as you might know, new york city's borough brooklyn is named after a very cute dutch village, breukelen (breuckelen in old dutch). the dutch breukelen is close to the city utrecht, where i used to live, and sometimes i would bike around this area, which is very beautiful... (buuuuuh, i miss my bike!). there are many huge and beautiful mansions along the river, dating form the 17th century belonging to wealthy merchants, mostly from amsterdam. already in 1624, the dutch were somewhere in that area on long island, NY! in 1646, breuckelen was part of new netherland, but in 1664 they lost it to the british. over time, the name evolved from breuckelen, brockland, brocklin, brookline, brookland and eventually, to brooklyn. brooklyn's official motto is still a dutch one: Eendraght Maeckt Maght, which was also the dutch motto until 1816. it means "unity makes strength".
now, brooklyn heights is a neighborhood within brooklyn, which looks rather nice, judging from google images. but.... the above advertisement is taken in the netherlands (in december 2010)! around breukelen.... (with in the background a dutch train...). why the hell do they call it brooklyn heights?! why does everything have to be in english? (this happens more often in dutch advertisements). it just really annoyed me...
anyways... here we still dont have snow. it started snowing on monday, and there was a nice (little) layer of snow on everything, enough to get the snow removers out of bed early, by 5 am (!!!) they had cleared the paths around our apartment complex. but.... by the end of tuesday it was all washed away by the, yet again, high temperatures and rain. now its freezing again, and some snow is expected. perhaps even more on saturday!! lets see....
