The chronicles of Friesland: a photo reportage
Van lieverlede: zo
komen zij nadir: 8 roeiers,
steeds verder landinwaarts
groeiend in hun mytologie.
Chrysanten, roeiers by Hans Faverey
“Unhurriedly: that is how / they approach: 8 rowers, / even further inland / growing into their mythology.” These verses by Dutch poet Hans Faverey vividly conjure up memories of my trip last in May to Friesland, the northernmost province of the Netherlands.
I remember the constant and elegant presence of water, serenely parading in front my eyes. The water had a soothing effect, cleansing the hecticness and stress I had brought with me on this road trip. Like the rowers of the poem it too grew into a mythology of its own. “A land that teases the sky with its many mirrors,” I thought as my good friend Pauline and I drove through the Frisian countryside. No matter where you looked there was water in many forms: gigantic lakes that felt like the sea, canals, polders, rivers, ponds… and hundreds of minute, white boats dotting the horizon. After all, of Friesland’s 5,700 km2 area almost half is water.
Our two day journey began 200 kms north of Maastricht, in Baarn, near Utrecht, where Pauline’s parents live. They not only kindly lent us their car and their Tom-Tom (a gadget with a suggestive female voice that was to change my understanding of driving!) but had us for a delicious dinner Limburg style: ham, boiled eggs, potatoes and asparagus.
We left Baarn early in the morning. After an hour and half drive we reached our first stop: Groningen. A T-shirt sold at the tourist office advertised Groningen as “The Ultimate City of Freedom.” During my short stay I did not find any evidence to support or deny this statement, but I thought it was hilarious.
The Martini tower, a 127 meters tall construction from the 13th century, impressed me as much as the fact that Groningen was an important harbour of the Hanseatic League, an alliance of trading guilds that established and maintained a trade monopoly over the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, and most of Northern Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries.
The curious thing about Groningen is that the city is many kilometres inland. It is thanks to a complex network of canals that Groningen is connected to the sea and could receive the products that were traded with other cities in the League.
We left Groningen after lunch with the sweet taste of poffertjes in our mouths. Poffertjes are a traditional batter delicacy. They look like tiny pancakes, but poffertjes are turned before one side is completely done and then sprinkled with powder sugar.
Our stomachs could complete their digestion before we reached the neighbouring province of Friesland. We purposely avoided its capital Leeuwarden and went to explore a few small towns around the IJsselmeer.
The IJsselmeer is the biggest lake in the Netherlands (the fifth largest in Western Europe) but it is surprisingly shallow: a mere six meters in its deepest parts.
We arrived in the town of Woudsend before 17.00 and sat in front of a canal eating ice cream and watching people sailing. The feeling of being inside a postcard was accentuated when we sighted a working windmill in the distance.
Around dinner time we drove to Heeg where we had a room waiting for us in a mostly empty youth hostel. Pauline and I went to the harbour full of sailing boats which were returning home as the sun was setting. It was a serendipitous moment.
In Heeg I noticed a most ingenious system to allow boats to go “uphill.” Through a series of floodgates and lockgates a water “lift” for boats or canal lock is created. The boat enters the elevator and the floodgates are closed. A lot of water is poured in so that the level rises and the boat “goes up.” After only 10 minutes the boat is 5 to 10 meters “higher” and can proceed to next bit of canal.
The next morning we explored towns like Stavoren and Workum.
In Stavoren we saw the statue of the infamous legendary lady who ruined the town. She gazes at the sea from the harbour waiting for the outline of a boat to appear on the horizon.
According to folktale the Lady of Stavoren was a very wealthy trader who wanted more riches. She sent a captain out to look for the greatest treasure in the world but when he returned with wheat, saying that it was the most valuable thing as it could feed people, the lady got mighty angry. She ordered the ship crew to dump all the wheat in the harbour. A beggar warned her that if she wasted the wheat she would become a beggar herself. The lady took a ruby ring off her finger and threw it into the sea in defiance, arguing that becoming poor was as likely as her ring returning to her. But that same night a large fish was served at a banquet that she had thrown and when the fish was cut open the lady’s ring was inside. Things, of course, turned for the worse. The wheat that had been dumped in the harbour inexplicably clogged up its entrance, thereby preventing ships from trading with the city. And misery for everyone followed…
The last surprise of the trip was the impressive Afsluitdijk connecting Friesland to North Holland. This extraordinary dike, which runs over a length of 32 km, was completed in 1932 and turned the former salt water inland sea, the Zuiderzee, into the present day sweet water Ijsselmeer.
As we crossed it we felt that we inhabited a frontier between three gigantic bodies of waters, the North Sea, the IJsselmeer, and the blue sky.
Our final stop was the touristy and colourful town of Volendam where we saw the typical souvenir shops and had coffee looking at the tourists loaded with bags full of presents.
This trip was an excellent chance for me to explore another beautiful and charming area of the Netherlands, particularly one so different from Limburg, and not only geographically speaking. Its food, language and architecture showed me once more the diversity and heterogeneity of the Netherlands. And obviously it is the definite place to go for sailing aficionados!
By Hector Pascual Alvarez
Hector Pascual Alvarez, 21, is a Spanish student enrolled at Macalester College in Minnesota (US) where he is majoring in International Studies and Theatre Arts. He spent the first semester of 2007 at Maastricht University as part of a study abroad programme.
