Of course we informed you last week about our present port of call, being Hasselt in the province of Overijssel, The Netherlands – a member of the former Hanseatic League. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasselt,_Overijssel or even better, for all of you with a command of the Dutch language, https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hasselt_(Overijssel).

It’s a charming old little town. To emphasize the word ‘old’, the picture proves beyond any doubt that this little row of houses sank a bit backwards in the course of time. Prove is given by the straight façade of the modern house in the distance. The old ones are endlessly more charming, don’t you think? (At least to look at, that is…)

The front of this house, named ‘De Bonte Os’ (The Multicoloured Ox), is adorned by a plaque depicting a… cow (ox?). This cow symbolizes a stratagem. The story tells that Hasselt, during a siege, intended to discourage the enemy by parading a cow on top of the town-wall as a prove of the fact that there was still plenty of food available to its population. Whether true or false, it’s a nice enough little tale.

Another example of a gem of a house alongside Hasselt’s canal. The owners/inhabitants are sitting in front of their home and did not object to being pictured. Name of the house “’t Hooge Huijs” (The High House).

A sense of humour to end with – as far as buildings are concerned. Here’s the building of Hasselt’s ‘Kringloopbedrijf’ (Recycling-company), called ‘Noggus & Noggus’. A hard to translate wordplay, but we’ll try. In English it might be ‘Rejuice & Rejuice’. Or, errr, ‘A Gain & A Gain’. We cannot think of anything funnier – keep in mind English is not our mother-tongue. Any better ideas?

Once every five years Hasselt is the centre of a gathering for well-preserved old ships. The gathering is named ‘Hassailt’, another example of wordplay – this time a combination of the name of the town and the word ‘sail’. We had the privilege of being able to be a part of this this rare event. In the capacity of visitors, not participants. And we loved it.

Saturday the 29th of July 2017. This is what it looks like after climbing the bridge that spans the river ‘Zwarte Water (Black Water) at Hasselt. Unfortunately the weather was, say, grey on that day. Sometimes even (very) wet.

An impression when standing on the quay, looking towards the river…

…and another one, in close-up, revealing more details. We always pay attention to names and where the ships come from, in this case ‘Goede Gunst’ (Good Favour) from Ouderkerk (either aan den IJssel or aan den Amstel) and ‘Nieuwe Zorg’ (New Care) from Opperduit. Opperduit! We’d never heard of it, but it does exist – or did, see https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opperduit. Only in Dutch, of course, it’s only a tiny hamlet next to the river Lek, the latter being a branch of the mighty river Rhine.

An undeniable step further is this name though: ‘Niets Zonder Gods Zegen’ (Nothing Without Gods Blessing). We like this sort of old-fashioned names very much. It is out of fashion nowadays, unfortunately. Never change them old fashioned ones, please!

And then there was ‘Hoop op Welvaart’ (Hope for Prosperity). That must be from a time that the owner and The Netherlands -the western world if you like- became more profane. (The word ‘Welvaart’ can have another explanation but that’s not applicable in this case, we think.)

No special reason to show this one to you. We simply couldn’t resist it.

May we introduce you to ‘Tina’, the tiny Tjalk-like ship we found the loveliest one. She is from Leeuwarden, Friesland and we completely fell for her at first glance.

Behind ‘Tina’ there was ‘Connie’, equally gorgeous and, again, from Leeuwarden. She was not very well visible from the opposite bank, zo we made the required detour to have a better view of her. Almost no-one did, the crowd was on the path on the other bank. Most of them will never know what they have missed. A friendly, lovely young lady even invited us to make a video of Connie’s interior. We didn’t do it because we are (1) too shy to intrude into someone’s privacy and (2) its rather time-consuming and/or difficult to insert a video of, say, over a minute into this blog. That’s it for this week. Although we didn’t move for a single yard this week we have enjoyed ourselves immensely and hope the same for you.