We eventually had to leave the beautiful Kyra and head towards Dokkum. We had only 3 more weeks to ourselves before Pam and Bryan arrive, and we had spent a good part of our summer cruising around Southwest (Sud-West) Friesland. There’s a few cities in the north that are good visits also, and 4 of the 11 fountains are up there. We chose to spend a couple of days in Leeuwarden (the capital city of Friesland) and then on to Dokkum.

Leeuwarden is a nice cruise north from Grou, though our cruising app led us down a couple of dead ends. One of the funnier ones is when we were tied up waiting for a drawbridge to come up, and the bridgekeeper said over the loudspeaker that the bridge was closed in Dutch. I asked, “how do we get to Leeuwarden then?” And he said, “uh, you just drive there.” OK. Got it.

The Road in the Sky

Parked Under the Willow

Not an Austin Texas Raft Up

When I lived in Austin, a group of us used to go out to the lake on Friday evenings and raft up, often to the largest boat with the largest anchor (Rob and Lynn). We’d spend the weekend in a cove, walking across each others boats, eating breakfast tacos in the morning, and spending the days floating in the lake. Rafting up is the same, but different in Friesland.

We left Leeuwarden for Dokkum. We were in touch with Jos and Anja (see previous blog post) and they were already in Dokkum. Jos texted me to just get there and we could raft up to their boat and not worry about finding a spot. They were in a beautiful location between 2 windmills. So, that’s what we did, and it was awesome and we didn’t want to ever leave.

Jos and David have a lot in common… and they talk and talk and talk about boats. Jos, like a lot of Dutch people, has been around boats his entire life and really knows boats. It took Anja and I a little time, but we learned we could communicate using Google Translate. It’s slow, but we learned a little bit about each other. I promised Anja next year I would know some more Dutch and maybe we could talk a bit more freely… I keep hearing Dutch is hard to learn, but after a month of doing Duolingo, I can say “my cow does not read the newspaper”. If you’ve used Duolingo, you understand what I just wrote.

It was a Cold and Rainy Day…

David and I decided that David would cook the Dutch national dish for Jos and Anja, and we’d have it on their boat. OK, David didn’t decide that… I decided that David would cook for them, because David is a chef and it was one of those days. We walked to the store in the never-ending rain and bought the ingredients for “snert” (split pea soup). We had our first dinner with our new friends, and they got a real kick out of the fact that we were Americans who made a winter dinner in the summer, and brought their national dish over for dinner.  (And yes, we got more Kyra snuggles in, because who wouldn’t want as many Westie snuggles as you can get?)

More About Dokkum

Dokkum is a beautiful city, just a few short km south of the North Sea. It’s way up there in the Netherlands. More than 12k people live there, and it’s best known event ever in the history of Dokkum is when Saint Boniface was martyred there in 754. Oh, and the 5^th crusade kind of started there too. The city has been a city since 1298, and it’s one of the 11 cities (so it has a fountain). It’s also the turnaround for the Elfstedentocht (the big ice skating marathon).

Dokkum… definitely worth going to, and if you are big a shopper, it’s the 5^th most shopped city in Friesland!

Made you look. Haha! No, we did not adopt another Westie. We’re enjoying traveling, and let’s face it – after Ernie, it’s hard to replace that incredible dog.

When we were in Workum, we were parked across the dock from a couple from Aalphen aan den Rijn who were also cruising in their 10+m boat “Amor”. The next morning we saw a beautiful Westie girl out of the windows of our boat, and immediately fell in love with her. She started walking towards our boat, and next thing you know we were both hanging out the side door calling her over. She was the crew dog from “Amor”, and we soon learned her name was Kyra. Kyra seemed to take a liking to us also (it helped that her mom gave us a treat to give her).

We were gearing up to leave Workum, so we had to say goodbye to Kyra and her owners, and we turned and head back up to Sneek. A couple of days later, we were walking down the street in Sneek next to the boats, and we see “Amor” parked a few boats from ours. We stop to chat with the owners (though it was really to get another Kyra snuggle).

We Made Friends

The next day, we saw Jos and Anja again, and Jos asked us how long we were staying in Sneek. We originally had planned to … well, we didn’t really have plans to do anything. We didn’t know what we were going to do, and the reason he asked is that they wanted to see Oppenheimer that evening and wanted to know if we wanted to dog-sit Kyra. The answer was a resounding…

OF COURSE WE WILL SPEND AN EVENING WITH A WESTIE!!!

We had our second dog visitor that evening on Compagnon. And we LOVE Kyra… (more about that in the next blog… we cruised a bit with them, and Kyra got to the point where she recognized us and loved hanging out in David’s lap.)

So… yes, I guess we did kind of “adopt” a Westie in the Netherlands!

We’ve spent a good amount of time this summer wandering around Southwest Friesland, where most of the 11 cities are also. The 3 towns north of the IJsselmeer that have fountains are Harlingen, Franeker and Dokkum (more about Dokkum later, but we won’t make it to H or F this summer).

We were headed for Stavoren, which is right on the coast of the lake called the “IJsselmeer”. The IJsselmeer is a massive inland bay which has been closed off by the “Afsluitdijk”, which is an enormous dyke that keeps the North Sea from flooding the country. The Dutch have spent countless amounts of money keeping this land that is under sea level from flooding, and in many cases creating new “polders” that become new towns for their population to live. David and I drove across the Afsluitdijk a few years ago, but the weather coming in from the North Sea prevented us from seeing anything but rough water on both sides and sideways rain in front of us.

Back to Stavoren… the reason we were on our way there is because our friend, Kathalijne, was visiting her mom in Stavoren. Kat lives in the Bay Area, and David and she have been friends for many years. She’s become a good friend of mine, and she’s Dutch. (She also really thinks it’s funny the way I say Dutch words.)

Our plan was to go to Stavoren via Workum (two of the 11 cities). As it turns out, our friend Lisa was also visiting Friesland from Luxembourg, because her partner is from here, so she and he came to Workum with their dog “Louis” (named after Pasteur – I love smart people). We devised a plan where Lisa and Louis would meet us in Stavoren, and do a quick cruise with us back up to Sneek.

Bolsward and the Hanseatic League

We stopped in Bolsward on the way to Workum. It’s a cute little town, and the only way to get there by boat is to wait for the low bridge to open. We arrived at bridge lunch break (12p-1p, and they take that thing seriously around here). It was Sunday when we grabbed a street side mooring, so there wasn’t much open. BUT, there is a fountain as Bolsward is one of the Frisian cities, and that fountain sits in front of the Broerekerk, which is a 13th century monastery church. The church was abandoned in 1578, served as a reformed church until 1970, and then caught fire in 1980. The building had gotten to the point where it needed to be taken down, but the mayor purchased the building and hired an architect to replace the roof. The replacement is beautiful, as it’s a full glass roof.

As usual, when traveling in Europe, I hear names and phrases that I remember hearing in European History in high school, but my short attention span kept me from really learning what it was all about. Being here, I’m piecing it all together (I’m more of a physical learner than a book learner anyway). The Hanseatic League was a confederation of merchants and towns across Poland, Germany and the Netherlands from the late 12th century to the 15th century, and encompassed approximately 200 settlements. As you can imagine, the Hanseatic League dominated maritime trade in the North and Baltic Seas, and I’m sure led to the Dutch ruling the oceans. More about that here (if you are so inclined to remember what you forgot from high school): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

Workum if you Got ’em

Workum is a lovely city that is a short bike ride from the shores of the IJsselmeer. It received city rights in 1399, and is most famous for the Jopie Huisman museum. Workum has some beautiful hand carved/painted pottery from a multi-generational place (yes, we grabbed some). We were fortune to park right in front of the fountain.

The Oldest City in Friesland

Finally, we made it to Stavoren. This city was granted rights between 1060 and 1067, and is the burial place of early Friesland Kings. Stavoren is a sweet small town right on the IJsselmeer, and it’s where we spent the weekend hanging out with our Bay Area friends.

The Lady of Stavoren

(from Wikipedia) Now a village of just 1,000 inhabitants, Stavoren was once a wealthy port city in the Dutch province of Friesland but began to decline in the late Middle Ages after a sandbank formed outside the harbour, blocking ships from entering and exiting. Several stories have been told over the years to explain the forming of the sandbank, including the tale of the Lady of Stavoren.

The story, of which more than 27 versions are known, involves an exceedingly rich patrician merchant widow, who desired ever greater riches. She sent a captain of her merchant fleet out in search of the greatest treasure in the world. When he returned with wheat, declaring wheat to be “the most precious thing in the world,” as it can feed the hungry, the widow, in her overweening pride and anger at his (as she perceived it) foolishness, let the wheat be thrown overboard into the harbour of Stavoren.

When she was cautioned against this wicked behaviour, being reminded of the fickleness of fate and (despite her wealth and power) of the delicateness of her station, in hubris she took a ring from her finger and cast it into the ocean, declaring that she was as likely to fall into poverty as she was of regaining the ring.

Soon afterwards, during a banquet thrown for her fellow Hanseatic merchant princes, she finds the ring inside a large fish served to her. As this event portended, she lost her wealth, living out her remaining years in destitution, begging for scraps of bread. In divine retribution the port had silted, and the wheat that had been cast overboard now grew in the resulting sandbank that closed the harbour and ruined the city.

So… that explains the fish and the dainty lady statue.

Sheep May Safely Graze (on the IJsselmeer)

This is 53 degrees latitude in late July in the Netherlands. Cold, very very windy, and rough water. But, the sheep like it. And the cheese is excellent.

I’ve Got Friends in High Places

Finally, a photo of me and Lisa in Stavoren before we had off on our short cruise to Sneek. Lisa is a college friend of David’s from Boston – they both studied voice at Boston University. Lisa has had a fascinating life, and is now a full-fledged card carrying Luxembourg citizen, after learning Luxembourgish to pass her citizen test. I expect we will be seeing a lot more of Lisa in the coming years, either here or in Lux.