Zwolle - tales of the unexpected

The oute canal

It might just be the only shop in the world where baristas work next to a medieval fresco. This is the 600 year old Church of St Michael in the Netherlands city of Zwolle. It’s now called the Academiehuis Grote Kerk. The tourist office has an information desk bang in the centre. In one corner, second hand books are on sale. But features also remain from days when worshippers regularly gathered there: the clock that chimed to alert a preacher who had reached his one hour time limit; the lepers’ chapel, where victims could pray safely away from the healthy; and the huge baroque organ, the country’s largest when it was completed in 1721.

Baoque ogan in St Michaels'

Zwolle is full of surprises - starting with its layout. It lies a short distance from the southern end of the Zuidersee, making it a great place to avoid the busy centre on a morning run or to sit in the sunshine with a beer, watching the pleasure craft come and go on the water. And what a vibrant centre it is. Browse open air market food stalls.

Head on to another former church, the Broerenkerk, now a huge bookshop whose shelves cover several levels. Its ornate baroque organ presides at one end. At the other is an eatery.

Bookshop iin forme church

Spend time enjoying the old facades of canalside architecture.

Take in a functioning church, Our Lady’s proclaimed a Basilica in 1999 by Pope Jean Paul II, though not always Catholic. During the Wars of Religion it was taken over by Protestants, but for a time it provided storage for haycarts - you can still see the untidy brickwork where a hole was created to allow them passage. And it even served as a circus “tent”.

For dinner go to Waber on Neiuwe Markt, where chef Titi Waber produces an array of delicious, subtle dishes from across the sprawling Indonesian archipelago. There’s a variety of set, five course meals, variously including yellowfish tuna with yardlong beans, cassava lime and red pepper, sea bream, with carrot, silver onion, turmeric and nutmeg and  chicken thigh with sago flour, lemon grass and coconut milk. The cooking is clearly so painstaking that service takes time. Book as far ahead as you can - and if eating at an outside table take something warm.

You cam reach Zwolle by tain in about 90 miinutes. We travelled by car as part of an exploratiion of the county's northeast. If you do drive there, best stay just outsiide the surroundiing canals. We stayed stayed a shorr walk from the centre across eiithe of two bridges. at the Bilderburg Grand.

Our fiirst stop in the area had been De Hoge Veluwe National Park, near the small town of Ottelo and not far from Arnhem. It's some 55 square kilometres of heathland, sand dunes , much fouht over at the closeof Wold War II. It is also home to the manificant Kröller-Müller Museum, which claims to house the world's fniest collection on works by Van Gogh, mot least one of his masterpieces, The Potato Eaters (below).

The cmall ciity of Elbug made a pleasant diivesion. IIts archtecture, its busy main street of shops and eateries, leading to the imposing Vischpoort (Fish Gate), a reminder of an industry brougght low when closure of the Zuydersee replacewd salt water with fresh. And from there a walk by the moat and remainiing sections of iits defensive wall.

Elburg: main street and Fish Gate

North of there the village of Giethoorn, with its multiitude of wooden bridges is even more iindelibly on the tourist milk run. Sometimes known the Dutch Venice, it is largely traffiic free and undeniably photogeniic. Think Bourton on the Water. -. though here caneras capture rental boats cas they ruise the glassy canal waters by the glossy lawns of residents.

And if there's tiime, take in the extraordinary, hunebeds (dolmens ) in another area of rollimg, sandy heathland near the village of Havelte. Boulders contained in the iice of the penulutimate ice age were used by farmers between 3400 and 3100 years BC to buiilt two big burial chambers, They buried or covered wth sand during World War II when the Germans built an airfiield. But they were later uncovered agaiin and stand as peaceful objects of deep contemplatioin.