Flag of the Netherlands

License plate of the Netherlands

Welcome to Nijmegen

      Our guided tour in Nijmegen (pronounced Neigh-megan with a guttural “g”) took us to the old tollgate where residents used to pay taxes.  There was a pretty mosaic on the city wall that was “protecting ships.”  Many of the old houses have decorative metal supports at the wall-beam junctions to keep the walls from bulging out and “step gable” facades to hide the roof line.  Houses have mailboxes with two signs to say “nee” or “ja.”  The left one means no unsolicited mail and the right sign indicates whether they want the community newspaper delivered in their slot.  What a great idea!

Tollgate mosaic

Beam and wall supports

Directions for the postman and newspaper carrier

Cute car

Rail down the steps for taking a bicycle down

            Around town we saw signs picturing a slash through a man peeing – “Don’t pee in the street.”  Instead they have fiberglass urinals to take the place of a tree.  Europe had a different sense of privacy from the US!

Arabic Cafe - the Netherlands has a large Turkish population

Jewish Memorial

Sign for a Marijuana Cafe

Busy sign

Weigh House

Weigh House detail

1500s Latin School

Mariken van Nieumeghen - character in a 15th century mystery play

WWII Bombing Memorial

Blue Hand Cafe

In the old days textile workers dyed silk blue and their hands turned blue.  When they came to this cafe, they left blue handprints on the tables

Belgian (or Dutch) Frites

Six barges linked together - you should have seen him negotiating the downstream bend in the river!

       This weekend was the 98th annual Nijmegse Vierdaagse or festival walk.  Forty-five to fifty thousand walkers from all over the world come to walk 30, 40, or 50 kilometers each of four days.  They walk through the countryside and end in town.  After they walk for the day, they party all evening, and repeat it the next day.  They are not walking for a cause – like MS, cancer, etc. – but each day has a theme.  Today the theme was “pink day” to celebrate openness to gays.  Many walkers wore something pink.  Many military units from Europe, the US, and Canada walk the 50 km with packs and the flags of their country.  Some in the units look like retired men.  The crowds of walkers made it difficult to cross the street from our ship to get into town.  The throng of walkers continued for at least six hours.  All the people we saw were wearing serious hiking boots or shoes.  Volunteers handed out drinks and snacks. 

Festival walkers

Festival participants

Festival walkers from the US

Festival walkers

       After lunch, we broke through the mobs of walkers and went back into town to take more pictures and check out the festival activities and to people watch.  Gale got a free sample of Nescafe instant coffee in new flavors – hazelnut, latte, cappuccino, and mocha.  It was hot and good.  We walked past many booths and sound stages and loud music.  We watched pole dancers do acrobatics on a 12-foot pole.

       We walked to St. Stephen’s Church, which was built between 1250 and 1500, was originally Catholic, then Protestant, and is now an event center.  It does not look like they hold church services here.  There were art paintings hanging all around the sides, a sound stage was being set up in the center with chairs on three sides, beautiful large flower arrangements, and yet there was a beautiful set of organ pipes, burial stones on the floor, and nothing religious in the interior.  It was all very incongruous.

St. Stephen’s Church

Model of St. Stephen’s Church

Organ in St. Stephen’s Church

The Devil Outside

Filling water bottles at the Municipal tap

       Rebecca pointed out department stores like Blokker and HEMA and showed us some special things to buy in the Netherlands.  One was licorice called “drop” in Dutch that comes in sweet, salty, double salty, or honey flavors. Gale later bought some delicious sweet (zoet) drop at a candy kiosk. She also showed us a Flessenlikker or bottle scraper that is used to scrape out ketchup bottles, etc.  Gale bought one of those at the Blokker department store and it works wonderfully!

Fessenlikker

Licorice at a festival street vendor's

Candy at a festival street vendor's

Home-made child carrier

Pole dancing

Ferris wheel

The marchers just kept coming!