Noorderplantsoen

The Noorderplantsoen is one of the most popular parks in Groningen. Especially in the summer, it can be quite crowded with people barbecuing or trying to get a tan. There is a big difference between the Noorderplantsoen in the summer and the same park in the winter. Not only based on the weather, but also based on how the park is experienced and ‘talked about’. For this blog I would like to pretend that I am a tourist who visits Groningen two times: ones in the summer and ones in the winter.

According to Scott McCabe and Clare Foster[1], story-telling is an important part of being a tourist. Tourists visit places and afterwards they share their experiences back home. The sharing of these experiences is part of social identity construction, in a way that one communicates ones identity through story-telling. Thus, if a tourist experiences something and shares this experience with others, the way this story is told and the content of this story say something about the tourist himself.

I have visited the park in the summer, which meant I went there to pick-nick, sit in the grass, watch the swans in the pond and see children play on the playground. The summer is the busiest time in the Noorderplantsoen, there are constantly people walking and running and people are sitting everywhere. Half a year later, during the winter, I decide to visit Groningen again and I have a whole different experience. Now, there lies snow and there are no people sitting in the grass anymore. Instead, people are strolling through the park or drinking chocolate milk in Flinder’s Café (a café that lies in the middle of the park).

Now, when I go back and tell my family about these two experiences, I might tell a more positive story about the winter-version of the Noorderplantsoen than the summer-version. I might say something like: “Luckily, there weren’t many people now. I could finally see what the park really looks like.” This says something about my preferences and thus about my identity. On the other hand, I might tell a different story to vague acquaintances and say that the park is best in the summer, because I know they really like warm weather and I adapt my opinion to theirs. Furthermore, I might exaggerate the excitement of walking through the Noorderplantsoen in the summer to make my story more interesting. In short, narratives of tourist experiences change, not only due to the changing experience itself, but also due to the way the story is communicated.

Source: www.fellas.nl

Source: Geert van Duinen

- Tessa

---

[1] Scott McCabe & Clare Foster, "The Role and Function of Narrative

in Tourist Interaction", Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 4 (2006): 194-215, accessed January 22, http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/jtcc071.0