Den Bosch…

Not long ago I went to ‘s-Hertogenbosch (more commonly known as Den Bosch) in the Netherlands. I was there to participate in a training course at our offices and had driven from home in England, taken the Chunnel train across to France, driven up through Belgium and into the Netherlands.

The course was called Functional Safety Engineer and was certified by TUV in Germany. It was a refresher course for me as I had done it several years before in my previous company. The training was intense and required you to remember many facts and complex details about the international regulations surrounding the definition, implementation and verification of solutions and process that apply to safety systems in industrial applications.

The office was close to the Golden Tulip Central hotel that was located on the pretty cobbled square that formed the old part of the town, and so I had time in the evening to get out and play tourist.

In the square is a statue to Hieronymus Bosch who is the most well know historical figure to come from the town. He was an artist with a vivid and scary imagination whose paintings of the torments of hell are remarkable as they are surreal.

In the middle of the square are several cafes with outdoors seating where patrons can survey the world from the seat under large umbrellas. It was at one of these that I enjoyed a Bosch Bol with a lovely dark Trappist beer. This local delicacy is basically a huge profiterole full of cream and covered in chocolate, and I chose to have this before going to have my dinner just in case I couldn’t face it later. As it was I had a fun time at a busy trendy diner called Dit where I sat at the bar and had a plate of starters and a cone of fries with mayonnaise.

The town seems to have an affluent population as it caters for an eclectic range of fancy shops including quite a few antique and retro style establishments. I did like the sweet shop Shoeperij Tum Tum with its old fashioned jars covering the walls and enamel bowls for the customers to choose from the wide range of liquorice pick and mix. I also liked browsing the comic shop called Strips van Silvester where I bought a copy of The Goon.

I missed the weekly market as I was taking a ride in an electric boat on the Binnendieze canal tour that went around, through and under the buildings of the old town.

So apart from the brain ache it was and being alone I had quite a good time, made better a couple of weeks later when I found out that I had passed the course