Working away again…

I have just returned from a week in The Netherlands at one of our offices there learning more about the product range of the company I work for. The course was with several colleagues from throughout the world and it was interesting talking with them and discovering what we had in common and what we didn’t. We stayed in 's-Hertogenbosch, a town also known colloquially as Den Bosch.

Once the one time home of Hieronymus Bosch (the Bosch part of his name taken from the name of the town) the 16C painter of weird and scary paintings on a religious themes, such as The Temptation of St. Anthony (I found a shop selling models of some of the images in his paintings and bought the least freaky one, which was the fish-boat in the foreground of the main panel.)

A quaint old town, Den Bosch retains much of its old-world character with pedestrian cobbled streets, Dutch gable end buildings, canals throughout and under the town, and wonderful masonry signs on buildings showing the occupation of the original occupiers (a relief of a brewer for an Amstel shop, another of a baker elsewhere). The statue/relief tradition has been maintained with modern equivalents on the side of buildings between the original and the religious statuary.

There was a real feeling of prosperity in the town with fancy designer clothes boutiques, interior design shops, and streets of cafés, restaurants and drinking establishments, the patrons of which filled the narrow streets with a joyful noise.

There were the typically Dutch establishments dotted around such as the bicycle shop (with every variety of bike and accessory available), the ‘koffee’ shop (the distinct sweet smell signalling its presence), and the comic shop (the Dutch and the Belgium seem to share the obsession with weird and wonderful comics for young and old alike). I found a lovely old fashioned sweet shop down one of the quieter side streets, where there were shelves upon shelves of jars containing their multicoloured goodies. Here I bought a pick-and-mix bag of liquorice for Sue who loves them (although even she has difficult with the extra salty Dutch ones).

The weather was unseasonable warm as it has been in the UK too, and this brought out the café culture and the excess of bare skin. The skies remained clear throughout the week and on after I returned home.