Talk:Limburg (Netherlands)

Regions

Which would be good regions for Limburg? I divided it into North, Middle and South, but now I see Parkstad Limburg. I think that we do not have enough well-developed articles for this subdivision to be very useful yet. Maybe when more articles are developed, we could subdivide South-Limburg into three more regions: Parkstad Limburg, Heuvelland and Western Mine Region. But we're not ready yet. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 10:56, 11 January 2010 (EST)

This is a very good question ..... what should we do with limburg.... I will pounder over this tonight and add my comments this week. But generally we divide it by North Mid and South. But those have subdivisions again. I'm not quite sure if I know all of these. --(WT-en) Velorian 20:46, 11 January 2010 (EST)

Well having done my thinking if this. The best way is to divide Limburg in 3 parts, North/Mid/South. We can also do the region map of limburg this way. I removed Parkstad Limburg and Heuvelland from the list and added all the municipalities. Dividing the map in municipalities I would find unneeded. --(WT-en) Velorian 15:51, 14 January 2010 (EST)

I would suggest renaming the Municipalities section to Cities (the standard WT term for a city, town or village).--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:18, 14 January 2010 (EST)

Generally we don't use municipalities on Wikivoyage. But the municipalities can be a good way of dividing the cities in the Netherlands. But there are exceptions.. for example, Sittard-Geleen doesn't make a nice travel city, I'd rather keep Sittard and Geleen separate. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 16:13, 14 January 2010 (EST)

Ah, I was trying to figure out that municipality policy, and still don't get it. I'm working on South Limburg, my favorite region in the Netherlands. I wonder how the list of cities on top is determined. Are these the largest ones?

Over the past decades, many administrative regions have been changed to comprise two or more small, medium sized and even large towns. As a result, official names now refer to several places at once, e.g.Sittard-Geleen, Gulpen-Wittem or Parkstad. Gulpen-Wittem is now 1 article (Wittem being a large village), Sittard and Geleen are separate and Parkstad is no more than a redirect to the province Limburg. In the South Limburg cities listing (which has 10 instead of 9), Sittard and Geleen are listed separately (even though Geleen is not of great touristic interest) but Gulpen-Wittem is one listing. Is this how it should be, should I change it? And if so, which rules do I follow? Thanks, (WT-en) Justme 08:43, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

You can read here what the current rules are about the scope of articles: Project:What_is_an_article. It basically consists of the "Can you sleep there?"-test. If there is a hotel in a city, then it's usually a destination. The problem is what to do with the surrounding villages around a city that do not have a hotel. They could either be merged together into one region (so you could make an article Heuvelland) for example) or the listings could be placed in a larger city nearby. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 09:11, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

Okay, thanks, that would basically mean that as good as every village in South Limburg gets its own article (eventually), since places with no single hotel are rare. It definitely means I should split up Gulpen-Wittem then, as both have several places to stay. And then what do I do with the "cities"-list in South Limburg? With Gulpen and Wittem being split, that list is even 11 places. Can I just cut out the ones that are of least interest to travelers? (WT-en) Justme 09:52, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

There is some opinion here that in lowest level region articles, the 9 rule can be relaxed. Otherwise we end up with lots of orphaned city articles. See what I did at Central Java and East Java for example. This is alluded to at Project:Geographical_hierarchy#Dividing_geographical_units: ...this doesn't need to be applied stringently to the lowest level of the hierarchy; if a region has more than 9 cities in it, and there's no helpful way to divide it into subregions then don't split it.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 09:57, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

Yes, but division is still possible. We could make the Western Mine Region, Parkstad Limburg and Heuvelland. Although I'm not sure if we'd want to make so many subdivisions of such a relatively small region as South Limburg. I think it'd be better if we'd merge some of the Heuvelland villages together in a Heuvelland article. --(WT-en) globe-trotter 11:03, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

You could yes but I am not sure that is desirable in a small country. It just creates yet more region articles which in all likelihood will be bare-bones.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:10, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

Besides, those 3 terms are quite confusing as the term Western Mine Region is normally used together with Eastern Mine Region, which comprises large parts of Parkstad. The Heuvelland is not clearly defined and definitions tend to vary but generally cover a large part of South Limburg. Parkstad is mainly an administrative invention, taking up parts of what was always called Heuvelland (e.g. Simpelveld) too. Places like Beek and Schinnen are considered part of the Heuvelland but also fall in the Western Mine Region. Tourist information services sometimes use another imaginary division: Valkenburg, Heuvelland Upland Region, Cities of Parkstad Limburg Limburg, Grensmaasvallei, Maastricht. Quite frankly however, that only seems to add to the confusion.

So basically, I think South Limburg is a pretty straight forward region but any subdivisions seem difficult. I don't really see how creating a Heuvelland article would help, as it overlaps strongly with South Limburg. Can't we put really small villages in the nearby larger villages or cities that they usually belong to administratively anyway? (WT-en) Justme 11:29, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

To your last question, I would answer yes, providing it makes sense for the traveller. If it doesn't then I do not think there is anything wrong with listing more than 9 "cities" in what would be a lowest level region article.--(WT-en) Burmesedays 11:36, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

Okay =) (WT-en) Justme 11:52, 30 July 2011 (EDT)

New WV-style region map

I have created and am about to add a map fitting the Region maps Expedition's rules for region maps, but I am not sure which one of the two versions to use. If we're being formal, then the regular version should be used. I personally find that its amount of secondary roads is high to where it is annoying to view, which is why I rendered an alternate version without these secondary roads. At this point, I am not sure which version to use, so please, some feedback would be appreciated.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 15:50, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

The regular version has many roads, indeed, making it slightly harder to read - but that's because this is a densely populated and well connected region. Several of the listed cities are not on the main highways and the alternative version (without secondary roads) shows no connecting roads for those, which seems to make the map less useful. The article and map don't even have other destinations yet, which will likely also be on secondary roads. I'm tempted to say that the main problem visually is the high number of roads in the surrounding areas, which are also visible in this image. I don't think we can change that though, at least not within existing standards. Perhaps some of our experienced map makers can weigh in? User:Texugo, or User:LtPowers perhaps? JuliasTravels (talk) 19:52, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

I do not know how I did not notice this earlier, but the map I used as source material (), does differentiate between important secondary roads within the Netherlands, but does not do so for secondary roads outside of the Netherlands. This is obviously the cause of the projected problem. Until any of the users tagged above drop in, I will experiment with removing non-important secondary roads and see if that improves the situation any. The destinations simply are not connected to the highways because of the lack of important domestic secondary roads. I simply disabled their layer for that render and did not bother to differentiate between the Dutch and non-Dutch secondary roads.

As for the "other destinations" on the map; Vaals is listed as I know that it is a destination often visited by the Dutch when visiting Southern Limburg. It is indeed not listed (yet), but probably should be.

Either way, I will experiment with removing non-Dutch secondary roads until the more experienced mappers start coming in. Hopefully that will result in something good.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 21:16, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Actually, "other destinations" are not supposed to be lists of smaller towns that didn't make the nine cities list, but rather of different kinds of attractions like national parks, theme parks or important historic attractions. Your choice to put Vaals on the map seems a bit random and based on your personal perception. The whole of South Limburg is firmly on the tourist track, much more so than the north of this province. Vaals is one of the well-known places, but Epen or Gulpen are equally (if not even more) popular. The "Drielandenpunt" (or three countries border point) in Vaals is a fairly important attraction (and the main one in Vaals), so that could be considered one of the other destinations perhaps and allow Vaals to be on the map. Venray however puzzles me. It's not a popular destination, there are no major attractions... are you just including it for geographic balance on the map? Is that policy? Just for your information, by the way... there's ongoing construction of a major new secondary road in the south of this province. It's not open yet, but the map might have to be adjusted when it is, as this is supposed to be a major improvement in infrastructure. JuliasTravels (talk) 22:31, 28 December 2016 (UTC)

Less is more when it comes to roads, especially on maps that show a regional breakdown (as opposed to bottom-level regions). I would absolutely hide secondary roads outside Limburg, and consider reducing the number that show inside the region. Also, remember to add a scale to the map. Powers ^(talk) 03:11, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Yes, Vaals is listed because of the Drielandenpunt, which I remember being one of the bigger attractions in Zuid Limburg. Venray's been added mostly to balance a large gap on the map, which, in hindsight probably wasn't necessary. As for the Buitenring, I wasn't aware of its construction yet, thanks for pointing that out. I'll add it to the next render :).

Thank you for the tips, Powers. I am, however, affraid that not all Belgian and German secondary roads can be scrapped as some of the German Autobahns would terminate in the middle of no-where. Looking at maps such as the Michigan map, I think that I'll have to reduce the roads outside of Limburg to a bare minimum. Also, looking at such maps brings up the question whether I should or should not add the highway shields/markers.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 12:12, 29 December 2016 (UTC)

Cities

I deleted Geleen as on of the cities as it's part of the same municipality as Sittard. And to stay in line with the 7+2 rule I added Vaals, as it's a better spread to the Limburg article, and such an important tourist location. --Velorian (talk) 15:53, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Velorian: Dank je wel! Merging Geleen and Sittard into Sittard-Geleen is something I've had planned for a long time already, so this is much appreciated. 7+2 is in general a bit of an issue for the Dutch articles, specifically for the Randstad once you look into it. I understand you're from Heerlen, but I have no idea how well-known you are with (South) Limburg, but if you ever run out of things to do on Wikivoyage and are looking for a bit of a project to undertake, then you might want to have a look at the 7+2-compatible mock-up of the entirety of the Netherlands, which you're more than welcome to tweak and use.
-- Wauteurz (talk) 20:34, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

@Wauteurz: I did already, I posted it on the discussion page for the netherlands check under: https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Talk:Netherlands#Cities_list I made large proposal there on how to tackle it. I have suggested 8 cities in that regard. As for the mockup page that might be a bit of work to look at. -- Velorian (talk) 20:38, 10 July 2018 (UTC)

Limburger cheese?

If that indeed from the region? It's famous for its smell. So if it's from Limburg, I think it should be mentioned in the "Eat" section. Ikan Kekek (talk) 20:26, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Well, it's not this Limburg, I can tell you that much. It used to be made as far north as Maastricht, but the Dutch variants (like Rommedoe) are 'extinct' if you can call it that. For nearly a hundred years no-one's been making them, as legislation within the Netherlands has since become a barrier-to-entry in the process.

As for locality, in Dutch and French, it's called "Hervekaas" / "Fromage de Herve", after the Pays de Herve, a region between the Dutch border and Verviers. That latter name is its protected name, meaning that any cheese branded as "Limburger" here, isn't necessarily what you call Limburger. Fromage de Herve is what you would call Limburger.

As for our hierarchy, that means Limburger ought to be mentioned on Tongeren (the Flemish exclave of Belgian Limburg) with its Dutch name and Liège (province) with its French name. I don't know anything about availability though. Apparently it's now more popular in the German third of Limburg than the Belgian or Dutch thirds? That's what NL-Wiki tells me at least... I'll have a little poke around and see if I can find something with cheese shops in Tongeren and surroundings.
― Wauteurz (talk) 21:14, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

I've had a little look-around, and I can report that the three main producers of the cheese have unified. I can't speak from experience, but it seems that as a result, the cheese seems to be decently available in your everyday supermarkets within the French-speaking part of the region, and speciality fromageries outside of it. The town itself seems like a decent OtBP destination like Eupen, so I guess starting Herve could be a good next move?
― Wauteurz (talk) 21:44, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Thanks for doing some on-the-ground research! Ikan Kekek (talk) 21:46, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Consider it done. I don't know if I can work on the article much during this week, but we'll see how it progresses :)
― Wauteurz (talk) 23:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)