Easter holiday - Part 5 : Euro Hockey League

From Good Friday through to Easter Monday, HC Bloemendaal hosted the Euro Hockey League where the best 16 clubs from Europe competed for a place in the semi-finals to be played at Whitsun.

England were represented by Beeston (Nottingham), East Grinstead and Reading.

This was our second visit to this stage of the competition and we met up with a number of friends from the world of hockey.

Beeston were first up at 9.30 on Friday morning against Russia's Dinamo Kazan.

 

Former Sheffield HC junior, Ali Wilson - now a regular with England and GB - is one of Beeston's key players

 

Adam Dixon is another England and GB player in the Beeston line up

Beeston beat their Russian opponents 2-0 but were narrowly defeated 4-3 by HGC (Netherlands) in the Quarter Final on Sunday.

Reading went one better by beating East Grinstead on Saturday and then narrowly defeating Belgium's KHC Dragons in a penalty shoot out in the Quarter Final. This is the first time that a British team has reached the semi-final stage of the Euro Hockey League. 

Here are a few snippets of action from some of the other games

 Mannheimer HC (Germany) against Atlètic Terrassa (Spain)

 This game was decided by a penalty shoot out - in the Euro Hockey League, if scores are level at the end of extra time, 3 players from each team take it in turns to go one-on-one with the goalkeeper. Starting at the 23m line, the attacker has 8 seconds to score a goal.

 

Terrassa went through to the next stage - but lost their quarter final match to another Spanish team (Club de Campo)

We eagerly awaited the match between host team HC Bloemendaal and last year's champions, UHC Hamburg

 

HC Bloemendaal are captained by the legendary Teun de Nooijer - arguably one of the most gifted players to have ever held a hockey stick. He has won pretty much everything there is to win in the game - Olympic Gold Medals (1996 and 2000), Euro Hockey League Gold Medal (2009). He has also been named World Player of the Year on three occasions (2003, 2005, 2006) and has played more than 400 times for The Netherlands

De Nooijer started playing hockey at the age of nine, with his brothers in the backyard of their house. He joined HC Alkmaar at the age of eleven, and was selected for the Dutch under-16 team 2 years later. At fifteen, De Nooijer made his debut in the senior men's league with HC Alkmaar, and two years later, he first played in Holland's elite league with HC Bloemendaal. After two seasons wearing the number 11 shirt, De Nooijer switched to the number 14, made famous by Johan Cruijff, and has worn it for club and country ever since. The number was later bestowed on the signature stick he helped to create, the Dita Giga #14. 

 

UHC Hamburg also had their own stars - Moritz Fürste, UHC's captain, was a member of the German Men's Team that won the gold medal at the 2008 Summer Olympics and at the 2006 World Cup. He has guided UHC team to success in the Euro Hockey League on two occasions, winning the title in 2007-2008 and 2009-2010. He was named as the Euro Hockey League's Most Valuable Player in the 2007-2008 and 2009-2010 Seasons

 

 

In a tightly contested match, UHC took the lead ...

 

... but Bloemendaal hit back and won 2-1

 

De Nooijer's fan club show their appreciation

 However, Bloemendaal lost their quarter final game on Easter Monday against fellow Dutch team Oranje Zwart from Eindoven in a penalty shoot out.

Easter holiday - Part 4 : Amsterdam

On leaving Bremen we moved our base camp to Holland. We set up home on a campsite in Bloemendaal aan Zee. We chose this venue because it was near to the Euro Hockey League matches which were to be played at HC Bloemendaal over the Easter weekend.


On our first day in the area we visited Amsterdam - via train and then cycled around the city.

Amsterdam's name is derived from Amstelredamme - a dam in the river Amstel. Settled as a small fishing village in the late 12th century, Amsterdam became one of the most important ports in the world during the Dutch Golden Age, a result of its innovative developments in trade. During that time, the city was the leading centre for finance and diamonds. 

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the city expanded, and many new neighbourhoods and suburbs were formed. The 17th-century canals of Amsterdam (in Dutch: 'Grachtengordel'), located in the heart of Amsterdam, were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in July 2010.

Just to show that the famous song is right - there is a "windmill in old Amsterdam" - although we didn't see a mouse on the stair!

The end of the 19th century is sometimes called Amsterdam's second Golden Age. New museums, a train station, and the Concertgebouw were built. The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal was dug to give Amsterdam a direct connection to the Rhine, and the North Sea Canal was dug to give the port a shorter connection to the North Sea.

 

Amsterdam Central Station

You know how you might sometimes say about someone that they "wouldn't pull up any trees" - well these guys definitely did (admittedly with help from a crane!)

The brewery

 Vondelpark

The Rijksmuseum possesses the largest and most important collection of classical Dutch art. It opened in 1885. Its collection consists of nearly one million objects. The artist most associated with Amsterdam is Rembrandt, whose work, and the work of his pupils, is displayed in the Rijksmuseum. Rembrandt's masterpiece the Nightwatch is one of top pieces of art of the museum. The museum also houses paintings from artists like Van der Helst, Vermeer, Frans Hals, Ferdinand Bol, Albert Cuijp, Van Ruysdael and Paulus Potter. 

Statue of Rembrandt in Rembrandt Plein

Rembrandt's house, where he lived from 1636 to 1658. The interior has been restored to its original state. The museum owns an almost complete collection of the known 290 etchings.

Funfare in front of the Royal Palace. The Palace was originally the Town Hall of Amsterdam but is now used for official occasions by the Queen of the Netherlands

 The sun sets as we wend our way back to the campsite

Easter holiday - Part 3 : Bremen

We said our farewells to our hosts and moved south to Bremen, part of the Bremen-Oldenburg metropolitan area. It is around 60 km  south from the Weser mouth on the North Sea. With Bremerhaven on the mouth the two comprise the state of Bremen

Many of the sights in Bremen are found in the Altstadt (Old Town), an oval area surrounded by the Weser River, on the southwest, and the Wallgraben, the former moats of the medieval city walls, on the northeast. The oldest part of the Altstadt is the southeast half, starting with the Marktplatz and ending at the Schnoor quarter.

 

The Marktplatz is dominated by the opulent façade of the Town Hall. The building was erected between 1405 and 1410 in Gothic style, but the façade was built two centuries later (1609–12) in Renaissance style. 

 

Two statues stand to the west side of the Town Hall: one is the statue (1404) of the city's protector, Roland, with his view against the Cathedral and bearing Durendart, the "sword of justice" and a shield decorated with an imperial eagle.

The other near the entrance to the Ratskeller is Gerhard Marcks' bronze sculpture (1953) Die Stadtmusikanten (Town Musicians) which portrays the donkey, dog, cat and rooster of the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale.

 

Other interesting buildings in the vicinity of the Marktplatz are the Schütting, a 16th-century Flemish-inspired guild hall, and the Stadtwaage, the former weigh house (built in 1588), with an ornate Renaissance façade. The façades and houses surrounding the market square were the first buildings in Bremen to be restored after World War II, by the citizens of Bremen themselves

 

Note the Bremen "musicians" emblem 

 Home of Werder-Bremen

 The Weser