On the Sunday before I left ‘s-Herogenbosch for Berlin, I decided to visit Utrecht. I wandered up to the station to start my trip about mid-morning, when I felt like it. I love how many trains there are in Europe going just about everywhere, just about all the time.
The train station in Utrecht is modern and enormous. I made my way through the big shopping mall attached to the station, reflecting on how much Dutch I have been able to figure out, just because it looks a lot like English sometimes.
“Eten and Drinken”. Self explanatory, right?
I love to see dogs being accepted as a matter of course in European train stations.
If not for that, would I have had the joy of seeing a Belgian Terverun?
I came out on the street near a massive parking lot for bikes.
In the background you can see “The Inkpot” the building which houses the head offices of the Netherlands’ National Railway company. It’s the largest red brick building in the Netherlands (22 million bricks) and was designed, appropriately enough, by a railway engineer. Built in the early 1900’s it reflects the influence of both Cubism and German Expressionism.
You may not perhaps have registered that the saucer shaped object on the side is a UFO.
It is a work of art by Marc Ruygrok (“Zover”, 1999) but I have been unable to find any information or explanation for why the Railway chose to put a UFO on its building.
Someone in charge there has a quirky sense of humour.
Aside from the bike park and The Inkpot, the view on leaving the station was of a Boots and a rather ugly modern-design building.
Utrecht did live up to its reputation for beauty though. I quickly came to an inviting square.
Lots of charming buildings could be seen.
I headed down the street leading from the square, stopping to look up at all the fascinating architectural detail on the buildings.
In an alley branching off from the square, my eye was caught by a row of red shutters.
I intended to find the tourist office (VVV it’s called here) to get a map. Gawking at the architecture slowed me down some.
I knew the VVV office was near the Dom Tower, Utrecht’s most famous landmark. It quickly came into view after I had walked just a little way, so I just went towards that.
When you get to a point just before you pass through the Dom tower, there is a picture postcard perfect view of the canal and the charming houses that line it.
A boat was coming through on the other side.
The Dom Tower dominates almost every view.
There is an arched opening at the base. When you enter it, a startling view appears of a massive statue of a woman on a plinth holding a torch in front of a trompe l’oeil painting or banner of a cathedral nave.
It turns out this striking monumental display is a WWII memorial – the first I have seen.
The Dom Tower was built in the 1300’s and is the tallest church tower in the Netherlands.
I was intrigued by a whole lot of little personnel doors about half way up this tower. Wikipedia says the Tower guard was lodged half way up the tower, so I’m guessing the little doors had something to do with that. But they seem to open onto nothingness.
Perhaps there were some sort of lookout posts there back in the day.
The Tower was originally part of the Cathedral of St. Martin (the Domkerk). But the Cathedral was never finished, due to lack of money (and I expect, the Reformation – the Calvinists were much in evidence in Utrecht). The unfinished cathedral nave collapsed in 1674 due to a tornado – wait for it -Act of God, ha!, leaving the tower freestanding.
From certain angles in the Domkerk gardens, you can get an idea of what it would have looked like when it was connected.
I entered the cloistered garden through a beautiful old door before I found the entrance to the church.
The garden was quite peaceful and there was a cherry tree beginning to blossom!
The weather here may be cold and rainy, but things such as that, and the crocuses in bud near my apartment remind me that January here is a lot different to January in Canada.
The stonework in the garden was very intriguing. This looks like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree, although I’m pretty sure the Revolutionaries didn’t wear skirts.
Around one section of a carved gothic arch, the stone mason had wrapped ‘rope’ to help hold it together; a centuries old visual joke.
The Domkerk itself was very interesting. It is Holland’s only pre-reformation Cathedral, but has been Protestant since 1580. And it has been ‘Protestantised’ with a vengeance; the first time I’ve come across this. Instead of the usual grand Cathedral nave with an ornate altar and sanctuary at one end and the organ pipes perhaps at the other, here where the sanctuary would normally be, is a massive marble sepulchre. I thought at first it was a Christ figure, but no, it turns out to be the monument to some Dutch admiral – and not de Ruyter who defeated the English at the Battle of the Medway. They have him in Amsterdam.
This massive monument, standing where one would expect the holy eucharist to be celebrated, is a memorial to some guy named Vice-admiral Baron Willem Josef Van Gendt. He was a canon of this church, so that goes some way to explaining him taking the place that in a catholic church would be occupied by the High Altar. He was supposed to be stowed in the west end of the church, but of course it fell down in 1674, so they put the whole shebang in the sanctuary. It was oddly sacrilegious, even to my atheist eyes.
At the other end of the cathedral, the massive organ pipes are topped by some guy wearing a crown and holding a golden harp.
It took me two passes in front of this to realize that the plain wooden screen under the organ is the altar. Equally plain choir stalls stand off to one side.
The pews sit at right angles to the pulpit/altar, so the congregation is looking at each other not the minister.
Except for the scale, it looks like something you’d see in a Presbyterian or United Church in Canada.
The church was badly vandalized by Calvinists during the 16th century, who were rampaging against ‘idolatry’ and I’m guessing that explains the absence of original stained glass.
Although I have seen a lot of very beautiful modern stained glass in my travels, I have to say I didn’t much care for the two modern windows facing each other across the entry to the Domkerk. In one, the four apostles appear to be a rap group, making gang signs.
St. Luke looks like he’s trying to push his way out of the window with his hand gainst the glass, and escape to wreak havoc on mankind. Still, I’d rather deal with him than St. Mark beside him, with the long black beard. His teeth are bared in such a way as to suggest he is very angry. Very. Angry.
One of the most compelling sculptures in the Domkerk was a modern one though, called De Mantel; a sculpture of St. Martin by Herbert Nouwens. It was all swirly, Lord of the Rings Black Riders-like.
You could only see it from the back for some odd reason.
It seemed to face into a little room that was locked. I asked one of the staff if there was somewhere to view the front of the statue, but apparently not that day at least.
Another lovely modern addition was a tapestry depicting the Holy Ghost. I much preferred the representations of the four apostles at the bottom of this piece.
Some of the destruction visited on the pre-reformation Catholic monuments was still on display. One sculpture in the tomb enclosure of a Bishop of Utrecht who died in 1378, has been left in the condition it was reduced to after the Calvinists took an ax to it in 1580. All the faces had been hacked off.
Defacing representations of St. Ann, Mary and the Christ child seems a rather blasphemous act for christians to engage in, but I suppose – idolatry.
Hard not to think of the Taliban destroying statues of Buddha in Afghanistan. Fanatics have been responsible for destroying too many great works of art. We are very fortunate that the magnificent tombs of French Kings and Queens going back to the 10th century were saved from the zealots of the French Revolution by one courageous man, the archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir, who claimed them for his museum of French monuments as part to the country’s patrimony.
A cenotaph to another bishop had also suffered some defacement, but its remains are still very beautiful.
The iconoclasts must have been defeated by the enormous tombstones in the floor of the church.
Or perhaps all those images of death and decay belong to the Calvinists.
I couldn’t read the latin.
There are many fine buildings around the Domkerk which belong to the University of Utrecht.
This one used to be a public reading room. It looks old, but was only built in 1911.
I was particularly charmed by the fact that the Faculty Club is housed in a building that looks like Rapunzel’s tower.
There was also, for some obscure reason, a replica of a Danish Runestone in the plaza outside the Domkerk.
From what I could make out of the sign behind it, it was given to Utrecht as a gift from the Danes.
I wondered if this was a case of trying to find something to do with a massive gift that doesn’t really go with the rest of your decor. Unlike the ugly lamp Aunt Bertha gave you as a wedding present, this is too large to be kept in a closet and brought out on occasions when the donor arrives for a visit.
I finally tore myself away from the Domkerk and found the tourist office across the square. They wanted to skin me €3 for a map, and as there was nothing in particular I wanted to find, I decided just to use the tower as a landmark, plus the plentiful signposts to attractions and walk around until I got tired, or saw something that interested me enough to stop for a visit.
The walking round part took some attention. There were no bike lanes as in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, but the the road surface was often pretty much indistinguishable from the sidewalks, and of course, the bikes use both indiscriminately.
It was also impossible to tell what was pedestrianised and what was not.
Several times I saw cars speeding towards pedestrians walking in the middle of what I have to suppose was a road. Neither party seemed particularly concerned. The pedestrians just moved out of the way.
Since I was prone to looking at buildings, not streets, I almost came to grief a few times.
Utrecht’s old section is so very beautiful and charming that walking while snapping photos was irresistible. But it was worth the risk.
Fortunately, there wasn’t much traffic on Sunday morning.
Impressive houses were everywhere, and not all of them were ancient.
I got a kick out of the sign for this camera store for instance.
I headed in the general direction of the Centraal Museum, passing the former nunnery, now the Museum Catherijneconvent which houses a lot of religious art, among other things.
Just before I reached the Centraal Museum, I came across a row of older houses, with delightful dormer windows on the second storey, all with their shutters painted glossy black.
I suddenly realised that the streets had became thronged with parents pushing strollers or holding little kids by the hand. Turns out there is some kind of kids’ museum opposite the Centraal Museum, featuring a famous Netherlands character called Miffy.
I decided I would go into the Centraal Museum, being as how I had walked a considerable distance and it was pretty cold. They relieved me of the terrible burden of about $20 to get in and in the result I couldn’t have spent more than fifteen minutes there.
Let me start with a disclaimer. I am not one of those people who disdains all art created after 1900. I am open to it. But in this case, I just didn’t find it very compelling.
Someone had done an installation in the stairwell of what looked like moss, or perhaps some kind of fungus.
The surrealists were interesting. But there were way too many too too utterly utterly clever modern art installations mixed up with old paintings by Utrecht painters. I found them largely banal.
Most likely I expect, anything that was extremely good has already been carted off to the Rijksmuseum.
For example I had seen this painting by the woman artist Therese Schwartze in the Rijksmuseum.
Here in Utrecht, there was a family group by the same artist which seems to my admittedly uneducated eye, to be significantly less compelling.
In fact, it caught my attention only because I was struck by the strong resemblance of the two women in the centre to Steve Buscemi.
I was interested in the 1000 year old boat residing in gloomy solitude in the basement. It’s enormous and was made from a single hollowed out tree trunk according the sign, which itself could barely be read in the gloom.
I found out later that there had been yet another modern at installation here, which just ended on January 1st. It was called “Lights on Wood” and had been an interactive lighting installation created by an artists’ collective. Perhaps when those lights were removed, they hadn’t gotten around to reinstalling the proper lighting, at least on the sign.
Even their website is too hip for me.
I did like this horse though.
I have simple tastes.
After that, I hoofed it straight back to the train station, arriving about 2:00 p.m. I bought a banana milkshake from a stand in the mall, because I was starving. The guy rattled off a whole bunch of Dutch and I laughed and said, “Funny, that’s exactly what I was about to say!” He laughed in turn and told me he was half-Canadian so he speaks English very well. Of course, I informed him that I was a Canadian, whereupon he gave me a large shake, though I had only asked for a medium, and that’s what he had charged me for.
Score!