A weekend in Miffytown: Utrecht, The Netherlands

Back in July, to celebrate a long weekend due to Belgium's national day we naturally headed out of the country. Both of us fancied something low-key, preferably without having to fly, so we decided it was high time to check out a bit of Belgium's northern neighbour. There are any number of interesting cities within a few hours' drive (The Hague, Delft, Leiden, Maastricht, Rotterdam to name a few) but after some deliberation, we settled on Utrecht. Basically just because it seemed quite a pleasant place.

On the way, we took a small detour through Baarle-Hertog/Baarle-Nassau, a place I've wanted to visit for some time. If you google Baarle, you'll find all manner of enthusiastic articles that basically make it seem like a wonderland of geographical oddities. Basically, although the whole area is surrounded by the Netherlands, you have scattered bits which belong to Belgium, and within these are further Dutch enclaves. It looks like this:

These articles make the town sound super-exciting: you have a restaurant where the clients all have to switch tables at a certain time of night because the Dutch side can stay open longer than the Belgian! You have houses which have their kitchen in Belgium and their dining room in the Netherlands! The insanity! Truth is, it's actually a pretty boring place. We thought you'd see borders running back and forth all over the town centre, but, although there were some, they're just lines on the road. There's a reason all the photos in those articles look pretty much the same. It's hard to find a spot that isn't just the border running across some tarmac and terminating in a garage wall with a wheelie bin next to it. Anyway, fun enough to visit for half an hour on the way to somewhere else, but if we had driven out there specifically I would have been a grumpy bunny.

Jules astride the border

Utrecht proved to be pleasant indeed. It still had the vibe of a laidback student town even in the middle of summer. Its main feature are the canals running through the centre, which are the perfect places to go for a drink and to watch the world go by.

Enjoying a drink right next to the water 

The canal area was also a prime location for Pokémon Go players. This was maybe the week after the game was released in Europe, and there were a crazy amount of people playing outside on the fine summer evenings.

Including me!

The Dom, or cathedral, is another prominent feature. The inside of the cathedral itself was not that exciting, but next to it is a really pretty cloister garden we liked a lot. You can climb up the Dom tower, but only as part of a guided tour that takes like an hour, so on the first day we were too tired and then the weather was not as good on the other days, so we didn't bother. The Dom tower is actually no longer attached to the cathedral proper, because the section in between was destroyed in a storm in the 17th century.

View of the Dom tower

Canal and Dom tower by night

The beautiful cloister garden

Heading in to the cloisters

The only thing of note we really did was a visit to the Catharijneconvent museum, which focuses on religious art. Long-time followers of the blog will know I'm a sucker for that sort of thing. It had a beautiful treasury, full of reliquaries and monstrances and such things, and a nice collection of paintings through the ages. Probably not for everyone, but nice enough.

"You wanna go? I'll take you down mofo!"

When he tries to sneak out without waking you up

A creepy modern version of the Pietà

Finally, Utrecht is the birthplace of Miffy, the adorable little bunny! Did you know Miffy's real name is Nijntje? We didn't make it to the Miffy museum but we saw Miffy's traffic light!

High excitement! All in all, Utrecht is a great place for a short break if you're looking to eat and drink and take it easy. Pro tip: we left the car in a park and ride outside the city which cost 5€ for the whole time we were there, plus a day bus pass for both of us. Versus parking in the centre near our hotel, which was 30€ overnight! As you might expect from a Dutch city, the place is car-unfriendly and bike-friendly. Try not to get run over!

The Wood of Earthly Delights

Two months since my last post, I'm thoroughly ashamed. What is even more surreal is that we moved house one month ago already! This being a major reason we've been so busy and I haven't been keeping up with the blog. In keeping with my fine tradition of having too much on my plate on top of planning a move, we spent 4 days in Berlin immediately before the move, and I've just come back from a long weekend in Tours. So things have been a-transpiring, even if I haven't had the energy to write about it. But that will be for another day. To ease back into blogging, here's a short (hopefully) post about our trip to Den Bosch (formally, s'Hertogenbosch, but you can see why they came up with a short version) in the Netherlands.

Way back in October last year, I read an article in the Guardian about a major upcoming exhibition on Bosch in Den Bosch, one that would bring together 20 out of Bosch's 25 surviving paintings in order to celebrate the 500th anniversary of his birth in the city from which he took his name. Even if the name doesn't mean anything to you, you've probably seen some of his wacky, surrealist paintings, such as the Garden of Earthly Delights.

Or maybe the Simpsons riff on it

They may not be the 'prettiest' paintings ever, but they're fascinating. You can stare at a Bosch painting for hours and always see something new. And while at the time, presumably the fantastical beasts and monsters of a Bosch were meant to literally put the fear of God into you, today they read more as trippy, Dali-esque curiosities.

Without rehashing the Guardian article entirely, the story of how the curator of a small, provincial museum in the Netherlands managed to get these world-renowned masterpieces assembled is also inspiring. One reason museums may loan pieces is to get a loan back the other way in the future. But the Nordbrabantsmuseum in Den Bosch basically had nothing to give. So, instead, its curator managed to persuade the town and the Getty Foundation to fund a research project into the artist and his works. So we got a major exhibition and to learn more about the paintings, and, judging by what we saw visiting Den Bosch, the town got a major tourist investment in return.

Speaking of the number of tourists, I heard about this back in October 2015, but tickets were not yet on sale, and I thought it would be fine to book when we got back from New Zealand in March. This turned out to be an error of judgement. The exhibition turned out to be so popular that when we looked in mid-March, the exhibition, which ran until early May, was already completely sold out apart from a few slots on weekday evenings. So we ended up having to leave work early one Tuesday evening and drive the two hours to Den Bosch to be there for out 8 pm timeslot, and then drive back to Brussels, arriving home around midnight.

Coincidentally, it happened also to be King's Day when we were there. Everything I've heard about King's (formerly Queen's) Day suggests that it's a huge party. However, the day we were there was freezing cold and pouring with rain (geez, a lot has changed in the intervening six weeks), and while there were plenty of empty Heineken cans littering the streets, the party seemed very much to have died down. But it was still fun to see it a little, without all the huge crowds you presumably get in Amsterdam.

The exhibition itself was really crowded though, which made me a bit of a grumpy Gus. I really don't like having to shuffle along, hemmed in by other people, barely even able to see the works in question. But it was still cool to see. My favourite works were probably the drawings. I know he made the paintings just as much as the drawings, but somehow you feel closer to an artist as a real, live human being by seeing the drawings. Maybe that's just me. I suppose it's the seemingly spontaneous, unstudied nature of a drawing as opposed to the more laboured work of a painting. (I know some drawings may be carefully constructed and some paintings done freely, but that's just the feeling I get.) Sort of more like seeing an author's first draft or manuscript notes rather than the printed book.

Study of beggars and cripples (by a follower of Bosch, but this was my favourite of the drawings)

The town had gotten into the spirit with a sprinkling of sculptures based on creatures from Bosch's paintings. We didn't get to see them all, due to the weather and the limited time we had, but I think they are going to stay there (it seems silly to remove them in any case), so it would be fun to explore the town and find them all if we ever find ourselves there again.

As for the town itself, it was a cute, small market town, very Dutch-looking with the typical tall, narrow buildings with stepped roofs. I don't know what there is to see there when there isn't a "once in a lifetime" exhibition going on, so I imagine everyone concerned is raining blessings and praise down on the visionary museum director. A fun little expedition for us, and a reminder we're lucky to be living here in Europe, where a quick jaunt to a neighbouring country to see an exhibition is entirely feasible!