Category Archives: Utrecht

Quaint Utrecht

Call it hilarious circumstances or maybe strange coincidence, I ended up in Utrecht after a long time. “Quaint” was the word that slipped off my tongue as we strolled through the streets, just as the city slowly lit up to a backdrop of dusky-blue skies. Calm canals stringed alongside with parked bicycles, old buildings and sleepy cobblestone streets paint the picture of a quintessential dutch town.

Or perhaps it was just the vibe along the route I was taken on by someone who knew the lay of the land. The quaintness (is that even a word) of the place left me wishing I had taken more pictures.

Utrecht University Library

I stumbled upon this building, while browsing through the pictures of buildings with modern architecture in the Netherlands. A sudden urge to see it led me to jump onto the next train. After a series of incidents – missed metros, taking the wrong train, getting myself lost in the station, being stuck in in a bus in mad traffic, I finally reached 2 hours later – way beyond my initial estimate of 35 minutes and it was all worth the trouble as it turned out even more stunning than what I expected.

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Although it seemed quite opaque from the outside with the black walled exteriors, the interiors on the contrary were just the opposite – there was a flood of natural light everywhere.

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The huge atrium basking in sunlight exhumed an enormous sense of space which made everyone and everything seem small – the readers were merely specks of dust amongst hundreds, reading a book or two from a collection of millions. That amplifying effect turned the softest of rustles – my slow footsteps and the camera’s mechanical shutter, into the loudest of noises, which apparently due to damping effects of the building design, no one could hear but me.

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The sharp dramatic shadows, casted by the natural light, in most corners of the library, made it quite enjoyable to shoot silhouettes from a variety of angles.

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