FOTO: SIESE VEENSTRA

This is the 100th edition of ‘Ain Wondre Stad’. The column featuring the favourite spot of a (more or less) well-known former student that has been written 
by Ellis Ellenbroek for 25 years. Read the very first instalment featuring Hans Anker here.

Or browse the Broerstraat 5 archive to find stories by Arjen Lubach, Ellen ten Damme, Martin Bril, 
Job Cohen, Ellen Deckwitz, Chris Zegers and many, many others.

from parties, football matches, and other gatherings where people are singing it at the top of their voices, arms around each other, shouting along at a nice waltz tempo. Everyone knows the lyrics by heart.

Thanks to this one song, I’ve done fun things, from participating in the Glazen Huis charity event to entering a pub and ending up standing on the bar singing it. Last summer, I performed at the KEI week opening party at the Grote Markt.

I still sing a lot. If you love something, you keep on doing it. I have two kids and we sing together a lot at home. And if there’s ever a wedding or a special occasion,
I usually do something for that, too. Just for fun. To be able to make a living in the music world, you need luck and more dedication. And, most importantly, more talent.’

‘During my student life, I was the singer of the Albertus student association band and I wrote first-year musicals. They asked me to write a song for a University anniversary. It was supposed to be a charity single for the KWF Kankerbestrijding organization. I played guitar but I’d also just set up an electric piano in my room to try it out. I wrote the song behind the piano. I thought that it should be decently produced and recorded. For the arrangement, we worked with Addy Scheele, a jazz-style composer. We recorded the single in a studio in Sneek and brought the song round to all sorts of shops and hospitality places ourselves. The music video was quite amateur. I rode my bike through the city with my girlfriend at the time and a friend of mine cycled behind us and filmed it.

I wanted to write a song about Groningen without having to literally sing the word “Groningen” over and over again. Songs about cities and places often revolve around their names. For example, “Amsterdam this, Amsterdam that”, the lyrics “Hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust”, and the song O o Den Haag.

I used grass as the motif. Grass is a nice thing to sing about. I love grass. It’s so nice to sit with your feet in the grass!
Slowly but surely, Gras van het Noorderplantsoen has been embraced as an unofficial anthem. We didn’t know that it would have such a long history. As people studied
in Groningen and then spread out across the country, the song travelled around. I still regularly get sent videos

Groningen. University.
But also countless streets, houses,
bridges, squares paved with memories.
Famous former UG students talk about
their special place.

AIN WONDRE STAD

TEXT ELLIS ELLENBROEK

Ralf Poelman (45),
is cluster manager at Numa, where he is operationally responsible
for a number of aparthotels in Amsterdam. He is the singer/songwriter of
the well-known Groningen hit Gras van het Noorderplantsoen (2007),
he studied Business at the University of Groningen (UG).

His special place:
of course: The Noorderplantsoen