Castles in the Netherlands 13 – Slot Zuylen

This relatively small and nicely rebuilt palace is easy to reach near Utrecht and has a number of nice features to it.

Yes, that dark line is a snaking wall, with a lot of fruit trees on its inner side facing South, soon to be reached …

On the positive side, the garden and park, which are also quite small, are very beautiful especially with the wide variety of flowers blossoming there even in mid-September.

And here we are at the snake-wall.

In the middle of the 18th century, this was the living place of the later Isabelle de Charrière, better known as Belle de Zuylen, until she became 31 and married the Swiss teacher of her brother. A person of very wide and deep interests and secret studies, she was a forerunner of emancipated women of much later and an author of many learned works written in French. She is one of the main attractions of the palace, which was somewhat rebuilt after her departure.

However, a visit inside is a bit cumbersome as it is only possible as part of a guided tour every hour. My guide was always in a hurry to close the boards inside the windows after her explanations, making taking good photos very difficult with so many in the group, but another guide may not be so hasty.

Otherwise, period furniture and clothing mean mainly the 18th or 19th century here. Paintings on the walls are huge in size and numbers, but are only of members of earlier families owning the place except for an older triptych and a really huge tapestry in this room.

This is where the budding ‘writeress’ wrote her letters to her forbidden and much older love, James Boswell, who, by the way, has the language institute of Utrecht University named after him (this is no ad for them, I hardly liked their Dutch language course when I attended).

By the way, guiding is possible in English as I heard another one, but I guess that was a small, special group. My guide was quite lengthy and uninteresting for me in Dutch, which was a bit of a let-down for the entrance fee of €8.5. Still, some nice pieces and the garden outside make it a nice place to visit, if not necessarily inside.

by P.S.

 

Castles in the Netherlands 12 – Batenburg and Hernen

Getting to Batenburg is a bit difficult from the direction of ‘s Hertogenbosch as you’d have to drive back towards Nijmegen across bridges and then back. If you come by bike, this is a very beautiful view of the village from across the Mouse.

The white structure hardly seen a bit closer from the church tower is the ferry that takes you across the water – if you’re on foot or by bicycle …

From all directions, there are only small country roads you wouldn’t expect in this country of motorways/freeways. On top of this, unless you’ve seen this picture somewhere, you’d be in for a surprise.

Yes, the castle must have been impressive a few hundred years ago, but not much more is left than the walls seen below. Here I can let you have a look at a few views in rainy weather.

The upside is, you don’t have to pay a penny to see everything worth seeing.

Quite unlike in Hernen.

Hernen looks like a castle worth seeing. One of the oldest in the Netherlands, you’d really like to see what it was like so long ago.

Unfortunately, the most interesting thing to see was a birthday party behind those open ground-floor doors, and of course, if you haven’t been invited, you’re not to see it, as I was made aware by a huge man by an inside door. I already became aware earlier that although the Dutch are very-very friendly almost everywhere, they are utterly territorial and what is theirs, or what they’ve paid for, is completely out-of-reach by others. So I was told that !this was a private affair, so …! I asked back, “So what?”, which lead to a rather hazy look and the person mumbled, so to make sure you don’t come in … I was half his size, no threat at all, yet he wanted to see me out of the building. Even then, I said yes, fine, but I’m not leaving the way you want me to. I’d paid for seeing the whole building after all, not a little.

The price for the whole building is €7.50. Considering that it is almost completely empty, I was left wondering what the curious visitor is paying for. Even the old walls are thin, make you understand why the castle of Batenburg is in ruins: thin walls of brick need only to be pushed a bit more strongly than by hand and they topple. See for yourself.

They say the wooden structure of the towers is still original …

but is this enough reason to fork out that entrance fee?

Even with the nice view, comparing to other castles, my answer is a resounding NO. A light walk around the buildings is all it is worth. You can decide for yourself though.

Good luck and enjoy.

By P.S.

Castles in the Netherlands 11 – Kasteel Ammersoyen, North of ‘s Hertogenbosch

Next up in this series comes a relatively small castle North of ‘s Hertogenbosch, still in the province of Gelderland. An easily approachable castle and one of the oldest in the country from the 13th century, it has a nice content inside to see for the €8.5 entrance fee. We can opt for a walkie-talkie for a guide, otherwise, you’re given a nice folder of text with photos describing the main points of information, but the explanations on the walls are also excellent for us to get to know the history and the people behind it. Outside the summer season, it opens at 13.00, so don’t need to hurry, and, as it’s not big, it can comfortably be seen within an hour.

The walls are extremely thick, even with the stair inside them, one can imagine the difficulty of breaking through them. The toilet in the wall can still be used, they say.

In this room having the tapestry on the wall, one is surprised by the voices at a time when almost nobody is around. You look around and see nobody speaking. Ghosts? You look around with awe. Then you move around and find where it comes from.

The next room on the tour describes most of the history, from the beginnings through the great fire of 1590 and the time of the nunnery until the abandonment and taking over and renovations by the Friends of Gelderland Province.

by P.S.

Castles in the Netherlands 10 – Kasteel Cannenburgh

Lying about 10 km N of Apeldoorn in Gelderland, this caste is not one of the larger ones and the ‘museumjaarkart’ is not accepted, the nicely-furbished interior makes it worth the cost of entry (€9.50).

The building is almost completely surrounded by lakes and a huge park where loitering around is completely free, unlike, e.g. in Rosendael. As usual, I started outside by circling the building from behind.

To the left of the entrance bridge, a bronze sculpture of Field Marschall Marten van Rossem sits brooding over the time that has passed since he started building the castle in 1538.

The entrance itself is a bit unusual as we first have to go down into the basement of the castle, where the tour of the castle starts. Yes, the first darkness is the water, the floor of the basement is below that level.

At the cash-desk earlier, we get a small gadget that tells us about all interesting features of the rooms and the furniture, included in the price. Besides, there’s even a video presentation which animates a painting of Marten van Rossem himself.

 

On the top floor under the roof, we can wonder about the exquisite wooden structure and here is one of the most interesting presentations for children, an animation bringing together unlikely people from two classical paintings of earlier centuries:

by P.S.

Walk around Leiden

Leiden is one of the most famous cities in the Netherlands, partly due to its university, which is by far the oldest in the country (University of Leiden),

partly due to its outstanding position in the country around the beginning of the development of modern Netherlands, partly as the birth city of the most notable Dutch painter, Rembrandt van Rijn

The city, originally built at the meeting of the Old Rhein and the New Rhein near the see, is today not among the largest ones in the country, but, with its numerous canals and the original river branches, it inevitably reminds one of Amsterdam on a smaller scale and a very pleasant atmosphere:

No wonder one can see, besides hordes of cyclers in the streets, a lot of rowing parties on the waters of the city.

Hortus Botanicus, established in 1590, is the oldest botanical garden still in existence in the Netherlands.

The largest church in town, Hooglandse Kerk, formely called Sint Pancraskerk, almost became a cathedral in the 16th century. The size would make it understandable.

but we can’t really see the full size from anywhere. However, it is interesting inside due to two objects: an ancient clock worked through huge ropes working on enormous cogwheels by weights on the wall

and the “English Organ”, one built in England but taken to pieces and still being built in this church

Back to the “streets” …

As in Amsterdam, restaurants and cafes are sometimes crammed full of people even during the day

just as “rondvarten” are popular

Interestingly enough, the neighbourhood of the railways station is highly reminiscent of the same area in the Hague

Apart from this, however I look at it, it is an interesting and beautiful city with an old atmosphere worth visiting just outside of Amsterdam.

by P.S.

 

 

 

Castles in the Netherlands 9 – Kasteel Doornenburg

In this part of my blog, I’d like to follow my series of posts on Dutch castles and palaces that can be found on my first photo-blog available from the blogroll on the left, where all the other eight parts can be found.

This castle can be found in the village of Doornenburg S-E of Arnhem, built in the early Middle Ages at the bifurcation of the Rhein and the Waal. It is a bit difficult to reach, no public transport, most of the road leading there is narrow along the dikes, but not problematic, and of course it is no problem by bike.

It’s not a very big place although it looks fine from the dike and from further in the village.

We can walk round it from further or from close up.

   

These last photos make one believe that the tower can be visited. A word of warning, however: one can only visit inside as part of guided tours, which only start at 12:00, 14:00 and 16:00, so timing is important if one doesn’t want to wait nearly two hours for the next one. For consolation, there’s a large space in the yard for eating and drinking, which most visitors seem to be content with.

Eet smakelijk, as they say, to you too!

by P.S.

Maastricht, the Netherlands

Maastricht, the Dutch city famous for the treaty of the EU signed here decades ago, is in a very far, Southern corner of the Netherlands, in the province of Limburgh, of which it is the capital, but at a distance of many hours of drive or train journey from almost everywhere, wedged between Belgium and Germany. As distance is translated into travel costs, I never really hoped to get there, but an action by HEMA, a chain store in the country, helped me out with a cheap offer (a quarter of the usual price) of day tickets I could tap into.

A few words of warning for tourists in order here. People other than residents of the Netherlands can only dream of receiving such deals except if the tourist has local friends. For a start, if you have internet access, you have to have a Dutch bank account to pay for the ticket as well. That’s a tall order, but foreign banks are not accepted. Then you need a printer to print the ticket after you’ve run the full gauntlet of the complicated procedure successfully. Further, be warned that the country is on the cusp of getting rid of paper tickets so you need to buy daily chip-cards to put money on before you get on a train. For the sake of the relatively large numbers of Dutch people visiting other countries, I wish other countries also introduce such systems almost fully shutting off travel possibilities so that they get an experience of their own medicine. With a venom. Talk about free travel in the EU.

Well, no problem for me, so I went to see this beautiful, intercultural city a few weeks ago, and to full satisfaction. One can hear as much French and almost as much German in the streets as Dutch, quite unlike anywhere else in the country, and it is a beautiful city on top of local hospitality. Its history goes back to the early middle-ages, which is reflected in a large part of the inner city and the ring around it, though there is not much as a surprise for continental Europeans.

The inner city is dominated by a number of great churches, of which St. Servaasbasiliek is the oldest and most respected one with a wonderful collection of religious relics inside, some of which dating back to the 5th century as the city and this church was involved in the old Franc empire of the Karolings, Karel Martel, Karel de Grote, Barbarossa and others right after the fall of Rome.

Moods and museums of Amsterdam – Part 3

Dear Visitor, This post is a follow-up on the previous parts 1 and 2 showing the beauty of Amsterdam and some of its museums on my first photoblog. However, in this post, I have to start with a museum I visited a second time over the years, and I have to warn you that my impressions were far from favourable. The good news will only come after this one.

The Van Gogh Museum is on the left side

This particular museum is situated near the great Rijksmuseum (shown in part 1 about Amsterdam) and the famous Concertgebouw at the Sourthern edge of the old city and is diagonally opposite to the greatness of those two. When I visited it years ago first, I had good impressions about the exhibition on show, but somehow my memories may have been polished by time, because this time I felt it was time and money wasted. Not that it took a long time to see. Basically, if one goes to a museum called after Van Gogh, one expects to see at least several paintings by said painter.  Here, however, there is one painting on show by Van Gogh, a couple by Chagal, Goncharova and a few other 20th-century Russian painters, and the rest is difficult even to see how and why they made it to a museum. Most of the pieces are on par with the museum of Arnhem, or a smaller museum in rural Hungary for that matter, so I haven’t taken photos of them. If it weren’t for two dozens of huge transparencies, or ‘installations’, transparent photos lit from behind, by renowned Canadian photographer Jeff Wall, the museum would be completely off the list of museums to be seen in Amsterdam. However, one doesn’t go to the Van Gogh Museum for photos, and these were there probably temporarily, it is no excuse for the museum. The content of the permanent exhibition is very meager, a real let-down in Amsterdam. My friend with me had to pay for it and was quite put out. Even when visiting free with a Museumjaarkaart, you should not expect much so as not to feel it. On the other hand, visiting the local Madame Tussauds was agreeable. As I lived and travelled in China about a decade ago, I had no opportunity to see the recently opened Shanghai and Beijing versions and the others mushrooming up around Asia. My most recent experience with Madame dates back to London in the 1980s. So I took an opportunity to see the one in Amsterdam with this friend a couple of weeks ago. Of course, all MTs have to include figures of local political leaders and celebrities. Instead of Queen Elizabeth, in Amsterdam we can see the new Dutch king and his wife, and the previous Queens, all of whom were generally loved in the country. You can pose with the former Queen, and can even put a crown on your head as you please. But the exhibition actually begins with a very important historical figure, Peter Stuywesant, director-general of New Nederland in the middle of the 17th century. That was the time when New York was still called New Amsterdam, and a large part of the wealth of the then young, but prosperous Netherlands came from. Unfortunately, a series of problems with the English texts also start here, which I can’t resist to expose here. I’m sure it’s not difficult to find which sentence was written with Dutch grammar … Those interested in more of my explorations about mistakes in this museum, please follow the link to my language-learning site on the left side of this blog. The rest of the exhibition consists of the usual great international figures of history, arts and sciences. There’s not too much bias, though I personally do not know or care about any of the Dutch celebrities, but then again, the show provides one an opportunity to learn about the local culture as well. The quality of the artifacts is good, or at least decent, with only a couple that I didn’t really feel similar to the originals. But all-in-all, it a great success. I was also happy to get in for half the price with the Museumjaarkaart, the one-year card that provides free access to a lot of museums in the Netherlands for a year.  

Madame Tusseaud herself