Every design for Gronau

In 1910 the skeleton of a Cretaceous plesiosaur turned up in Gronau, although the ancient sea creature now lives in a museum in Münster. The town's real wealth came later and from cloth: the first textile works opened in 1854, Dutch investors drove the industry forward, and the mills set the rhythm of life until the van Delden Group went bankrupt at the start of the eighties.

What makes Gronau different is the border. Enschede is just ten kilometres away, four former crossings lead into the Netherlands, and the town has borders with a district, a state and another country all at once. That openness shows in the Jazzfest Gronau, where a large share of the audience comes from abroad, and in the Rock'n'Popmuseum and the Udo Lindenberg Statue. To the northeast, the moor and heath of the Gildehauser Venn begin.

Grow up between the Dinkel and the Dutch border, and this map holds bike rides out to Epe, summer evenings in town and the short trip across to Enschede that never felt like going abroad.