A walk through the city I grew up in. Not like being on a tour, but on my way to something, but with open eyes in what is happening around me. You do not always have the eye for all the stuff that is passing you by, but other days you surely do. Eindhoven, what happened dude?
Eindhoven has never been the most beauty of all cities in Holland. There aren't a lot of cool historical sites in the way of beautiful buildings. Eindhoven always has and will always need to its coolness from the stuff that actually happens inside. And those are not the buildings but the people.
This halfly demolished building is the old building of the V&D (Vroom en Dreesman) warehouse in the center of the shopping center. This was always my go to place for when I needed schoolstuff of when I needed sunglasses, or a wallet or whatever. Clothes were not the nitty gritty I found here. But to my surprise when I was living abroad I heard the company had filed for bankrupcy a while back. To me this was a compete surprise, because....I don't know. This was just part of the history of the town for some reason.
Like more things are a part of the town. A friend of mine from Belgium would often pop over the boarder for a drink or a night on the town, and he would always say
'Some things you just always need to see when in Eindhoven. You see the V&D building, you see the city maintenace guy with his cigar, and you see Arnol Kox the religious dude preaching on the street.'
Well the V&D building is being demolished at the moment, and Arnol Kox died two weeks ago. No joke.
Arnol Kox was maybe even more of a city attraction than any other regular building. Everybody knew this dude because he was always and I mean always in teh city center preaching the word of God in a very vocal way. Numerous lawsuits were filed against him by store owners. Not because of what he was preaching, but how loud it was. And the same sentence over and over again for days. Not very good advertising for your store, but people wanted to see this dude. A statue for this dude with his scootmobile and some pigeons around him (he was always feeding the pigeons, also a complaint of the store owners because they would crap everywhere) would be proper. Maybe he will be better remember than the average store that was situated in Eindhoven
And the man with the cigar?
There he is. There was even a whole paged devoted to him in 2017 as a famous unknown face from Eindhoven. Maarten is his name. I guess he is still working but I haven't seen him as yet.
Maybe he will become the new face of the city. Anything but a building