Anyway, I went back to the cathedral for church again--and this time I got there early enough to find a decent seat and meet someone else in the congregation. The woman who sat next to me teaches at the medical school at the U of Groningen. She was pleasant and fascinating, and after the service, she took me for a grand tour of the church--and grand is definitely the word.
Here, for example, is the organ:
The organ was built by some famous European organ-builder and the church hosts an international organ competition in August, with competitors from France, Russia, Japan, and elsewhere.
The "old part" of the church dates from somewhere around the year 1000. It was built as a Catholic church, and sometime in the 1500s, when the Netherlands became Protestant, the church did as well. The old part of the church is much smaller. Most of what I saw today was built in the 1400s or 1500s, as I understand it. In any event, at some point in history, people were occasionally buried under churches. If you look closely at the floor of the medium-old part of the church, you can see bumps, where the outline of the grave is and the epitaph is chisled into the floor. Most of the epitaphs are unreadable.
We even made our way up a really dark, narrow, steep spiral staircase so we could get a view of the church from up high.
The only other thing I photographed today was the BarBQ Boat. As you can see, this is essentially a giant inner tube with a motor and a grill located in the center. I have not been on this, but it seems like a great way to tour the canals.
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