Utrecht Saint Nicholas 5 December

This memorial stone you can find above the door of
Oudegracht 330.

I couldn't find the back ground information.

It shows Saint Nicholas who flies on a kind of cloud to save the sailors on the vessel.

It is not clear why, according to Dutch tradition, St. Nicholas comes from Spain.

Maybe it has to do with the fact that St. Nicholas was the patron of the seafares.

In the 17th century, Holland was known for its seafare (trade and colonies).

Maybe this tradition began by the contact with Spanish sailors.

This may also explain why Saint Nicholas is helped by Black Pete's
(the Moors dominated Spain for several hundreds of years)

Another, more popular, statement is that the Pete’s are black since they often enter chimneys and there is no time to wash their selves :).

Utrecht The Hermits: Suster Bertken

The most famous hermit in Utrecht was Sister Bertken.

Sister Bertken was born in Utrecht in the year 1426 or 1427 with the name Berta Jacobsdaughter and by that is meant Jacob van Lichtenberch.

Probably she chose for the life of a hermit because she had found out that she was a bastard. When she was 30 (1457) she was locked up in the hermitage of the Buur church and stayed there till her death in 1514 when she was 87 years old.

Her day plan consisted of praying, attending the mess, writing poems, advice people, doing needlework.

She lived a vegetarian life and her clothes consisted of a simple skirt and a coarse dress and naked feet without any form of heating in her hermitage.

In these times a renovation of the Buurkerk was planned and after her death the hermitage was pulled down and her grave destroyed. At another spot a new vault was made.

However, in 1579 also the holy cross choir was broken down and next to the Buurkerk the Choorstraat (Choirstreet) was erected.

In the Choorstreet Suster Bertken’s grave should be somewhere , but it is not for sure where it is exactly.

Now a stone is laid with the text: “Sister Bertken lived here as a hermit locked up in a niche in the bricked wall 1457-1514.wall

At the foot of the stone you see a map of the church and a golden dot shows the place where the hermitage should have been.

On the pictures the hermitage console corner Choorstraat/Vismarkt ; a book cover of Sister Bertken (Royal Library /Kon. Bibl.) and the grave stone in the Choorstraat

Utrecht Homage to Annie Brouwer

It was around 1953 when the local government of Utrecht decided to renovate the wharfs
of the Nieuwe-gracht and Oudegracht.
Old gas lamps should be put back in the street scene.
They were carried on a “Collar Stone” (Kraagsteen or console) and decorated one by one with a sculpture.
More about it in a future chapter in this blog.

Today the loco-mayor unveiled a sculpture dedicated to the former Mayor of Utrecht Annie Brouwer-Korf, who was mayor between 2 July 2007 and 20 December 2007.
It was a present of the members of the local government in honour of her departure as mayor.

See "goodbye meeting" speeches, during a special meeting of the local government, here (page 9, last two paragraphs -alas in Dutch only).

The sculpture is created by Koos Boomstra who has successfully expressed Mrs. Brouwer as she was:
A bit severe lady by which quality she maintained in all kind of situations that came up in local politic. In the background a brewery scene, for Mrs. Brouwer's name means ''brewer".

In the past you could also find about 20 breweries in the neighbourhood of this part of the Oude Gracht.

The console is placed at Oude Gracht at the wharf 328.

on the pictures: taking away the red-white Utrecht flag, the sculpture with a.o. ginkgo leaves and platinum mayor chain, and Annie Brouwer between Koos Boomstra and loco-mayor Harm Janssen