Wageningen

Another Saturday, another city, another water tower, another adventure: Wageningen. Don't worry if you can't get your tongue around it because I still stumble over it myself: VA-hen-ing-en. It's a historical and university town of Food Sciences just 50 km from our apartment here in The Netherlands.

When I got excited about seeing it a week ago, it was for the water tower, windmill and Grote Kerk. Astrid never once mentioned what it's historic significance was until we got there. Hold that thought.

As we often do, we head into the city center and get our bearings. Right away we start looking for a quaint little café for our late-morning koffie and appeltaart. It's our photo-hunt treat every weekend we're out-n-about.

And there it was, the Hotel de Wereld (Hotel the World):

And that's when Astrid told me why it was important.

"May 6, 1945, the German general Blaskowitz surrendered to the Canadian general Charles Foulkes, which ended the Second World War in the Netherlands. The Generals negotiated the terms of surrender in the Hotel de Wereld."

On the spot I said to Astrid, THIS is where we need to have our koffie. Such a memorable place!

So we did. Outside on the terrace, overlooking the May 5th Plaza.
That important day was a month before the day I was born on the other side of the Big Pond.

BTW, the koffie in the glass is a latte macchiato, my koffie of choice whenever I can get it...since Germany days in Hannover so many years ago!

A block or so away from the hotel, we passed the Roman Catholic church on Bergstraat. No amount of Googling has helped us find the name of it, which is why I've mentioned the street:

It so happens the church was open that Saturday morning because a group was preparing for a monthly Eucharist service the next day. But I want you do see this YouTube I found of the interior. Remember when I told you a couple posts ago that the catholic churches seem so dark to us? This is without doubt the darkest church of any denomination Astrid and I have ever seen:


The lights weren't on when we were there either. So strange. I really don't understand it, do you? But we were still glad to see it and get our education, so to speak.

As we continued walking to the Grote Kerk and City Hall, we passed the kind of architecture that still blows me away. The spires, the clock towers, the old, the new....

....and all the fun things that make our photo hunts...well, fun!
That middle left image, incidentally, is a stork's stand built as an open invitation for any stork to build its nest, if it would be so kind. It's a rare and protected bird here in The Netherlands, one we have actually seen more than once, sitting high up on a roof/chimney.

As we neared the city-center's plaza where the Johannes de Doperkerk or Grote Kerk (John the Baptist or Great Church) and city hall stand, we first of all saw the Saturday market in full swing, all around the church....

....then we started to hear music as we rounded the corner to City Hall, and this is the band we saw playing:

That's City Hall with the city's lion coat of arms and the Grote Kerk in the background. It didn't take us long to find out what all the hubbub was about....


Are we lucky or what!
If you recall back to when Astrid and I got married in February, you may remember that we, too, were married at City Hall and by a city-hall official, licensed to perform wedding ceremonies. In The Netherlands, whether you get married in a church or not, you are required to be married by a city hall official at city hall (very few exceptions to the rule). There is a definite separation of church and state when it comes to marriage.

For one brief minute or two, we were there at the right place at the right time! We really did feel lucky.

After that, there was only one thing left to see on our list....

De Vlijt Molen = The Diligence Windmill, built in 1879 as a grain mill.
See how much Granny Towanda (our granny-apple green car), too, loves windmills! I think she can spot them with her eyes closed. And lucky for us, that day this mill was open for business....

I don't often show you images of a mill's interior because they're usually not open, not a business, or someone's private residence. When it's a working mill that sells its own produce, we're all in for a treat. This is where you can buy your own corn meal, for instance, which I have done elsewhere. It's like another world, another time.

Okay. That's enough for today! On our way home, we stopped at the Blauwe Kamer nature reserve but I'll save that for another post...along with all the apple and pear trees loaded down with fruit everywhere we go right now. That, too, is another story...as is the dining table we just bought with 6 ladder-chairs for €50 at the nearby thrift store. We're on a roll.

The Oudenbosch Basilica of Agatha & Barbara

In almost every post these days I mention that we have driven to a new city here in The Netherlands and have visited a church, among other things. What I haven't been explicit about is that almost all the churches we've seen have been Dutch Reformed or Lutheran churches. That is, Protestant. Unlike parts of Belgium and France to the south, Holland is not Roman Catholic.

So when we had the chance recently to visit the Basilica in Oudenbosch, 27 miles SW of us, we had quite the surprise. Modeled after St. Peter's Basilica in Rome (construction began in 1865 and was completed in 1982, over 100 years later), it represented everything "Roman Catholic."

The thing is, Oudenbosch is a village of only 13,000 people. Can you imagine this imposing structure in a city of that size? It still blows my mind.

When you enter the front door of the church, your eyes are immediately drawn all the way to the altar at the opposite end:

In some of these images, the altar is seen from the dome above, after climbing up to the "whispering gallery."

Speaking of which, when not drawn to the altar, the dome beckons:

Interestingly, everything we saw from the whispering gallery surrounding the dome was painted. It looked like mosaic tile but it wasn't. We guessed it made sense for having the look without all the expense.
[In the above collage, the bottom center image is not from the dome but from the altar.]

For those of you who grew up with Roman Catholic culture, iconography and architecture, this is surely "old hat." For me it is astonishing. All of it:

Lucky for me, I was able to find a YouTube video of this church, with much better images: The Oudenbosch Basilica of the Saints Agatha and Barbara:

Now I will make a simple/simplistic observation which I hinted at in my last post: We have visited only a handful of Catholic churches here in The Netherlands but Astrid agrees with me that all of them have seemed so much darker and "colder" than the Protestant churches we've visited. Maybe one of you can enlighten us? Is it marble vs. wood? Statuary vs. open spaces? Fewer vs. more windows? What is it?

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That same day-trip to Oudenbosch, we saw another delightful, artistic creation...in the form of this whimsical garden "statue:"

While we were photographing this car, the front door of the house opened and a gentleman came out to welcome us. Apparently this has become quite the tourist attraction (unbeknownst to us) and he asks people to send him their images once they get home. Yes, we were good and sent him ours. I bet he has quite a collection.

Also on this particular trip I was able to photograph 4 different water towers that we purposely went to find both coming and going to Oudenbosch. Astrid knows I'm "collecting" them to put together one day into a gigantic collage. But to whet your appetite, here's a peek:

Believe it or not, these are very plain compared to others I have "captured." They're almost as soulful as the windmills...though not quite.

And that brings me to one last thing (before I start tackling the Sail 2010 images!): it's my turn again today at Vision & Verb where I talk about Pleasing All the People All the Time, using the following image (from my last post):

Maybe you'll figure out what I'm gonna say before you get there?!