Bomen Berend is Here!
August 24th 2008 08:32
It's that time of year again! Time to celebrate sieges.
The budding chemist and incompetent meteorologist, the Bombing Bishop of Berend failed to take wind into account during his assaults on the walls of the hardy city of Groningen, the Netherlands' northern capital. The Gronigers stuck it out inside the walls and observed the tragi-comic Berend bombing both them and scoring toxic own goals until 28 August 1672 when the siege broke and the Bishop returned to Munster to resume his priestly pastimes.
336 years after he stuffed incendiary devices with belladonna in the hope of producing toxic fumes the Gronigers are still celebrating.
I joined the festival a couple of years ago on a baking August afternoon when I arrived to find the Gronigers still celebrating the day that the Bishop left in failure. I exited the train station bleary eyed and dazzled by the Lego blocks melted together and dumped in the middle of a canal. The post-modern Groniger Museum is an intrigue of design and architecture. Designed by Mendini with the assistance of a half dozen other architects the building is, quite rightly, as much an attraction itself as the archaeological, historical, and modern installations inside. The architecture is a testament to collaborative deconstructivism, whatever that may mean. If nothing else, dumped as it is in the centre of a canal and facing the traditionally bruin brick station, it serves as an apt symbol of a city both head scratchingly modern and classily classic.
Jet-lagged, discombobulated, and shielding my eyes from the mutated Lego, I walked across the footbridge into the sanctums of the city, startled as bikes pedalled by long legged tapered jeans wearing locals grazed past either side of me along the dull yellow bricks paving the circular inner island. The air was thick with a musty-sour-saltiness, a mix I placed as some combination of body odour and wet socks left at the bottom of a sea-trawler, a whiff I came to identify as herring, particularly pungent on market days when locals (and almost only locals) lean against the counter of the fishmonger’s van and throw those smelly rolled up little fish down their throat, head titled back like pelicans. The wind can drown out the herring on windier days when it variously carries a golden syrup-molasses scent from the sugar refinery or a thick brown pipe-rum odour from the tobacco plant.
In the late summer the population swells by a quarter with the beginning of university term and an influx of both Dutch and pan-European Erasmus students who add an extra edge of cosmopolitan vibrancy to the city. The Bommen Berend festival is the perfect time to visit as its local inhabitants are full of bonhomie and the wide eyed excited students fill the pedestrian city centre on the Grote Markt (the great market) in the east and the Vismarkt (fish market) in the west. On weekends and festivals the city becomes crowded with purveyors and providores and bicycles and locals who have that stress-less expression that comes from not dealing with traffic. Around the Stadhuis at the Grote Markt under the pencil shadow of the Martini Tower and the green letters Houghoudt (the local Jenever), stalls line up in orderly rows under red and yellow striped awnings, pink neon signs advertise fairground rides to dislodge the herring, and musicians busk away happily.
The Vismarkt on the western side of the inner city has florists and grocers, fishmongers and butchers as well as the artistic fries from Belge Waterloo. Although technically Belgian in origin, the fries are the finest Dutch compositions since Van Gogh’s works: the deep fried potato sticks sport a hard golden crust with speckles of some exotic spice in a black, red and yellow cone. On top – and here’s the real artistic and taste masterpiece – a glacier of garlic mayonnaise trickles to the edges making it look like some stunning geographical relief of the kind that will never be found in the Netherlands.
The flatness makes Groningen, like much of the rest of the Netherlands, a joy to explore by bicycle. A bike can be bought for as little as ten euros from one of the junkies in the parks that ring the town between canals. Ever the ecologists, there’s a tacitly acknowledged re(bi)cycling plan in place so if your bike goes missing, you can always go back to the junky you bought it from and reclaim it for a very reasonable discount. If you don’t want to re-buy your bike every couple of days, it’s an idea to invest in a lock double the price of the bike.
After making the acquaintance of other newcomers to the city, identifiable in the Three Sisters mega pub by the lost and slightly panicked look on their faces, we emerged into the twilight in time for the Gronigers to send up the fireworks above the Stadpark where the locals had gathered to party around their horse stalls. Despite needing no reason other than the Bomber the festival is also marked by a horse event or two at the Stadtpark and the Ossenmarkt.
The budding chemist and incompetent meteorologist, the Bombing Bishop of Berend failed to take wind into account during his assaults on the walls of the hardy city of Groningen, the Netherlands' northern capital. The Gronigers stuck it out inside the walls and observed the tragi-comic Berend bombing both them and scoring toxic own goals until 28 August 1672 when the siege broke and the Bishop returned to Munster to resume his priestly pastimes.
336 years after he stuffed incendiary devices with belladonna in the hope of producing toxic fumes the Gronigers are still celebrating.
I joined the festival a couple of years ago on a baking August afternoon when I arrived to find the Gronigers still celebrating the day that the Bishop left in failure. I exited the train station bleary eyed and dazzled by the Lego blocks melted together and dumped in the middle of a canal. The post-modern Groniger Museum is an intrigue of design and architecture. Designed by Mendini with the assistance of a half dozen other architects the building is, quite rightly, as much an attraction itself as the archaeological, historical, and modern installations inside. The architecture is a testament to collaborative deconstructivism, whatever that may mean. If nothing else, dumped as it is in the centre of a canal and facing the traditionally bruin brick station, it serves as an apt symbol of a city both head scratchingly modern and classily classic.
Jet-lagged, discombobulated, and shielding my eyes from the mutated Lego, I walked across the footbridge into the sanctums of the city, startled as bikes pedalled by long legged tapered jeans wearing locals grazed past either side of me along the dull yellow bricks paving the circular inner island. The air was thick with a musty-sour-saltiness, a mix I placed as some combination of body odour and wet socks left at the bottom of a sea-trawler, a whiff I came to identify as herring, particularly pungent on market days when locals (and almost only locals) lean against the counter of the fishmonger’s van and throw those smelly rolled up little fish down their throat, head titled back like pelicans. The wind can drown out the herring on windier days when it variously carries a golden syrup-molasses scent from the sugar refinery or a thick brown pipe-rum odour from the tobacco plant.
In the late summer the population swells by a quarter with the beginning of university term and an influx of both Dutch and pan-European Erasmus students who add an extra edge of cosmopolitan vibrancy to the city. The Bommen Berend festival is the perfect time to visit as its local inhabitants are full of bonhomie and the wide eyed excited students fill the pedestrian city centre on the Grote Markt (the great market) in the east and the Vismarkt (fish market) in the west. On weekends and festivals the city becomes crowded with purveyors and providores and bicycles and locals who have that stress-less expression that comes from not dealing with traffic. Around the Stadhuis at the Grote Markt under the pencil shadow of the Martini Tower and the green letters Houghoudt (the local Jenever), stalls line up in orderly rows under red and yellow striped awnings, pink neon signs advertise fairground rides to dislodge the herring, and musicians busk away happily.
The Vismarkt on the western side of the inner city has florists and grocers, fishmongers and butchers as well as the artistic fries from Belge Waterloo. Although technically Belgian in origin, the fries are the finest Dutch compositions since Van Gogh’s works: the deep fried potato sticks sport a hard golden crust with speckles of some exotic spice in a black, red and yellow cone. On top – and here’s the real artistic and taste masterpiece – a glacier of garlic mayonnaise trickles to the edges making it look like some stunning geographical relief of the kind that will never be found in the Netherlands.
The flatness makes Groningen, like much of the rest of the Netherlands, a joy to explore by bicycle. A bike can be bought for as little as ten euros from one of the junkies in the parks that ring the town between canals. Ever the ecologists, there’s a tacitly acknowledged re(bi)cycling plan in place so if your bike goes missing, you can always go back to the junky you bought it from and reclaim it for a very reasonable discount. If you don’t want to re-buy your bike every couple of days, it’s an idea to invest in a lock double the price of the bike.
After making the acquaintance of other newcomers to the city, identifiable in the Three Sisters mega pub by the lost and slightly panicked look on their faces, we emerged into the twilight in time for the Gronigers to send up the fireworks above the Stadpark where the locals had gathered to party around their horse stalls. Despite needing no reason other than the Bomber the festival is also marked by a horse event or two at the Stadtpark and the Ossenmarkt.
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