Frisia Coast Trail.com

On May 28, 2011 Bill Clinton held a speech in Achlum, province Friesland. The village has some 600 inhabitants. Looks like a small audience to me. What was he up to? We searched online for the keywords "Clinton" and "Achlum" and found many articles mentioning large sums of money... Indeed Achlum should be famous for large sums of money. But not for the huge sum that allegedly has been paid for Clinton to speak. So let's pause Bill for a moment. We would like to draw your at

Exactly a year ago Hans van der Togt, a former Dutch television presenter of the game show Wheel of Fortune, told in the talk show Pauw abou

Below the green and black image of Saskia Holleman, the reincarnation of Mata Hari, her fellow citizen. Saskia was born in 1945 in the town of Leeuwarden in the province of Friesland, standing stark naked in the milky grasslands with a Friesian Holland cow. It is a pamphlet from the former Pacifist Socialist Party (PSP) for the Dutch general elections campaign in 1971. Besides the fact that Saskia was of Frisian descent, the pamphlet also depicts every detail of the scenery i

The essence of the Frisia Coast Trail is hiking through the heartland of (former) Frisia: to experience the landscape, its history and culture, and to meet its people. Every now and then, ' Frisian bastards ' venture onto trails that pass through the heartlands of other minority cultures. Hiking the illustrious Cape Wrath Trail in the far northeast of Scotland was one such adventure. It was a two-week, fairly challenging trek with no fixed route—and, consequently, no path dir

How do Frisians spend their time off? Frisians in the Netherlands must have loads of it because job prospects are among the lowest in the country. In addition, those who have a job do not face traffic jams consuming precious hours every day, unlike the people in the cities further to the south of the country. Inhabitants of the province of Friesland belong to the poorest in the country and have the highest unemployment rate. Yet, these people turn out to be the happiest in th

This is your DIY manual for enlarging or creating your own terp — an artificial settlement mound or house platform designed to protect against sea or river floods, depending on where it is built. Although terps have been constructed on the tidal marshlands of the Wadden Sea for over 2,600 years, this manual is the first of its kind. We sincerely hope it is not too little, too late, now that terp-building is on the rise again. Too often we see these projects carried out in an

This is one of the simplest things there is, once you’ve got the hang of it. ‘A child can do the laundry,’ they literally say in the Dutch language. This has nothing to do with a history of child labour, by the way. Understanding the logic of Frisian personal names is essential if you want to have a seamless and non-violent hiking experience along the Frisia Coast Trail. Once you get it, a Frisian—or a Dutchman with Frisian roots for that matter—is also easily recognizable by

Your mother-in-law lived to a respectable old age and has now, one hopes peacefully, departed this world. That, you might reasonably assume, is the end of your relationship. Old believes, however, leaves room for doubt. A late mother-in-law may still decide to linger, make her presence felt, or even haunt those she leaves behind. If you'd rather ensure her spirit rests in peace than spends eternity haunting you, this blog post is for you. Fortunately, there is a remedy—one th

For those never having met a native Frisian, here is a crash course. There are some remarkable things to mention and rules to live by. Before I start describing what makes the Frisians different, I have to apologize for my poor discrimination skills. I was raised in Cameroon, in Africa. All my friends were natives from the small village of Atcha Tugi, the place where we lived. I admit, that is a poor start. Once back in the Netherlands, my discrimination career took a huge t