The Autumn Break

 I've often complained about my schedule at HZ University of Applied Sciences, but sometimes things align perfectly and I get a week off with splendid weather. That's been the case for the last few days! A nice period to relax, forget about next week's exams, and have reality come crashing back towards me on Monday morning. 

A really bad selfie by the sea and a nice afternoon reading down by the canal.

The northern and southern halves of the country take turns with fall and spring breaks here. This goes for all schools, from basis to middelbare to universitiet. I'm in the south, so we get the earlier week off; next week they'll be free in the north. typically Dutch to be so coordinated!

In regular circumstances I'd be travelling during this week, and until a few weeks ago that was the plan. I had Denmark or perhaps the Eiffel region of Germany in mind, but an easier and more fun opportunity presented itself. House-sitting for a professor! A good rule to go by in life: always sucker up to your teachers, and reap the rewards. 

There's no payment, but all the food is free game and I'm allowed to have people over. The place is mine for nine days and eight nights, and while it's just a half-hour walk from my usual cell domicile, it feels like a totally new city. Quiet neighborhood, no early-morning construction, (a story for another post...) new supermarkets, plants, CATS, CHICKENS, A RABBIT to keep me company. 

For the first time in months, a couch to sit on!

Gezelligheid is the name of the game here. I've explained this word before but it's come up often enough to merit another breakdown. Literally "cozy-ness", it's used liberally for an appealing space, setting, or moment. Similar to the Danish idea of hygge, and it has a strong connotation with koffie and bier. I think it was one of the first Dutch words I ever learned, certainly one of the most useful!

Dinner with classmates Paul and Mattieu: tough chicken (I'd accidentally selected a rooster from the freezer... should have used google translate!) but a good atmosphere!

The house is an old bakery which has been renovated in the most sustainable way possible: by using almost exclusively natural and recycled materials. The walls are adobe, with local clay and straw, dried rock-hard. It's exactly like drywall, and  not dusty at all. The cracks give the place a nice texture, and the warm color suggests a burrow. The ceiling is insulated with wool, complete with a huge skylight for light and heat in the wintertime.

Most houses here have solar-arrays anyways, but this house has a twist: the panels power a heater inside a 250 gallon reservoir of hot water. This circulates in the walls, providing warmth in the winter and cooling in the summer. (when the heater is turned off)  Everything has a lovely old-fashioned and yet strikingly modern vibe to it. Antique furniture, but fancy triple-paned windows. Pots and pans older than my grandparents, and an induction cooktop for them. 

But what I like the most about the place is that it's full of life! Houseplants like you wouldn't believe, literally coming out of the woodwork. And a big garden in back for good measure. I'm tasked with watching two cats, Zoey and Kusha, Flip the rabbit, a diverse fish tank, and two chickens. 

Kusha (disgruntled, on the pillow) and Zoey. (sleeping in background) A good example of the adobe walls and antique furnishings!

Flip, the rabbit. He's a lot larger than it seems in this picture. 

The birds and their residence.

Most of my week has been cooking and entertaining; I have a full-sized oven, plenty of counter space, extensive kitchen tools, so I'm taking advantage of it. Not to mention access to high-quality ingredients, spices, and fresh eggs. Some highlights so far: 

Fig and ricotta cake on the left, a quiche with mushrooms, onions, parsley, and gruyere on the right.

Rozijnbollen, a Dutch classic. Think of a white dinner roll with a lot of raisins inside.

It will be a bitter pill to return to my regular room on Sunday night... I'm not optimistic that my roommate will have cleaned anything in the last week. As I mentioned above, it's already exam-week, so expect an update on these in the next post. Following that, a week-long excursion to Friesland and Groningen provinces! Stay tuned for more tomfoolery. 

Unrelated to house-sitting: there's a snack bar nearby, and yesterday afternoon I noticed at least a dozen city vehicles, garbage trucks, street-sweepers, and bicycles parked outside. All the Middelburg city workers were having lunch together at a long table, classic "fried stuff with mayonnaise" too. Why not, on such a nice autumn day. I had a laugh at that!

One Handsome Devil

The atelier: an escape from the endless procession of digital assignments! 

Most students in The Netherlands have some job or another, whether that be dishwasher, shelf-stocker, laundry-doer or ice cream scooper. How else are they supposed to afford beer? I too have a profession, though in a somewhat fancier field: I'm a model at an artist's collective!

I got the opportunity about this time last year via WhatsApp, from a former student. And boy was I lucky to seize it. Most international students can only find work at big-box stores or in hotels- my roommate works at Action, a sort of Dutch Walmart, and makes €8.50 per hour. 

The studio is in Vlissingen, so naturally I commute by bike. It's an unassuming single-story brick building, between a primary school and a shopping complex in the suburbs. The atmosphere is my favorite part- you can tell that people have been doing art here for a very, very long time. There's lots of old work on the walls, dried paint on the floors, and the smell of art-supplies. 

Various charcoal sketches of me in the studio. It's a strange feeling to look at so many Aarons!

For a long time my schedule didn't agree, but starting in May last year I began what has been a steady job for a busy student. It's definitely part-time: there are five three-hour sessions, once a week for five weeks. I make €15 per hour, coffee breaks and snacks included. But the ideal part is, it's all under the table: no contract or taxes! 

It's also a great opportunity to practice Dutch. All the artists are in the 55-70 age group, and very interested in what an American is doing with Water Management in their corner of Zeeland. On account of this, my vocabulary has a disproportionate amount of words for body-parts: kaakbeen, oogkas, voorhoofd, adamsappel, neusgat, to name a few. 

The focus is on facial-geometry and lighting. I think the eye and nose in the lower left is really good!

The "sitting perfectly still" part isn't so bad either. I do 20-minutes, followed by a 5-minute break, in four increments, from 9:00 to noon. With a generous 30 minutes for coffee too. I find it rather meditative, and I have giant plate-glass windows to look out of. My language skills are good enough to understand that, when the phrase "het koffiemachine is kapot!" is uttered, there will only be tea during the break. 

Everything is orchestrated by Peter-Paul, an artist from Belgium who reminds me very much of a particular art professor I had when I studied at Gustavus. For me, the hardest part of all this is not reacting when he points to and explains the particular curvature of my left cheekbone. "You can see here, from this angle there is..." and so on. 

Peter-Paul explains some detail to the group.

Naturally, some of the painters are better than others. (if you can distill their work to a sense of "good" and "bad"- I find that too critical, and I'm a student, not a connoisseur) It's said that every artist paints a version of themself into an artwork, and I'll let you readers be the judges of that: 

Various interpretations of me. (works in progress) 

For the spring session, I was even gifted my own portrait by one Lucia Boerna, which now hangs on the wall above my bed. I've covered it with thick brown paper, since at the time it was made I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. I want to avoid that kind of situation!

I think I look rather grim in this one... 

In Search Of Tacos

 I can get most foods that I like here in The Netherlands; from Thai to Spanish to Indonesian cuisines. But one thing I miss is a good taco: Mexican food is hard to come by here. Ask a Dutchie what they like in a burrito, and they'll probably ask if you mean shawarma. Near Middelburg, my options are limited. I have El Mosquito, a bar that has tacos as starters. There's an Argentine steakhouse in Vlissingen that does some Mexican dishes, and of course Chefy-Chef.  

Picture from Google Reviews, but it gets the point across.

This hole-in-the-wall dive, just a stone's throw from my flat, is centrally located between an Albert Heijn supermarket, the canal, and the liquor store. It opened last year, and I've been meaning to go ever since. At the special request of one Joe Urban in Saint Peter, I caved in. And writing about it in this blog provides the catalyst for my fateful visit. 

And if you'd like to hear about more of my culinary misadventures, you can support me via BuyMeACoffee (though odds are I'll be buying more interesting things than coffee!) 

On Sunday night I went their with my fellow American, Thomas. While he lives in Hong Kong, he has experience with real tacos from visiting family in Oklahoma. It was typically cloudy and cold, some light mist was in the air, and the sun was setting at an upsettingly early time already. We placed our orders: three tacos for myself and a burrito for Thomas. (with choice of filling; fries or rice, and sauce; Mediterranean or Mexican) 

We got our drinks at the supermarket across the street, since they're 1/3 of the price there. They do a steady business in takeaway and delivery at Chefy-Chef, so I think we waited about 20 minutes for our food. The canal-side seating is exceptional; you can enjoy your meal in the presence of seagulls, ducks, pigeons, and jellyfish. 

I got the pulled chicken, regular chicken, and pulled beef variants. What struck me most about the tacos was that they were grilled! The hot-sandwich press is popular in this country, so I guess they applied that to tacos for whatever reason. (traditionally, it's used to make greasy grilled cheese sandwiches, tosti's) The shell was tortilla-like and much larger than any other taco I've tried. 

The lightly burnt flavor went quite well with the package!

There were no familiar seasonings on these, no cumin, chili, lime, cilantro, onion, etc. Very mild salsa and guacamole, and a lot of shawarma sauce. (sweet, lightly garlicky mayo is the best description I can muster) Which, of course, caters to the local taste for Turkish cuisine. I was expecting at least a little bit of unique flavoring- all I got was plain salty and savory. These were very good, but they weren't tacos by any measure. 

Pondering our choices: what had we gotten into here? 

Note the scattering of canned corn, which is a nice gesture at least. 

After this hearty meal we went to return our cans and buy something sweet at Albert Heijn: their cheapest coconut macaroons, enjoyed on a bench in the park at dusk. So some consolation in that! Alas, there's no tacos to be found in Middelburg.