Latest news with #Maastricht
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
I spent less than £150 on a weekend in Maastricht, Netherlands – here's how I did it
The hotel After an hour and a half's flight (or less) from Stansted or Manchester to Eindhoven, a 60-minute train ride deposits you in this historic Netherlands city. Check in at Hotel Monastère (below), a boutique stay in a former 14th-century monastery. With original features such as marble fireplaces, ornamental ceilings and stained-glass windows, each of the 52 rooms is unique. Expect king-size beds, blackout curtains and gorgeously tiled bathrooms (from £85 per night; The square The most famous one in the city is Vrijthof (below). Every July, Dutch conductor (and Maastricht native) André Rieu pulls up with his 60-piece Johann Strauss Orchestra for a series of open-air concerts – surrounding restaurants are booked out by diners soaking up the music and atmosphere (3-20 July 2025; During the last week of August, the square hosts the largest outdoor food festival in the Netherlands, known as the Preuvenemint (28-31 August 2025; The restaurant Maastricht is an alfresco dining paradise – as you'll see from a waterfront table at seafood haven Les Trois Seaux ( in 't Bassin, the city's old harbour turned modern marina. At Brasserie Louis, on the historic Onze Lieve Vrouweplein square, tuck in to the veal croquettes (they're served on two slices of bread with mustard; £14, Or secure a spot on the riverside terrace at Cinq (below) for steak tartare, served with side salad and fries (£23, The wine Maastricht and its rolling hills have an impressive selection of wineries. The family-run Apostelhoeve is Limburg's oldest vineyard (also one of the Netherlands' largest), producing dry white and sparkling wines (tastings from £19pp; A little further down the valley, wine estate Hoeve Nekum (below) turns out a variety of whites, reds and rosés (tastings from £15pp; Or visit wine shop Thiessen for a tasting in its charming little vineyard in the heart of the city (from £32pp; The bookshop Dating from the 13th century, the Dominican Church served as a place of worship for centuries until it was secularised after the French Revolution. The gothic building subsequently did time as an army warehouse, an exhibition hall and a bike shed until, in 2006, it was transformed into a bookshop. With its stained-glass windows, pointed arches and ribbed vaults, Boekhandel Dominicanen, as it is known today, is a must-visit, even for non-readers. Plus, it has a great café ( The snack It would be sacrilegious to leave Maastricht without indulging in a cup of coffee and a slice of local Limburgse vlaai (fruit-filled pie, below). The roastery Maison Blanche Dael has been a fixture since 1878 – you can't pass its premises at Wolfstraat 28 and not be drawn in by the aroma of freshly roasted beans ( Later, head to bakery De Bisschopsmolen, famed for its lattice-top pies. Try a slice filled with apple, plum, cherry or, my favourite, apricot (£3 a slice;
Telegraph
14-04-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Mario Vargas Llosa was that rare thing, a freedom-loving literary genius of the right
It was Mario Vargas Llosa who first drew me into politics. Before Brexit, before Maastricht, before the coup against Margaret Thatcher, I had marched alongside the ingenious novelist against the nationalisation of Peru's banks. It was 1987, and I burned with the righteous certainty of a 16-year-old. Vargas Llosa was already a titanic figure in his native country, the winner of all manner of awards (though the Nobel Prize for Literature was still in the future). He was eloquent and handsome and he was right: the Leftist government against which he was protesting ran Peru into the ground. He had had a dose of the socialist bacillus himself, and it gave him a lifelong immunity. In the 1960s, like every self-respecting Latin American intellectual, he had railed against US imperialism. But when he saw what revolutions meant in practice – he was especially stung by the treatment of dissidents in Cuba – he was big enough to change his mind. Vargas Llosa turned out to be better at literature than at politics. After his successful campaign against the bank seizures, he entered Peru's 1990 presidential election with an apparently unassailable lead, but lost in the second round to Alberto Fujimori, an agronomist who had come from nowhere, backed by Leftists who were terrified of Vargas Llosa's 'neoliberalism'. Hilariously, the Leftists ended up getting the neoliberalism from Fujimori, with an added dose of dictatorship. A dislike of dictatorship – or, more accurately, a dislike of bullying and the abuse of office – was Vargas Llosa's ruling principle. He hated when people made excuses for tyrants who happened to be on their side. His humane and liberal spirit infused his novels from the beginning. His first work, The Time of the Hero (1963) was set among cadets at a Lima military academy, and based on his own experiences. Sure enough, it is a story about bullying and the abuse of power, of how hierarchies among the boys end up in a murder, and of how the school covers it up. The Peruvian military authorities hated the book, sensing that their values were being undermined, though they could not put their finger on how. His subsequent works veered in every direction, historically, geographically and thematically. He wrote in French and English almost as well as in Spanish. He may have been the finest Peruvian writer to lift a pen, but you don't have to be Peruvian to appreciate his corpus. You are drawn, rather, by his largeness of spirit, his insistence on the dignity of the individual. After losing in 1990, Vargas Llosa moved to Spain, where he became a favourite in conservative circles. A perceptive bullfight aficionado, he ended up being given a hereditary marquisate by King Juan Carlos. But he was always a liberal in the fullest sense of that word: curious, broad-minded, intellectually generous. If you want to mark his death by reading one of his novels, I recommend The Feast of the Goat (2001), a story about the end of the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic. Never have I seen the fears and petty humiliations intrinsic in authoritarian rule so beautifully captured on the page. In a world where liberal democracy has been in retreat for over a decade, we could all do with reminding ourselves of what the alternative is.
Reuters
14-02-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Rheinmetall CEO sees faster growth as pressure on Europe to boost its defences mounts
MUNICH, Feb 14 (Reuters) - German arms maker Rheinmetall ( opens new tab expects to keep growing even faster than earlier thought, its CEO said, given U.S. President Donald Trump administration's calls on Europe to boost defence spending and take responsibility for its own security. Trump has called on European allies to crank up defence spending to as much as 5% of GDP, though no NATO member right now is close to that threshold. German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on Friday called the NATO defence spending target of 2% of economic output insufficient, urging changes to the EU's Maastricht debt rules to give the alliance's EU members more leeway in boosting military budgets. Asked about possible consequences for Rheinmetall ( opens new tab after Trump's administration announced talks about a ceasefire in the Ukraine war and said Europeans needed to do more for their security, its CEO Armin Papperger said: "For our company that means that we have to grow even more than previously thought. "Trump has clearly said that Europe needs to grow up and the United States will not have to deal with European security," Papperger told Reuters on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. He said an increase of the German defence budget from the current 2% of national GDP to 2.5% or 3% would translate into 60 billion euros to 70 billion euros annual defence investment. The group was also considering acquisitions but would only act after consulting Germany's new government. "We will make acquisitions, we will invest, invest heavily. We will talk about it whenever the time comes," Papperger said, adding that the company was expanding its capacities in electronics, expecting more investments in the coming months. Asked about key areas for European military investment, Papperger pointed to ammunition, noting that no European state was meeting NATO's requirement for a 30-day combat stockpile. "In the case of ammunition ... we gave Ukraine almost everything ... Putin knows this, of course, and that's why we need to act," he said. Rheinmetall also plans to at least double the capacity of its powder plant in Bavarian Aschau as gunpowder is the biggest bottleneck at the moment, Papperger said, adding that the company would reach production of 12,000 tons to 14,000 tons per year from 2026. The company was aiming to complete the construction of a powder and an ammunition plant in Ukraine in 2026, with serial production of the Lynx IFV expected to start in 2027, he added. Asked about a potential closer cooperation with KNDS, Germany's other big maker of military equipment and solutions designed for ground-based operations, Papperger said there were no talks currently about a consolidation, neither with KNDS Germany nor KNDS France. Papperger also said Rheinmetall had submitted a non-binding offer for Thyssenkrupp's ( opens new tab warship division TKMS at the end of 2024, but the sales process had been stopped as Thyssenkrupp prefers a spin-off of the subsidiary. "That means all interested parties are out," he said.
Al Arabiya
14-02-2025
- Politics
- Al Arabiya
Trump's apparent concessions on Ukraine NATO ties, territory ‘a mistake,' German minister
Germany's defense minister said it was a mistake for US President Donald Trump to take the bargaining chips of Ukrainian NATO membership and territorial concessions off the table ahead of possible talks to end Russia's war with Ukraine. Speaking on his arrival at the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Boris Pistorius said that Russian President Vladimir Putin had 'not budged an inch' on his negotiating position so it was not in the other side's interests to do so. 'I think that was clumsy. I think that was a mistake,' he said of the position of Trump and his defense secretary. 'It would have been much better to talk about possible NATO membership and territorial changes at the negotiating table.' If European countries were to be involved in upholding any kind of Ukraine-Russia peace deal, they will have to be involved in negotiating it, Pistorius said, speaking two days after Trump had a call on Ukraine with Putin without notifying Washington's NATO allies or Ukraine in advance. He also said that for the coming years, Europe would not be in a position to guarantee a peace accord on its own without US support. For that reason, he said, it was essential to reform both the European Union's Maastricht debt criteria and Germany's own debt brake to make it easier for European NATO members to spend more on defense, as the Trump administration is demanding. 'Nobody can believe any longer than 2 percent is enough,' he said, referring to NATO's target of 2 percent of GDP on military spending for its members. Trump has called on European allies to crank up defense spending to up to 5 percent of GDP. It was reasonable, Pistorius said, for the US to want to reorient its security focus towards the Indo-Pacific region and spend less on Europe's defense, but for this, there had to be a roadmap for a gradual transition. On this, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had agreed with him, Pistorius said. In his overseas debut after taking charge of the Pentagon on Jan. 24, Hegseth raised an uproar in Europe in announcing on Wednesday that a return to Ukraine's borders of 2014, when Russia seized and annexed Crimea, was unrealistic and that Washington does not see NATO membership for Kyiv as part of a solution to the war triggered by Russia's 2022 invasion. Hegseth's critics say the remarks amounted to the US ceding leverage in negotiations with Russia before they even started, in what they described as a major victory for Putin, whose force now control 20 percent of Ukraine. On Thursday, Hegseth appeared to backtrack on his own remarks, telling a press conference that 'everything is on the table' for Ukraine war negotiations and that it was up to Trump to decide what concessions will be made. Also on Thursday, a senior US foreign policy official said the United States had not ruled out potential NATO membership for Ukraine or a negotiated return to pre-2014 borders, contradicting the earlier comments.
