generation.