We are in the town of den Bosch in the Netherlands, home of the 17th century painter Hieronymous Bosch. You may be familar with his work. He is best known for his depiction of his cleverly grotesque scenes of hell and demons, especially the Garden of Earthly Delights tryptich . Until now I thought the town was named for him. It's actually the other way around, as I found out on a visit to his home this morning. His family name was different. He took the name den Bosch, "from Bosch" which the museum video mentioned was a clever bit of marketing, so that people would know where to find him.
Let me explain the motivation for this trip. Several years ago I saw a video on fb of the Bosch parade. It was a parade of floats on the river Dommnel in town, inspired by Bosch's work. In the back of my mind I thought, some day I'd like to go to that. I thought that was four or five years ago, until fb showed me I had posted a video of the parade ten years ago. I guess my concept of time these days is not very accurate.
So, seeking inspiration for our next travels, I saw the dates of this year's parade were in late June,just the time I was looking to go. And so, we built a trip based on this funky little parade. It happens four or five times over the period of three days, a few in the afternoon and a few at 8pm. I decided we should go twice, once in the evening and once in the afternoon. The parade itself is free, but for better viewing you can buy tickets at two different locations along the route. Which I did.
I;m not sure how many of the attendees are local and how many from afar. The majority of the people we've seen at the parade and in town are Dutch speaking. We've heard English sporadically, but most of it not Americans. Many visitors speak English, but as a second language, and it's the default language for foreigners. And almost all Dutch people speak good English, in some cases flawless.
For our trip, the parade was the inspiration, but not the main focus. We decided to rent a boat for two weeks, and will embark on that part of our adventure tomorrow. I had looked for boat trips online, but not bike and barge trips or cruises. I eventuallly came upon sites where you could rent a boat to drive yourselves, and for which you needed neither a license or any experience.
And so tomorrow we begin the next part of our adventure. We will travel to Vinkeveen, the home base of the Le Boat company, from which we will be renting our Cirrus Two cabin cruiser. After an hour long training we will be off on our own for two weeks, boating to wherever we would like. They provide some potential itineraries, routes and places to stop along the way. But there is no set itinerary. We have some tentative plans of places we would like to visit, but will improvise as we go. I am excited but also a bit nervous; have never done anything like this before.
So let me tell you about our stay here in den Bosch and the parade. We are at the Golden Tulip Hotel in the center of the old town. It's a charming town and a nice hotel. One problem, however, When we went to check in, they told us that there was a problem with the air conditioning in the old part of the hotel. It had been broken for a couple of days. They gave us a choice, either the room we'd reserved,which had a view of the main plaza and a small balcony, or another room with air conditioning in the newer part. Oh, and did I mention that we are here in the middle of a hear wave?! It's been in the 90s when typical temperatures are in the 70s. So, as you might have guessed, we took the air conditioned room. To compensate they gave us a voucher for two drinks and a charcuterie board in the hotel restaurant. And after I asked they said they would also give us a partial refund for the less expensive room. The charcuterie board was impressive, including not just the meats and cheese but also shrimp tempura and fried wontons and some other treats. As the price on the menu for that was over $25, and then the drinks about $10 each, i guess that was a pretty nice compensation.
The first night we went to the parade and sat in the grandstand seats we had purchased. One thing, though. We had envisioned a night time performance. But the parade was aat 8pm, and it doesn't get dark until about 10pm.
The parade was delightful and low key. It's certaninly not a major event in the country, which was fine. I am not sure that all the locals are even aware of it. When we were waiting for the train here from the Amsterdam airport we asked a man on the platform if the train we wanted would be on the track we thought it would be. He said he was also going to den Bosch. I asked if he was going to the parade, and he said no, he was going home. I don't think he even knew what I was referring to.
So, to the parade. In fact it was unnecessary to buy tickets, although it was nice to sit in the grandstand in seats with backs. The seating was sold out, for all the performances, so I was glad we had purchased them in advance. There were about 17 floats, all lof them except the very last one from the Netherlands. The last one was from France according to the program. The theme this year was "Powered by Defects" although I am not sure anyone would have gleaned that without reading the program. The program describes each float and what it represents in detail, and will attempt to summarize the gist of it in my next post.
