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.
