There's art, and there's art ...

Groningen

The day looked promising as we set off for the museum, and we enjoyed this statue from the seventies in one of the broad residential streets:

You reach the museum across a canal bridge, and then rather unexpectedly descend below water level to the galleries. We went first to the modernistic pavilion that has revolving exhibitions, and were confronted with the New Wild school – something we had not encountered before. Dating from the eighties and featuring many German and Dutch painters, it was indeed wild stuff, back to (fairly) representational art after the abstract expressionism that preceded it, with lots of sex and violence. We were impressed, but didn't greatly like it. Here are a couple of examples:

After exhausting the charms of the New Wild, we went up to the top floor where there was a one-woman sculpture show. The sculptures were made of cardboard and packing tape. We were underwhelmed:

Then it was time to cross to the other pavilion for the permanent exhibition. There were plenty of worthy civic portraits and some reasonable 17th and 18th century landscapes, but the star of the show was a set of Andy Warhol coloured prints entitled Ladies and Gentlemen, and featuring New York drag queens. Here's one:

We also came across this piece, entitled Grapes, by the Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei:

It was an interesting visit, and much to Groningen's credit to have such a striking place. Even the main staircase is a work of art:

But by now it was time for a pit stop, and thoughtfully there is a bar on the terrace, overlooking the canal we came along yesterday, and serving a very acceptable draft beer and spectacular bitterballen, a deep-fried meat-ball snack:

From the museum we headed into the centre of town, and found a craft market going on in the Fish Market square, which we enjoyed browsing.

It also featured a fish stall serving fresh fried kibbeling, which we could not resist. Street food at its best and a remarkably economical lunch, together with the bitterballen.

We could, of course, have lunched at an expensive place like this – but preferred the kibbeling:

Tomorrow we will set off again and head west towards Leeuwarden and Friesland. It is, of course, the home of Friesian cows, and I expect we will see lots of them. Not sure what else!