Hiking through the Netherlands: from Lemmer you see Germans everywhere – so Apfelkuchen!

From the fishermen’s monument on Urk, the Westermeerdijk stretches to the horizon. On the left the IJsselmeer, on both sides windmills in line. There is not a breath of wind, only bright sun. The first few kilometers some couples on electric bicycles speed past. They call loudly and the men then call back: “So, walking?”

On Urk it was already full with day trippers at ten o’clock. They drank coffee at the harbour. Were shown around and pointed out the stained-glass window in the Bethel Church called ‘The Miraculous Catch of Fish’. The guide explained how nowadays not fishing, but fish processing „boom businessis on Urk: “If you see Norwegian salmon in the supermarket, there is a good chance that it has been sliced ​​here.”

The villagers speak Urkers among themselves. Of the conversation between two teenage girls, only the words “TikTok” and “really fat” can be understood by an outsider. And when a man on a mobility scooter addresses Cees de Vries, it can be deduced from the hand gestures that he is talking about his painting.

“We are raised here bilingually,” says De Vries. “I only learned Dutch at school.” Pia, an acquaintance of his, and daughter of the old lighthouse keeper, had previously said that she used to have to talk ‘just’ at home when the pilotage service came to visit. When De Vries talks about his grandfather, he says baebe. He died at sea, his name is on the fisherman’s monument. De Vries is not a fisherman either, he works on superyachts. And he has his own program on UrkFM: ‘Visser en De Vries, je moas on the radio’. Your mates.

When students Jacob van Lennep and Dirk van Hogendorp travel through the Netherlands on foot in 1823, they do not understand many inhabitants of the newly formed kingdom. Dialect is common; people are regional, they don’t travel that much. And when Van Lennep and Van Hogendorp visit Urk together, it is still an island. They arrived there by ship from Enkhuizen, and then continue to Lemmer with that ship.

Since 1939, the Westermeerdijk has been there, which after ten kilometers at the Rotterdamse Hoek becomes the Noordermeerdijk. At that point, the dike was reinforced with the rubble of the Rotterdam city center that was bombed in 1940. And then it is another thirteen kilometers to Lemmer. The asphalt burns in the sun.

Bus with air conditioning

The idea is to follow in the footsteps of Van Lennep and Van Hogendorp through the Netherlands this summer, to see what the country looks like now and what concerns people. And in the footsteps of journalist Gerard van Westerloo, who explored the Netherlands on foot in 1993. When Van Westerloo walks on the dike, he will interview himself “under his breath”: “Were there any boring parts on your walk? Yes. Those three and a half hours between Urk and Lemmer.”

Now there is a bus, with air conditioning. It whizzes through the geometric landscape of the Noordoostpolder, with its straight rows of trees and sprinklers that keep the different shades of green green. And in Lemmer, the coffee is waiting in De Wildeman.

Van Lennep and Van Hogendorp stayed there, and more than a century and a half later also Van Westerloo. It is no longer possible to spend the night, only an apartment is available above the neighboring house. In any case, there appears to be no bed for miles around this day – the Dock, the water right through the village, is full of boats. The terraces alongside are full.

But there is another reason why De Wildeman (anno 1773) no longer has any rooms. The inn had been empty for several years when Stephan Dijkstra and his partner took it over in 2019 to provide shelter for young people “with a backpack” and to help them enter the labor market by allowing them to gain catering experience.

He talks about “diamonds in the shell” who are stuck in school or in their personal lives. “The labor market often wants too much and too fast for these young people. If you get angry here, you can go upstairs.” That’s where they live. Dijkstra says: “We try them in the lead to put.” A boy and a girl happily navigate between the terrace and the traffic with trays.

German tourists can be found everywhere from Lemmer to the border. Soepeltjes switches catering staff to German Apfelkuchen with Sahne to praise. Menu cards are also in that language. More often than in the Randstad, coffee is served with a small glass of whipped cream and liqueur.

Zuiderzeepad

When the tourists are not there, it is quite quiet in Echtenerbrug in the winter, say Marjan Moedt and Fokke and Gerrie Mast. When you enter their village along the Zuiderzeepad, the first thing you see is a holiday park. Large wooden villas, on the waterfront, with ‘wellness facilities’. But, says Moedt: “Even in the summer it is not crowded there.”

There are more holiday homes in the area, and more to come. She lists which are still on the route to Wolvega. It makes her angry: “It bothers me that this is possible in this day and age, there are no new houses for villagers.”

The three are standing on the bridge, which is the heart of the village – of the two villages that are actually separated by the Pier Christiaansloot. Every Sunday, villagers exchange their news here, a faded photo of yesteryear hangs in the bridge keeper’s house for confirmation.

A discussion ensues about the tiny houses that are being built next to the park. “Some have already been bought up to turn them into holiday homes,” Fokke Mast thinks. ‘No,’ says Gerrie. “Where did you hear that? I thought they were for villagers?”

Around the Tjeukemeer they are used to tourists. A festival toilet is available every half kilometer along one of the side canals. At a house that is tiled from sidewalk to roof with spell tiles, a local resident said that in the summer the children of the sailing camps can walk straight into the yard to take a picture. He says: “You don’t make much progress when you’re talking to everyone!”

Allotment

But there are not that many people outside the larger towns on a weekday. Between Lemmer and Echtenerbrug especially the sparrows chirp and the wind rustles through the trees. Farmer Linda (34), who does not want her last name in the newspaper, points around the meadows. That has become a farmhouse, and that. That too. She and her husband still have 260 cows. She tells how milk from the farm is “much tastier” than that from the supermarket.

Walking half a day further, where Wolvega turns into a nature reserve, Willem Menger says the same about his vegetable garden. The pole beans that stood by the ditch were stolen and the onions belonged to fellow horticulturist Jan. Lettuce is plentiful. He eats it every day this week, with “tasty crusted hash browns and usually bacon.” Vegetarian? “Maybe someday.”

When Van Lennep and Van Hogendorp visit the region, the first describes Wolvega as “lovely” and Steenwijk “terrifying” because of the enormous high ramparts. The center of Wolvega is now bordered by supermarkets, all chains are represented in the Hoofdstraat. The HEMA tune sounds through the open doors. Steenwijk plays music in its streets like wallpaper. Billy Joel with ‘Piano Man’. The same chains can be found here as well. A walking path has been laid out on the ramparts, sheep graze the steep slopes.

Two hundred years ago, the two students visited Frederiksoord, one of the Colonies of Benevolence, founded a few years earlier by Minister of State Johannes van den Bosch. Poor families (from the ‘Randstad’) were offered a new life, with housing, care and education if they cultivated the wasteland.

Van Lennep gets “a fairly favorable” impression. Now the peat colonies are described on every electricity box with posters as ‘Het Pauperparadijs’, the stage adaptation of Suzanna Jansen’s success book. And the colony villages have been given Unesco status. In the middle of Willemsoord there is a large touchscreen to provide information to tourists, four cyclists map out their route.

Also read this article: The Colonies of Benevolence: from utopia to place of sorrow

Dries and Donny Lawerman are happy that the region is “on the tourist map”. Donny has just taken over the Pieter Poot restaurant and meeting center from father Dries. Named after Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Amsterdam (New York) who was born nearby in Peperga. You can take a picture by sticking your own face through a wooden picture of him.

“This used to be a driver’s cafe. At four o’clock in the morning the balls were chopped up,” says Dries. But then the main road and the A32 motorway were diverted at the end of the eighties. “Of course they don’t turn around. It wasn’t easy, converting. We have had difficult years.”

The meatballs have made way for regional products. “No Unilever junk, but very tasty cheeses, milk and honey,” says Donny. What people have too much in fruit and vegetables, they exchange for dinner vouchers. Staff shortage? No, there is no supermarket in the area where teenagers could have their first job: “All youth work here or have worked here. When we organize something big, there is always someone to find,” says Donny. Twenty cyclists are already sitting on the terrace early in the morning.

A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper on July 25, 2023.