Zuidlaren, NL, and It's Famous Statues

In conjunction with my happy birthday last week, Astrid and I drove on an overnight trip to Zuidlaren and Groningen over the weekend, 230 km north of us to the provinces of Drenthe and Groningen.  Actually, in the coming and going, we traveled through 6 of the 12 Dutch provinces (South Holland, Gelderland, Overijssel, Drenthe, Groningen and Utrecht)!  Gorinchem, where we live, is in South Holland province.

[Groningen is another post, where we went to see a Jan van Haasteren exhibit celebrating his 80th birthday.  He's the jigsaw puzzle man, remember?  We also had an unexpected stop on the way in Westerbork where 102,000 Jews were "assembled" for transport to Nazi concentration camps during WWII.  That, too, is another post.]

This happy post is about the village of Zuidlaren where we spent the night.  What a delightful, cozy, clean, charming village of ca. 10,000 people.  I fell in love with it.

But long before we got to Zuidlaren (at 4:30 p.m.), we stopped late morning for our koffie break.

It's the treat we give to ourselves when we make these road trips.

Latte macchiatos always seem to call out to us!

Now insert on your back burner at least 6 km of walking in the afternoon before reaching Zuidlaren.

As we drove into the village on its main street, we saw two of its famous statues.

This one was the first and is called the Berend Botje statue.

It's a nursery rhyme depiction of Berend Botje who sailed out with his boat from Zuidlaren...

and eventually went to America, supposedly, since he was never found again.

Astrid was repeating the nursery rhyme throughout the trip!  :)

The second statue, a block from our hotel, is this horse-market sculpture.

Every October in Zuidlaren is Europe's largest horse market with 350 market stalls 

extending 2.3 miles from the center of the village.

Horsetraders come from Germany and Belgium, as well as the Netherlands.

The statue depicts the time when buying-and-selling deals were "closed" with a simple handshake.


ADDENDUM:  I've added this YouTube after publishing this post.
At around 1.5 minutes, you can see the famous handshake!

It wasn't surprising, then, as we walked around town, to see many references to horses...

and that famous handshake!

But we were hungry...and had seen an Italian restaurant while driving into town!

Remember that 6 km walk on your back burner?

I guess carbs were what we needed because that's all we wanted,

accompanying our very nice Warsteiner German beer.

We both have a weak spot for spaghetti carbonara and lasagna, a rare chance to eat for us.

And then we walked some more, finding the village synagogue

where you can read the 15 names of residents sent to Nazi concentration camps.

After our earlier time in Westerbork (another post), this was additionally sobering.

Zuidlaren is also known for its many village greens, called brinken (middle-right),

with their stands of trees.

The next morning, Sunday, before driving to Groningen (another post),

we drove to Zuidlaren's only windmill, De Wachter (The Guard), from 1851, now a museum.

It's where the original Berend Botje resides, which we had arrived too late to see that Saturday.

And just outside the windmill, along the canal, is De Jonge Wachter (The Young Guard), 

a paddle steamboat built in 2000.  Both mill and steamer were at rest/closed that Sunday.

But we had seen enough to make us very happy campers,

along with the many weathervanes throughout the trip, several in Zuidlaren itself.

The turkey (middle-right) is the first we've seen, in the Westerbork area.

Happy Birthday to me, right?  It really doesn't get more fun than this.

Growing older and better, that is!