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Discovering Eindhoven and its surroundings on foot, and all that is on offer for pedestrians (and cyclists). Exploring the city and beyond as a running habitat, which involves an out-of-the-box perspective on “running”. Looking at the city with the help of geographers, historians, architects, biologists, artists, urbanists, and others to unveil its beauty beyond the usual highlights. Seeing and understanding what has made and still shapes this place.

Eindhoven

It is about Eindhoven and its surroundings because I recently moved here and most of my pedestrian explorations are now here. Running/walking this new habitat throws up a continuous stream of questions, ideas and comparisons, that are triggered by my explorations and efforts to understand what I see.

The expat friendly capital of brainport has more to offer than what its brand showcases. So the explicit intention of this site is to go beyond what This is Eindhoven highlights

the region

What is your region? It is as large as you psychological sense of home. Anyone discovering their living environment soon finds out that city limits are purely administrative borders. I explore as far as my feet (or bicycle) takes me. And occasionally beyond to places within reach of affordable and efficient public transport. You’ll be amazed by the diversity such a sense of home unlocks.

pedestrianism

My preferred ways of exploring my living habitat are walking and running, ideally combined into what I prefer to call pedestrianism. This has nothing much to do with the sporty side of things like training regimes, races, injuries, and gear and everything with the way it connects us with our bodies, the environment, and  what individuals and societies lose when those connections wither away. I post interesting routes on this site and my inner trail and ultra pedestrian may shine through but I don’t intend to add yet another voice to the madhouse of opinionated cyberspace chatter about running.

life

Exploring the pedestrian way, opens doors to many seemingly unrelated pursuits. The crux is in the ‘seemingly’ because I’m very much of the persuasion that nothing can be fully understood without taking ‘everything else’ (the meaning of life and the universe – yes I agree it’s 42), into account. Obviously ‘fully’ is an ideal and I make an effort to stay within defensible limits. But be warned: I do enjoy pushing those limits. If I go off rails, please let me know!

music, art & other diversions

Language is a powerful tool, but sometimes other tools work better or add to a verbal description, analysis, story, or argument. However, many of the embedded extra’s have no other ambition than to amuse, entertain and make your time on the site and with particular posts more enjoyable. That said, the choices I make are always based on some kind of resonance of that video or image with what my writing is trying to convey. If you hear that resonance, all the better, if not,  I at least hope that you share my taste. If not, bad luck.

Let’s kick off right away with this:

navigating and searching

This site can be searched in various ways. The footer has four different search possibilities:

  1. Archives lists all posts by the month they were published
  2. Search offers a free text search facility
  3. Categories lists all posts by major theme
  4. Keywords list posts by specific key words

resources and getting in touch

The possibility to subscribe to notification by email when a new post appears on this blog is in the footer below.

Many pages and posts refer to interesting resources and make them accessible by way of a hyperlink. Those that I find particularly interesting, thought-provoking, and relevant are also listed (with a short description) on the resources page. Not everything that I find really interesting ends up in a post. So the resources page deserves a visit on its own merits.

Anything I publish on this blog site invites comments and discussion. Please use the contact form on the contact page to get in touch with me.

Eindhoven News

I contribute feature articles on exploring the Eindhoven region to Eindhoven News, an online newspaper targeting the brainport expat community. Those articles need to be focused and concise so most detail and background info that I collect in the course of writing them cannot be included. Eindhoven News readers looking for that additional detail and relevant or just fun background can find it here.