After finishing my thesis last week I was finished with my Bachelor Psychology. I need only one course to get the degree. I hoped that course would be “Gerontology” but I sadly did not pass the exam. The teacher arranged to have a meeting to discuss the exam on August 1. I mailed him explaining my situation, but it appears he’s on holiday already as he doesn’t answer. Let’s hope and pray he will change his mind then. In the meantime I’m enjoying my own vacation in my own province. This week my dad and brother picked me up to go to Lauwersoog. My brother goes on a sailing trip with an traditional sailing ship (tjalk) one of his friends lives on. These ships are nowadays used for charters on the Wadden Sea or IJsselmeer. We had to take the tourist route because there were road works on the freeway next to my quarter. Therefore we couldn’t get out of the quarter using any freeway, we basically had to take the rural roads and there made a reasonable detour to get there. But the scenery was beautiful!

In the picture at the left you see a tjalk (another one: “Vrouwe Anna”[Lady Anne]) which lies on the mud flats with low tide waiting for the high tide to return. This is exactly the reason why traditional Dutch sailing ships don’t have a keel but ’swords’ at each side. When they ‘fall dry’ in the wetlands at the coast with a keelboat, the boot would fall on it’s side and be unable to erect itself when the tide comes up again. With a ‘flat bottom’ boat you don’t have this problem. A tjalk looks a lot like a cutter, but it has this characteristic round belly and no keel. It has a gaff rig, like most old fashioned Dutch sailing boats.

Lauwersoog is the place you sail to in order to reach the Wadden Sea, there are the slices which give you access. There are also a lot of cheap stores where you can buy yachting equipment and other tools for your ship. My brother went there to buy a flotation suit, as it can be very cold on the sea. At the main land it was only 55-60F, so you can imagine that off shore the temperature is a lot lower.

We had a look at the sea, you can see the Wadden Isles from the dike. Actually, from Lauwersoog you only can see Schiermonnikoog. It looks very nearby but you have to make a lot of turns to get there as the Wadden Sea isn’t very deep. It’s so shallow that it gets dry every six hours with low tide. Only the main trenches have water in them then. During low tide you can do ‘mudflat hiking’. It’s only allowed with a certificated guide, as it can be very dangerous: you have to know exactly where to go to and when to leave. When you don’t and you get surprised by the high tide you drown.

The weather wasn’t the best, a lot of clouds and rain. I managed to take a picture from our modern day windmills standing on the dike. We use them to generate power. The old-day windmills were used to pump water out of the polder to the sea, we use mechanical pumps with diesel engines or electric pumps to do that now.

We also had “kibbeling” with french fries at a fish restaurant. I just LOVE kibbeling. These are small parts of cod (belly) coated with egg white/milk/flour and spices which are deep fried to make them brown and yummy. They are usually served with a fish sauce and I like ravigotte-sauce best. After that we had another tourist route home, because there were road works on the freeway everywhere. We just loved our trip through the countryside.

I was totally inspired to rent a good bike this summer and go into the countryside of our province to shoot some photos for my blog. I just need a real camera to start with, but these aren’t that expensive any more. I already started saving. To be continued…

Link:
Tourism in Groningen - G7 (Groningen Seven: the coolest sights)

Posted under Daily Life