And there I was…

… in the A&E department in hospital. Carefully holding my left wrist with my right hand, hoping the pain killers the GP had given me would kick in soon. I gave the ‘letter of recommendation’ the GP had also given me to the nurse behind the ‘Welcome To A&E, Make Yourself Comfortable, This May Take A While’ desk.
Actually, the sign above the desk just said ‘Reception’.

‘Please don’t drink or eat anything’, the nurse encouragingly said, ‘in case you’ll need an operation.’

That morning I’d fallen off my young horse. She didn’t mean to throw me off, she simply made a silly jump sideways, pretending to be startled by something and I simply forgot rule 1 of horse riding: keep one leg on each side of the horse, soles of your feet pointing towards the floor. Before I knew it, I had made a lovely butt-shaped indentation in the sand and the soles of my feet pointed towards the sky. All of me was fine, except my left wrist. That hurt a bit, but I remounted and rode for another 10 minutes or so. I then brought the horses to the field, gave coffee to a visiting friend, decided not to muck out the stables because of the sore wrist and took a book from the pile of books waiting to be read. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, so I tried to relax a bit. The wrist started to look alarmingly blue with strange swellings. I wrapped it in an elastic bandage and waited until hubs came home that evening.

He decided that I needed to ‘go see the doctor’. The doctor decided I needed to go to hospital, so hubs dropped me off there and went home to take care of the Brinkbeest-zoo and muck out the stables. ‘I’ll call you when I’m done here’, I said and there I was, in the A&E department in hospital.

It was the night of the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. For those of you who are not familiar with this annual event, each country that’s a member of the EBU-UER (don’t ask, I never heard of the EBU-UER, until I just tried to find out which countries can enter in the Eurovision Song Contest) chooses a singer or a band and a song to send to the contest, every country gets to vote and the one with the most votes wins (gosh, really?). Now, in recent years the country with the weirdest act has won, so almost all the other countries thought ‘we have to send weird acts too’, which made the whole event even weirder than it already was. And not weird in a good way. Just weird in a weird way.
The A&E waiting room has a television and someone had decided that we should watch the semi-finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. As if we weren’t suffering enough.

This was the Dutch entry in 2012. She didn’t go through to the final. I wonder why not (not).

And then there was the Irish act:

The Russian grannies came second in the final:

Actually, I believe Sweden won with a really decent song. So perhaps next year other countries will send decent singers to the contest too. Whatever. I don’t really care. If it had been an evening at home, I’d have never watched this. But I had to.

The other entertainment while waiting for my X-rays to be taken was provided by a loud woman who had brought a louder friend and four even louder kids to the A&E. The loud woman was in a wheelchair and the louder friend parked her in the waiting room and flipflopped (nice weather remember?) away to take care of the administrative side of things, while the kids flipflopped to the coffee and tea-corner and tried to get third-degree burns by making themselves tea (tea and coffee are free for the people waiting in A&E, but they serve hot water for tea and coffee in those large thermos flasks, under which you have to hold a plastic cup with one hand while pressing the top with the other hand, which even if I was allowed to drink something I couldn’t do because of the probably broken wrist. Still… a dry mouth wasn’t the worst of my problems.)

The loud woman sat in her wheelchair in the middle of the waiting room and grabbed her mobile. She started to call the first person on her list: ‘HI, IT’S ME, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHERE I AM. I’M IN HOSPITAL. H O S P I T A L!! YES. I KNOW!
I’LL TELL YOU. I WAS CYCLING HOME AND CAME PAST THAT POND, YOU KNOW THE ONE, NEAR MY HOUSE, AND THERE WAS A SWAN AND IT FLEW UP JUST AS I PASSED AND TO AVOID IT I HAD TO MAKE A STRANGE MANOUVRE AND I FELL. AND NOW I HAVE A REALLY SORE KNEE. IT’S IN A BANDAGE. I’M IN A WHEELCHAIR. YEAH. … (name of friend) BROUGHT ME TO THE A&E AND NOW THEY ARE GOING TO TAKE X-RAYS. YEAH.. OKAY… BYE

She put down her phone. A collective sigh of relief went through the waiting room.

Then she took up her phone again and phoned the second person on her list: ‘HI, IT’S ME, YOU’LL NEVER GUESS WHERE I AM….

And we all had to hear the whole story again.

By the time she called the third person to tell where she was, I and some of the other people waiting mumbled ‘swan, flew up, fell down, hurt knee, blablabla’ and we collectively sighed again. The mad woman telephoned at least 8 people and repeated the whole story VERY LOUDLY!!!!
I swear, if I had had the use of both of my hands, she’d no longer be alive. But then again, I wouldn’t have been in hospital either.

While mad woman was informing everyone where she was and why, her friend flipflopped into the waiting room again. ‘HERE!!!’, she shouted towards the kids, who had managed to survive the tea-making-adventure with only minor burns, ‘GO FIND SOMETHING TO PLAY WITH. THERE ARE TOYS IN THAT CORNER. WE’LL BE HERE FOR A WHILE!!!’

‘HEY, GUYS, IT’S THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST!’, loud woman shouted towards her friend and the kids. ‘PUT ME IN FRONT OF THE TELLY AND GET SOME CHAIRS. WE’LL WATCH IT TOGETHER. IT’S FUN!! OUR INDIAN HAS A CATCHY SONG! I KNOW ALL THE WORDS!!! I CAN’T HELP SINGING ALONG WHEN IT’S ON THE RADIO!!!’ And towards some other people in the waiting room: ‘DON’T YOU LOVE THE SONG CONTEST? I LOVE IT! I’M GOING TO SING ALONG!’ The people smiled and nodded. Rule 1 when dealing with idiots, try not to upset them. ‘CAN SOMEONE PUT THE VOLUME UP?!’

‘Oh God’, I moaned.
’Is your arm very painful?’, the man sitting next to me asked concerned.
’Yep, that too’, I smiled.
’Oh’, he understood, ‘They are rather loud aren’t they.’
We leaned back in our chairs and tried to not be there.

Finally it was my turn to get the arm X-rayed and to see a doctor and then the arm was put in plaster and then I phoned hubs and then he came to get me out of there. Hooray!

And again, it won’t happen

Well, that was that then. There’s no hope anymore. And we were all so looking forward to it. It united the nation. Hundreds of people volunteered to try and make it possible, but since yesterday evening we all know better. It won’t happen. The Elfstedentocht won’t go on.

If it wasn’t so disappointing, it would be funny. Earlier this week I posted about people suffering from the Eleven Cities Tour Fever after only one night of frost. Television programs were dedicated to the 200 kilometres (124.2 miles) long ice skating tour on natural ice, past 11 cities in Friesland, the Netherlands. From Leeuwarden back to Leeuwarden again.
If you turned on the radio it was topic of conversation.
It was the first thing we, often jokingly, asked each other: “And, already in training?”, and instantly the other person would know what they were supposed to be in training for.

Even I had a mild case of the fever. A telephone conversation between me and a friend, earlier this week:

Me: “Already in training?”
He: “Hmm, not really. You know, I’m more of a long distance ice skater.”
Me: “You mean, the 200 kilometres isn’t long enough for you?”
He: “Not much of a challenge.”
Me: “And besides, it’s only one round.”
He: “Oh, but I usually do more rounds. One round isn’t really… just when you found your skating rhythm, you’re already at the finish line.”
Me: “Hmm, that’s true.”
He: “And I always ‘kluun’ from Groningen to Leeuwarden too, to warm up the muscles.”
Me: “Sure you do.”

Anyway, there were people more serious about the Elfstedentocht. Professional skaters, looking forward to this once in a lifetime skating event, were in tears last night when the news broke at a press conference.

The last Elfstedentocht was in 1997 and before that the ice only was safe enough in 1985 and 1986. This year it looked like the ice could be thick enough (minimum of 15 centimetres) to hold the expected 16,000 skaters, but unfortunately a large part of the ice was covered in snow. Snow works as an insulation and it prevents the ice from ‘growing’. So the snow had to be removed. The ice wasn’t thick enough yet to allow snow shovelling machines on the ice, so it had to be done by hand. Entire villages went on ‘their’ stretch of ice to shovel the snow to the sides. Schools volunteered their pupils for shovelling. And people from all over the country went to Friesland to do their part. The army sent 50 soldiers, who just had returned from polar training, to shovel snow. I’ve always wondered why soldiers need polar training, since most wars are fought in hotter (in more than one sense) parts of the world. But now it makes sense.

It really did unite the nation.

But the weather isn’t doing its part. It’s not freezing hard enough anymore. Temperatures are still below zero, but it isn’t cold enough to make the ice ‘grow’. So… yesterday evening the news came that it couldn’t go through. Not that a date was set yet. But we all lived in hope that it could perhaps take place this Saturday or perhaps Sunday.

If you watch the video (follow this link) you will understand the atmosphere of the whole event. It truly is magnificent. After about a minute, you’ll see the competition skaters start. All skaters have to run to the Bonkevaart (the canal where the starting point is), put on their skates and then skate the entire route, collecting a stamp in every city they skate through. Because of the amount of people who skate the Elfstedentocht, they start very early in the morning, when it is still dark (so the first hour or so they can’t even see where they are skating). First the competitive skaters start and after that the tour skaters start in groups. The later they start, the later they will arrive back in Leeuwarden, so many of them will arrive in the dark. They are only allowed to pass the finish line until precisely 12 o’clock at night. When you’re late, you won’t get a medal to prove that you’ve done the tour. Life is hard. Now I know that lots of tour skaters take breaks in bars along the route, so it’s a wonder they do even finish at all, but still it is incredibly sad when you’ve braved the cold, skated 200 kilometres, avoided freezing to death or breaking limbs, and then you arrive at the finish at 10 seconds past 12. Bad luck! Better luck next time. If there is a next time that is.

The video also shows what ‘klunen’ is. It’s rather funny to watch.

And you’ll see our Queen at the finish line of the competition to greet the winner. Even our crown prince skated the tour once. I believe it was in 1997. Brave boy.

Ah well, who knows, maybe next year we’ll have another Elfstedentocht. Or perhaps even this year. If temperatures get as low as –15 Celsius again. Don’t burn your skates yet! There’s always hope.

Klunen: in places where the ice is too unsafe to skate on, skaters have to get off the ice and stagger on their skates to a place where they can get on the ice again and continue the tour.

This is your captain speaking;

I hope you’ll enjoy this mini-cruise through part of the historic city of Groningen.

The inner city of Groningen is surrounded by a circle of interlinking canals, also known as the ‘Diepenring’. I’m taking you on a cruise through the west- and southside of the Diepenring.

Groningen is a University city, famous for the Martini Tower, a church tower from the 15th century and lovingly known in Groningen as the Old Grey One (or ‘d’Oale Grieze), and for the Groninger Museum, opened in 1994 and designed by Alessandro Mendini.

We’ll start our cruise at part of the Diepenring that’s called the A. I’ve always found A the best place to start things.

If you look to your left you will see the ‘Hoge der A’ (high side of the A – the canal is called A). If you look to your right (shown below) you’ll see the ‘Lage der A’ (low side of the A). You can see that Groningen used to be (and still is) a thriving city. Trade over water used to be an important part of life here. In the fourteenth century, Groningen became a member of the Hanseatic League (1282-1669), a collaboration of merchants primarily from Germany, Scandinavia, England, Poland, the Baltic States, Russia and the Netherlands.

A lot of these buildings date from the latter part of that period. The warehouses are now transformed into apartments. Most of the ships are enjoying their pension and are used as homes.

 

 

 

 

Just above the houses on the ‘Hoge der A’ you can see part of the tower of the ‘der Aa-kerk’, a church that dates from around 1200.

Looking back: the Hoge der A on the right side and the Lage der A on the left side.

But we’re turning our heads (and bodies, unless you’re an owl) around again and will continue our cruise. We’re heading for the A-brug (or A-bridge).

The building that seems to be on the bridge is called Heykenshuys and houses a cookery shop on the ground floor and offices above.

On our way back we’ll see the other side of the Heykenshuys and the novel way in which this bridge opens.

But we’ll continue our tour, heading South toward the train station with the white statue of ‘t Peerd van Ome Loeks’ in front of it. A world famous statue, well: world famous in Groningen at least.

It is a statue of a horse (paard or ‘peerd’ in local dialect) and its owner, uncle Loeks (or Lukas). It is positioned with its backside towards the town and its head towards the train stations, so the first thing the unsuspecting traveller sees when leaving the station isn’t the huge backside of a horse. The NS (the national railways) thought that it would be more welcoming to see the front of the horse first. They may well be right. Although, as many of you loyal readers know, I have a thing for a nice bum.

The train station is a beautiful building, dating from 1896 and completely restored in 1999. It has a beautiful ceiling. Well worth a visit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The other thing, and possibly even more shocking than the bum of ‘t peerd van ome Loeks could ever be - but who am I to judge - the unsuspecting traveller sees when leaving the train station is the Groninger Museum. A very modern building, built as an island in the Diepenring.

 

 

We are now sailing towards the eastside of town, to the Oosterhaven (East Harbour).

We turn the boat and return the way we came.  Now we can see the ‘d’Olle Grieze’ or the Martini Tower.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the other side of the Heykenshuys, the building with the cookery shop. Looks like a totally different building from this angle. And the bridge opens in an interesting way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were followed by a sailing yacht with three guys on board. One of them wearing the tiniest of swimming trunks and he didn’t really have the figure for it. Slightly disturbing and the less said about that, the better. I didn’t take a photo (collective sigh of relief). They were all the way from Latvia (I asked them when we were negotiating a lock on our way to the northern part of the province of Groningen. We didn’t recognize their flag and couldn’t make out which language they were speaking.). 

Another historic building on the Hoge der A and a last look on the Noorderhaven (North Harbour)….

…..and we are on our way to the north of the province of Groningen to bring the boat back to its original harbour. A beautiful journey through the countryside. As I said, I’ll post some photos of that on a later date. You’ve seen enough for now I guess.

You know, Groningen is complaining about the lack of tourist visiting. Most tourists go to Amsterdam and leave the rest of the country for what it is. Even the Dutch people who live in other parts of the country think Groningen isn’t worth visiting, or they think it’s too far away. HA! Would you come to Groningen if you were to visit the Netherlands? Be honest.

 

Click on the link to the tourist information board and find out everything you always wanted to know about the city of Groningen.

Oh, don’t laugh and 100 Things I Love About the Netherlands # 17:

I love the town of Groningen.

OH, DON’T LAUGH

So finally we could enjoy an afternoon and out with friends on their boat, the Hendrik-Salvador.

I mean, we were promised numerous outings for almost four years now, but somehow we only managed to get on board on one occasion, two years ago. That is mostly due to our private zoo that we can’t and don’t want to leave alone for too long and our friends normally keep their boat in a harbour that is almost an hours drive from our house. But last Saturday afternoon we left all the four-legged hairy and two-legged feathery ones to fend for themselves for the afternoon and jumped on board of the lovely boat that our friends temporarily rented a space for in a harbour in the town of Groningen, not far from our house. We were going to enjoy a view of the town from the water. With him being the captain, her being a fantastic cook and taking care of the catering on board, another friendly friend, who just keeps laughing and giggling when he’s had his first glass of wine, joining us we were ready for an afternoon and early evening full of fun.

ANYWAY…

It started out alright.

The weather was good (it is unusually warm and dry this Spring in the Netherlands).

The harbour, surrounded by lovely colourful houses.

I even spotted an Indian. He was looking in a different direction.

And then we left the harbour to sail (is it called ‘sailing’ even though it isn’t a sailing ship?) through the town of Groningen.

We sailed (?) past a real sailing ship, the Ecolution, initiated by the first Dutch astronaut; Wubbo Ockels.

A very interesting ship; if you follow the Ecolution-link (after you’ve read this post of course), you can find out everything about it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first bridge opened to let us through, the second bridge did too (interesting blue underside),

the third bridge opened in a different way…,

and then we came to this bridge.

It stayed closed.

Oh sure, HE could go through…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and THEY could go through…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

…but we had to wait for one-and-a-half-hours before that bridge would open to let US through. Apparently bridge keepers have to eat too. And I suppose they take a nap after dinner. And then they have coffee. And then they kiss their wife and kids goodbye, hop on their bike and cycle to the bridge to open it for innocent people who own a boat that is just slightly too high to go under the bridge.

ANYWAY…

We decided to turn the boat around and go back to enjoy a bit of the countryside around Groningen. Perhaps we could go into Groningen from the other side of town. So we went back and came to this bridge…

…that THEY could go under, but WE couldn’t. And since the bridge keeper was enjoying his dinner…

ANYWAY…

There was nothing else for us to do than moor the boat and enjoy the idyllic view… (of a whole row of portaloos hmmm)…

…have a nap…

…watch the ducks swim past…

…open another bottle of Prosecco…and hate envy people in a rowing boat…

 

 

…and one-and-a-half-hours later the bridge finally opened and let us through to sail (?) back to the harbour, because it was getting too late for us to do the whole Groningen-tour that night.

On our way back the guys on board decided to inspect the motor compartment. While we were sailing (?). In the other direction! No one was steering the ship. But did we, women, panic? No, we didn’t. We’d had a lot of Prosecco. It does wonders for one’s ability to relax and enjoy the sunshine…

 

 

AAAAANYWAY…

The food was great, the wine was very enjoyable too, as was the company. So we did have a fun time.

 

The next day I got a second chance to take photos of the town of Groningen, from the water. Our friends had invited some other people (some I knew, some I didn’t) to do the Groningen-tour by boat and then sail the boat back all the way to its original harbour all the way up in the province of Groningen and invited me and hubs to join them. Hubs decided to stay at home to take care of the animals, so I could enjoy the entire journey.

Some previews (I’ll post more photos later this week):