Bovensmilde was left on Monday the 10th of July, 10:01AM (yes, sharp). We could switch off the engine already at 11:31AM after arriving in one of Assen’s waterways, called De Vaart (vaart = canal), adjacent to the city’s centre. The next video will show the last, wider, part of this waterway – where we are able to turn. During the turning-maneuver a cruiser tried to ‘steal’ our targeted space, although (1) our intentions must have been very clear and (2) there were several spaces for (smaller) cruisers left, unlike for (bigger) barges. One of us made it overly clear to ‘buzz off’. They did - reluctantly.

Already visible with the picture and video before this one we were moored in front of a trio (Vaart N.Z. 26, 28 and 30) of beautiful, early 19th century typical Assen-type houses.

We stayed fairly long at the cemetery – it’s just so restful and forces one to contemplate and slow down. Life goes on, nevertheless, so we continued our walk. What one sees here is the result of a new housing development in the 19th century. Not bad. Not bad at all.

A detail here of the perfectly symmetric Jozefkerk (kerk = church, you’ll no doubt understand about Jozef), built between 1846 en 1848 – see the year in Roman figures. It is a designated ‘waterstaatskerk’. For an interesting explanation of this phenomenon see https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterstaatskerk. It’s a real pity that this is only available in Dutch. Maybe Google Translate can do the trick for you. The building reminded us strongly of the building style we saw when visiting New England in 2009.

Before we left we had to visit the Drents Museum (https://drentsmuseum.nl/en). If only because several of our family implored us not to skip it. The initial impression of the museum from the outside is it being a small one. Don’t be misled – one’s led to (a) adjacent building(s) underground(!) and can easy lose one’s way or miss a part without realizing. Perhaps we did but we liked very much what we managed to see.

One of the current expositions is about The Great Liao. It’s too complicated to explain the history through this weekly blog. For the history-lovers among our readers, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liao_dynasty and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khitan_people.

A second exposition was dedicated to the works of Jan Sluijters (1881 – 1957, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Sluyters). He was the winner of the Dutch ‘Prix de Rome’ in 1904 and the ‘Grand Prix’ at the Paris’ World Fair ‘Urbanisme 47’ in, yep, 1947.

The third exposition showed numerous drawings of Jans Muskee – website http://www.jansmuskee.nl/drawings/. They are provocative at times, so we have chosen a modest one, called ‘Marcel en Eve’ for an example. Apart from the qualification we already used it’s imaginative (of course) enigmatic (He! Hello! Hi!) and funny (‘Caritas’). We appreciated it very much, but it was, understandably, too much for a visiting young girl: she looked (away) and disappeared immediately.

As mentioned before we stayed at Assen for four days. On Friday the 14th we left at 1:50PM and again reached Smilde (this time on the Drentsche Hoofdvaart) at 3:50PM. No locks yet, only some 10 bridges (9 of them lift-bridges) had to be passed. This is where we still are today, Sunday the 16th of July 2017. We are planning to explore pastures new tomorrow. That’s it for this week. Bye.