Going Dutch
01 June 2019
Sadie
Facts, Fiction and Preconceptions of The Netherlands.
We arrived in the Netherlands nearly two weeks ago and Leslie Frank spent some of it on a working quay surrounded by fishing vessels, whilst the gear box was removed and repaired. The poor guy, having repaired it ashore, carried the 70kg gear box onto the boat and fell, causing him much bruising, a broken rib and a chip or two to our gel coat. When the gear box was finally fitted, he had broken another part when he fell, which resulted in a longer stay. The harbour master was lovely and found us a space on the fishing quay right next to the engineer’s workshop. The local fishing boats, whilst very friendly, moored inches away from our bow and stern, and were not quiet when unloading their boats at 3am!!
We have spent our days motor sailing, sightseeing and enjoying the various villages, and some of my preconceptions of The Netherlands have been challenged, whilst others have been reinforced.
Food
The Dutch are very proud of their cheeses (kaas) and the supermarkets are packed with shelves of Gouda of various ages and ripeness. I have always preferred a French goats cheese or runny Brie to rubbery Edam but the farmer’s market here made me question that view. They had Dutch cheeses of all colours, shapes, sizes and maturity. Some tasted like a mellow Parmesan, others smooth and silky and a few were runny and ripe. They must have had a selection of at least 200 Dutch cheeses, and everyone of them had a tasting bowl. I must have gotten through at least a pound of cheese and was impressed with them all, including the tricoloured Gouda... however I paid for it with a night of bad dreams!!!
I thought that Belgium was the place to go for chocolates, but the Dutch chocolates are giving them a good run for their money. Our favourite is ‘Slagroom truffle’. For those of you who have never visited The Netherlands, slagroom (cream) is served with everything, usually the squirty canned variety. These chocolates are dark rich chocolate truffles, coated in cocoa powder and filled with lightly whipped fresh cream. Apparently they don’t last long, but so far that has not been a problem on board the boat!!!
In my mind Apple pie is a very English thing, something Jules’ Mom and my Nan always made, but here it is sold at every cafe as a special... coffee and pie for €4. Jules has not been able to resist, and often in a morning you have to wait a few minutes for it to come out of the oven. In Jules’ eyes the only thing missing is a good dollop of custard!!
I realised that the Flemish love their sauce, in fact chips are a mere accompaniment to a portion of mayo in Belgium, but here there is a sauce for everything. The Dutch really like their fries with a lot of toppings such as mayonnaise, tomato ketchup, curry, tartar, cocktail, peanut, piccalilli or even apple sauce. If that is not enough you can have the famous combination- toppings of mayonnaise, raw chopped onions and peanut sauce and is called a ‘patatje oorlog’ (‘fries at war’). Kibbeling is the Dutch variety of fish and chips, (but without the chips). ‘Kibbeling’ refers to battered and deep-fried white fish. It is served with dipping sauces like a mayonnaise-based remoulade sauce (similar to tartar sauce) or garlic sauce. In the same shop you can choose smoked or plain eel, battered prawns and octopus salad, but if you want chips, you are going to be sadly disappointed! This seems very odd to us, especially as potatoes are a national dish and can be bought grilled, baked, cubed,spiralled, diced, straight, in sauce, in spices, but mainly in croquette form. Apparently Mac Donald’s is famous for the golden Croquette here!
Cycling
According to Katie Mellua in her song, “there are five million bicycles in Beijing”, but I think The Netherlands is not far behind. Everywhere is so flat so cycling is very easy and the red cycle paths are amazingly well marked and cover thousands of miles. The only problem is knowing who has the right of way and how to turn across oncoming bikes. I have been frozen in the middle of the cycle lane with bikes whizzing past on both sides with bells ringing and moped’s papping their horn, trying in vain to make a left hand turn. We have had some superb days whizzing along the canal cycle paths to the next town and clocked up 50km one afternoon. I am told that there is one simple rule of the road that I need to be aware of, ‘just don’t hit anything’. Thank goodness for electric batteries and gel seats!!!
World War One and Two.
I realised as we looked around Vlissingen that I knew nothing of Dutch history and certainly did not realise that they remained neutral in the First World War and attempted to remain neutral again in 1940. Despite being neutral they were invaded on 10 May 1940 and surrendered 5 days later after the bombing of Rotterdam. As the resistance movement increased, Hitler tried to starve the different islands around Zeeland. 70% of the country's Jewish population were killed during the conflict, a much higher percentage than comparable countries, and records revealed the Germans paid a bounty to Dutch police to locate and identify Jews, aiding in their capture. Jews who survived the camps came back to find their homes and possessions gone. They were often met with incomprehension and sometimes downright antagonism. Although many did receive support, the knowledge that so many had perished made liberation a very bitter one indeed. I found this quote from Sem Goudsmit’s diary who lived in Amsterdam, very moving: ‘The neighbours are celebrating. Yesterday and today, day and night. Music is playing, everyone’s singing loudly the merry and sentimental songs. 95,000 innocent dead in Auschwitz, 95,000 of their countrymen who would have wanted to see this, will not return to their city, their homes – the families have been destroyed, burned, with their heaped ashes in a foreign place’.
Swimming in the canal.
I thought up until now that swimming in ‘the cut’ (canal for those of you not from the Black Country) was something only done by the tough kids in Tipton. At the end of my first teaching year, (twenty five years ago) at Alexandra High School the Headteacher gave a talk about keeping safe during the holiday. He told the pupils to make sure if they swam in the canal, they did not do it alone. I thought it was a joke, but apparently the kids would take their towel to the lock, fill it up and spend the day swimming in the leech infected water. Up until now I thought no one else was that mad, but today we saw lots of Dutch kids picnicking beside the canal and swimming in the icy cold, greenish, weedy water.... rather them than me. Even Tinker refused a swim when we threw in a stick!!!
Eurovision
The Dutch will tell you that they are proud that they won Eurovision this year, they will also tell you that they are not competitive and that they are not really bothered about it. However, we met a lovely Dutch couple who came aboard for drinks. After a while, it was obvious that they knew far more about Eurovision than we did, and were delighted that they were now at a tie with England on numbers of victories. They could name all the Irish winners and even sing Johnny Logan songs. They were wrong however, in believing that ‘tie a yellow ribbon round the old oak tree’ was a Eurovision hit, although I do now know the symbolic meaning behind the yellow ribbon... a sign of love to someone returning from war, be it from the US civil war right up to Vietnam. ‘Nil point’ to the Dutch and full points to the Brit’s when Jules pointed out that it was ‘Save all your kisses for me’ that they were thinking of. At 1am in the morning our Dutch friends were playing ‘try a yellow ribbon’ from you tube whilst singing the words from ‘save all your kisses’, to prove it was an easy mistake to make. So much for not being into Eurovision.... but a top night was had by all and the Brits won again!!!!!
Canals, locks and bridges.
We can not believe how locks, canal and bridges can come in so many shapes or sizes. We have gone through canals and locks with giant container ships and fishing vessels. In these canals you catch ‘the blue wave’, where road bridges are opened by remote control at a set time and all boats, whatever their size go through in convoy. You are watched on camera, and if you are going too slow, they ring you up and ask you to speed up. We have also gone through other canals where we have had 10cm under the keel and the lifting bridges that are so narrow to pass through that we have held our breath and squeezed through with fenders popping. We have not encountered it yet, but we are informed that on some of the smaller bridges and locks that the lock keeper cycles from place to place and sends down a clog for you to put in a tip. Some locks take ages to operate as you travel from saltwater to freshwater and they filtrate the water, so the two do not mix, and it is so odd to leave a narrow lock into an inland sea, where you can sail once more. It is simply wonderful in the small canals to find yourself right in the heart of an ancient town. In the Golden Age, merchants needed to transport their goods and cities needed a way to expand. Canals were built to use for drainage, transport, defence and sewage. The ground that was dug up when creating the canals was often used to build up a raised town and the bordering streets were where the merchants’ houses were built.
Open Days
The Netherlands is renowned their free travel on world Book Day. You can present the book you are reading instead of a ticket and get free travel. We have also found that they have Windmill Days and Bunker Days. We have been lucky enough to experience both. Once a year all the bunkers are open for one day only and it is free to look around. Whilst Jules and Tinker sat outside I had a great half an hour looking round the bunker In Vlissingen. The Dutch bunkers form part of the Atlantic wall, a series of fortifications stretching from the Franco-Spanish border to the tip of Holland. Hitler had 14,000 of them built after he failed to conquer the UK and feared an Allied invasion was on the horizon. Forced labour was often used, and some Dutch contractors got rich very quickly. Few were held to account, but the president of one tribunal was determined to fine and imprison, telling them, “ As soon as you take the road to hell, you are on a slippery slope greased with soft soap”.
There is also a National Windmill Day once a year, and we were very lucky to stumble upon it on a morning walk. Tinker could not manage the steps, but we both took it in turn to visit the mill with the giant sails turning. We were both shocked about the noise they made inside. Jules was interested in the mechanics of it all, and I was glad to see an old fashioned singer sewing machine to sew the bags and mend the sails. What I did not realise is that the position of the sails when not turning can indicate local messages, such as a local celebration or mourning. We have been so excited each time we see a windmill and sadly burst into song, ‘ I saw a mouse, where? There on the stairs, right there, a little mouse with clogs on, there on the stairs right there. A windmill with mice in is hardly surprising, she sang every morning how lucky I am, living in a windmill in old Amsterdam”. ( and they really do sell clogs at the old flea markets).
Verboten
A few years ago when we took a campervan trip to Switzerland, everything was VERBOTEN= forbidden. However The Netherlands is a close rival. To start with it is Veboten to carry red diesel and carries a huge fine. They know that we only get red diesel in the Uk and so we are sitting targets for customs to come and interrogate. We had a rough few hours with customs on Leslie Frank, threatening a £5000 fine, but they finally left us in peace when we rang the British Embassy and they accepted our Guernsey receipt for red diesel. We were instructed to get rid of it as quickly as possible or to dump 400 litres of fuel!!! Then there is the motoring cone. We bought ours 15 years ago and have never used it, you display a black plastic cone to show other vessels that you are motoring with your sails up. In 30,000 miles of sailing for well over a decade we have never put it up, but the Dutch are hot on it, and not using it carries a €35 fine. Anchoring is also forbidden everywhere, and there are big signs forbidding such activity. They claim it is to protect the sea beds, but the size of their fishing vessels raping the sea does not really bare that out!!!
We are going to have to hurry through The Netherlands if we want to make it through to the Baltic, but we will spend longer on the way back in September. After all, when I went through Chemotherapy I promised myself new experiences, and a certain little Dutch cake has my name on it!!!!!