Ol' fashioned fairy tales

We were walking with a friend in Den Bosch the other day when we came across a set of narrow canals crisscrossing the city. While this is not unusual in itself here in the Netherlands, these particular canals caught our attention because of the way that some of the buildings hung out over the water and there were some small patches of greenspace along their banks (kind of unusual). Then we noticed a pair of route signs used to direct self-guided boat tours through the canals. Pretty cool! But then, we also saw a large troll like figure standing on the banks, easily viewable from the boats. Even cooler! A little bit of a “Story book forest” type of self guided tour. The picture above is not the best, but you can see one of the figures on the banks of the canal on the right.

As we continued further along and crossed the canal system again at a different place we saw another figure…a good old fashioned Frog Troll. And what’s he doing? Is he a happy little troll waving to the kiddies? Nope. Maybe he’s a mean troll, making faces to try and scare them? Again, nope. This little bugger is hungry! Isn’t that great!! Of all the fairy tales of my childhood I was never presented with something like this - those are some kid's legs hanging out of his mouth. Of course there were parts of stories like Hansel and Gretel (German story by the way), where the kids are slated to become lunch. But did you ever see it happening? Nooooo….wouldn’t want to hurt our little psyches, right? Way too traumatic. Well, these Frog Trolls don’t take shit from anyone. They hungry? They gonna eat! "I like popping the heads first. Crunchy. Then you can suck out the middle. Mmmm. Lekker!"

We’ve become too soft…

They also had some statues around town for the more adult oriented audiences. We came across this great little number on one of the side squares beside the big church - A naked matador woman ready to deal the death blow to a raging bull….which also happens to be really a man. Now that's art!

And we weren’t done yet! They also had a great old fort that kiddies of all ages could play in. I think that the last time that I had a picture of me sitting on a cannon was one taken at Devil’s Den in Gettysburg back in 1973. Gotta love a second childhood…or is this still my first?