Visserij Dagen: Netherlands Festival

Wow! This was a fun-filled four days of festival. Our decision to stay in Harlingen to have the full experience of their Visserij Dagen festival was worth it! This festival had it all – traditions, competitions, music, food, a flea market, rides, parades and parties. The street parties went on until 2:00AM every night. We usually called it a night between 11:00-12:00.

All the festival propaganda was in Dutch. However, a kind boat captain translated much of it for us on Thursday and then invited us to sail on his boat in the parade on Saturday. Of course, we said an enthusiastic, “yes!” More on this excursion later.

Netherlands Traditions and Competitions

This Netherlands festival celebrates Harlingen’s tie to the sea and their fishing industry so many of the activities take place on the water (mainly in various canals). Their Visserijhaven (fishing harbor) is opened to the public for the last day of the festival. You can see the enormous fishing boats and walk out on the piers. From the end of the longer piers, you get a good view of the dyke that keeps this town from being reclaimed by the North Sea.

We saw several events where participants wore traditional period clothing, including the famous Dutch wooden shoes. One of these events was the main competition of the festival, Ringrijden.

Ringrijden has a man and woman in traditional clothing riding in a buggy pulled by a beautiful Friesen horse. The man drives while the woman uses a stick shaped kind of like a pistol to retrieve small rings from several ‘arms’ on the course. The course runs right down the main street and around to the Noorderhaven and is probably about a mile in length. All of the arms are on the main street. There were ten teams and they went around the course six times. The team with the most rings wins.

Other competitions at this Netherlands festival involved rowing, trying to knock someone off a log into the canal, and sailing little boats made of wooden shoes. This last we actually missed out on because we couldn’t find it but we did see the kids register their boats. We went to the Ringrijden and when we went back they had disappeared.

Netherlands Festival Music and Food

Every night of the festival there were numerous stages all along the main street with bands or dj’s. Our favorite was the band, Fragment, out of England, who performed Thursday night.

For street food, there was everything from mussels, frites (french fries), a variety of smoked seafood including herring and eel, little shrimps with and without whiskey sauce, and, my favorite, Dutch pancakes – yum!

Our Boat Parade (and how I almost killed myself)

I mentioned earlier our invitation from the nice boat captain to sail on his vessel for the parade. It turns out that our hotel owner plays tennis with his mom. She also let us know that lots of people ride on the parade boats.

We got down there about fifteen minutes early and it’s good that we did for the boats were filling up. We found Simon, our captain, and verified that he still had room for us. He did and sent us down to his mate who would assist us onto the boat. It was quite a step down (about a three-foot drop) from the mooring into the boat but we made it without incident and found a seat.

The parade route took us out of the harbor into the North Sea for a bit before returning where we started – about a 45-minute ride. It was a beautiful day for a cruise. There were probably about fifty people on the boat. Some were friends of the captain’s teen-age children; others seemed to be groups of friends. We were the only non-local people on this boat but the man sitting next to me had recently been to Ireland so we chatted about that. They were bringing around cheese and sausage and we got our choice of a half-shot of either Irish or Friesen whiskey.

When we docked, there were two ways to get off the boat – the way we got on or go to the back of the boat where there was a ladder. Dave chose the ladder. I was going to go with him but there were a lot of people taking that route and I got impatient. Others who climbed out in the front were doing just fine with the help of a few guys who had been on the boat. So I stepped up to climb out, slipped and could have seriously hurt myself. And, how I slipped put me in a difficult place to get out of. It took several guys to help me get back in position to try the climb out and then to help me actually make it onto the mooring. Thankfully, all I did was bruised my right knee a bit. Our kind waiter at The Black Pearl made me an ice bag and let me put my leg up while we ate dinner (good Caribbean food). So our time in Harlingen ends with a bang. This Netherlands festival will be a travel highlight for sure!

We are moving on to Haarlem which will be our base for five nights. Follow along at http://europeyourway.net/haarlem.