St. Liduina's Basilica

One of the places that was open during the Schiedam Open Monumenten dag was St. Liduina's Basilica.  Or, more formally, de Basiliek van de Heilige Liduina en Onze Lieve Vrouw Rozenkrans--The Basilica of of the Holy Liduina and Our Dear Lady of the Rosary.

It is one of the buildings that is not normally open to the general public.

That little girl in the pink, by the way, was having such a good time playing in the fountain.  It was the kind that alternated spraying out of different holes, with different pressures, and she was dancing around all over the place, shrieking and laughing and having the time of her life.

St. Liduina is the patron saint of Schiedam and also of the chronically ill.  According to Dutch Wikipedia, she is thought to be, perhaps, one of the first recorded cases of multiple sclerosis.  According to the church's webpage (which you can visit here, if you like) St. Liduina was a medieval lady who fell and broke one of her ribs while skating on the river.  The rib became abscessed and poor Liduina was bed-ridden for the rest of her life.  But, if anyone who was sick or lame came to her, she could heal them.  She was proclaimed a saint in 1890.  And, in 1990, the St. Liduina Kerk got upgraded to a Basilica.  I don't know what the difference is but apparently it is a pretty big deal.

This is a picture from a book on the lives of the saints showing her fall.

Apparently, Thomas A Kempis wrote about her as well, so I guess that she is kind of a famous saint.  And still famous enough, that she has her very own Facebook page here.




On marginally related note, there is a street called Thomas A Kempisstraat in Schiedam.  And I thought it was interesting enough to take a picture of but, apparently, not interesting enough to walk across the street to get a good picture of it.




The Basilica has a very nice approach.  This is across a large square from the center of town that leads straight to it.  The big, modern looking building on the left is the Nieuwe Stadhuis.  It is pretty boring but it is quite huge.  The building on the right is just a bunch of shops and restaurants.

This is a photo of the Nieuwe Stadhuis.  The public library is also here.









And here Ben, just for you, is a picture of me.  I intended to  take a picture of the engraved seals that are on the automatic sliding glass doors (which just seems so wrong, somehow) but none of them really turned out. But, I did accidentally end up with a picture of me sight-seeing, so, there you go Ben.  I am not just making it all up.  =-)


Also, I kind of like the view of the square that you can see reflected.


You can see how close I was cutting this trip, too.  The church closed at 5 (or 17:00) so I just barely made it.

I am still not quite sure to make of the interior.  The best way I can think of describing it (and trust me, the photos don't do it justice--I think I need to figure out how to do the white balance on this camera) is to say that it looks like a 70s take on Baroque.  Everything is in soft pink and green, including the bricks.  It was pretty, but it was not your typical church decor.  And what made it especially odd was that the floor was made some 70s-looking rust and black and cream tile, which didn't really match the rest of the theme that well at all.

I don't have any picture of the front because there were little old people sitting in the church praying and it just seemed kind of rude to get in their way.  I asked the supervisors who were keeping an eye on things before I took these pictures and they were fine with it but I didn't want to bother the people more that I needed to.





This is the plaque from the front of the church.  The yellow and black striped flag is the official flag of Schiedam.

NeboKerk (11 september 2011)

On Sunday I went to the NeboKerk again.  It was their Children Focused Sunday.  So they had special music, sang lots of younger-type songs, and had a gospel-message type sermon that was especially directed toward children, from Ephesians 1:17:  "That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him."  This was part of their equivalent of a VBS program (although I didn't quite catch whether this was the conclusion or the kick-off for it).

On a related note, I am now the proud owner of a Dutch Bijbel!  I found an old, school Bible, the kind that, as appears on the name plate, were given as school prizes a long time ago.  This particular one was given to a student named Rienus van der Hulst at a Reformed Sunday school in Rotterdam on Christmas Day in 1925.  It is a little worn and the spine is held together with scotch tape but that just gives me an excuse to finally go buy some of the fabric that they have at the market, so that I can make a Bible cover.  And they have some really, really pretty fabric at pretty reasonable prices.

I got the Bible at the Blaak Markt on Tuesday out of one of the flea market type booths.  I just stopped by on my way to the Official Welcome stuff the school had for the international students and just happened to see some books and, after I had looked through the books and seen nothing I wanted, as I turned to leave, I just saw the Bible under some magazines out of the corner of my eye.  It costs 1 euro (or about $1.50) which is a pretty terrific deal as, even used, the Bibles I have seen have been over 30 euros ($50).  The one downside is that this is the good, solid, old-fashioned Statenvertalling Bijbel, which is the kind I kind of wanted anyways but is also the kind that none of the churches I have visited uses.  I will have to keep an eye out for some of the newer translations as well, I guess.  Although they will be much less historically interesting.  If you think that this Bible managed to survive not only the obliteration of Rotterdam in the war but also 86 years (almost) and ownership by a little kid, the fact that the binding is coming apart all of a sudden seems pretty minor.

By the way, for those of you looking for baby names, Rienus is an old fashioned name (or at least an old fashioned spelling) of a boy's name which means "from the sea."  Which makes all kinds of sense for a Dutch baby.  Anyways, it's a unique name--your little Rienus would probably never meet someone with the same name. . . (and also, no "J"s . . .)

De Bonte Koe Chocoladekunst

Because of the Open Monumentendag at Schiedam, there were concerts going on all over town.  There were organ concerts in at least three of the churches and there were vocal performances in at least two different studios.  Apparently cobblestone streets and brick and stone buildings make really terrific accoustic chambers because, as I was walking along this one street, I could hear a very nice operetta going on.  Inside a studio there were a couple singing something classical sounding (I didn't recognize but that just means it was The Ride of the Valkyries or something equally ubiquitous).  They were all dressed up and all of the people inside, who looked like they were at some kind of dinner reception, where all dressed up in evening wear.  And then there was a whole bunch of tourists and sightseers, in jeans and t-shirts, grouped around the door, listening.  It was a lot of fun.  That room was right next to "De Bonte Koe Chocoladekunst" store: "The Colorful Cow Chocolate Art" store.  So the whole time I was looking at the displays here, I could hear the singing going on next door.

These suns are vacation themed.  The dark chocolate one says "prettige vakantie" which means "nice/pleasant vacation."  I don't remember what the bigger one says.

The little houses are Jenever-flavored bonbons shaped like the old Jenever building (where the Jenevermuseum is located).  You can buy sets of these in special boxes with different flavors from the different kind of Jenever.




I saw a few people buying them so I think that it must be a pretty popular product.











They also had white chocolate sculpture/buildings.  These look very Dutch.  Also notice the little modeled tulips in front of the houses?  I don't know how you would go about eating these.  It is kind of like the gingerbread house dilemma.  You would probably hate to wreck it until it got too gross to eat.








I think that these shoes are pretty spiffy.  They are solid chocolate.  I think a shoe chocolate mold would be a lot of fun to play with.








These giant clams stuffed with bonbons were pretty but what I especially liked was the box of rusty tools (although why somebody thought rusty tools sounded appetizing is another whole question).  They are molded out of chocolate and then dusted with cocoa powder to get the rust effect.  It was very effective, too.  I did a double take.






One thing I wasn't really sure about was the memorial chocolate plaque.  While I guess that there are chemical reasons why eating chocolate would be good during the grieving process, I am not sure that this would be the first thing that I would think of doing.  Especially with the primitive portraiture.  What is especially odd, though, is that, not only did someone want to order this, but the store thought that this was the kind of thing that people would want to buy and that displaying this would be a good way to garner business.



De Bonte Koe is actually a store, not a museum, but they had a nice display room set up that you could walk through, besides the actual store and a little cafe, and there were a lot of people just wandering through and looking at stuff.  Apparently it is a fairly big draw for the city (or at least they get a lot of business from tourists) because they had advertisements in the tourist information material.