I hope you all had a lovely Halloween, I did, did you all light yourpumpkins, well I bought mine but it got eaten up instead of decoratingthe garden.
This week we went to Stiens. The shopping centre had a nice feeling but when we walked to the church this had a tremendous calming effect.
Thechurch was built on a terp (man made hill), I seem to think that thischurch seems to have been a long time ago a Catholic church, because looking at the building a lot of windows thatwere arched have been bricked in and the side entrances (side chapels), have also beenbricked in, I think the windows were stained glass windows earlier,this is the impression I got while looking at it.
We then left the church and walked around ,we came across somehouses which reminded me of labourers houses (arbeider huizen), butthis area had such a forlorn, feeling that you just had to get awayfrom there, as we walked along and came to where there was a signvolkstuinen (community gardens), like the ones I described in'Leeuwarden bos', here I was actually interested to find that brusselsprouts (spruiten), grew on the stalk of the plant under the leavesthat looked like cabbage leaves, this took me by surprise as did theboerenkool, (do not know what it is in english), this looked very muchto me like broccolli from far off, but as you get closer you see itisn't it is very undiscribable.
We then walked around came across a building built next to therailway line, though this building had three houses built from it, wethen started to think how odd the building was, we walked around andcame to the conclusion that we must have come across the old railwaystation that was once had a line running from Leeuwarden to Dokkum, andnot far from this building was some old building that looked like thatit could have housed locomotives, what a suprise I got when I lookedfor information on the stiens line and found out I was right about thestation and the warehouse for the locomotives.
This picture was taken of a quaint lane in Stiens near the station.
I can only say I am very sorry that this service from the NederlandsSpoorweg (Netherlands Railway), was stopped and you can now only get toDokkum from Leeuwarden by bus, though it is nice to go through thevillages by bus it takes along time and I love travelling by rail, Ithink they should bring this service back. Also alot of these stationsthat are still existing today (not many),
have either been turned into private housing or pulled down, how sadwhen you think of all the men it took to build these lines and all thehard work they put in what a shame. By the way I meantioned in myVrouwbuurt story about walking along Spoordyk, well believe it ot notthis was actually part of the railway line they took up, you wentthrough Vrouwbuurt, steins etc on the way to Dokkum.
Funny to see flowers on the trees at this time of year.Well all in all though I am glad we found the station, I am not sorry to say goodbye to stiens, I once cycled through stiens with myhusband in 1995, and it was a sunday and we came across a cafe come puband stopped to have a drink of colddrink, well it was like the westernmovies you see on t.v. when strangers enter a town and everyone in thebar goes quiet when you enter, well this happend to us, (all the regulars of the village must have been there), now whether it was wewere strangers or I was the only female around I do not know but theyonly began to talk again when we had our colddrink and left, I haveheard from other people that people are not so friendly in Stiens,
but boy was I glad to leave then and I was rather glad to leave yesterday and this is 11 years later.
Come on Stiens be friendly, Leeuwarden and Het Bildt area are. Till we meet again.
This cat was friendly...
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