10/9/23
Hello all,
My life here has been quite enjoyable as of late! As I write, my roommate Emil is cooking a delicious dish from Lithuania for which there is no translation to English. (I certainly hope he feels the same way about things that I cook!) It’s pork, carrots, tomatoes, onions, and garlic, all stewed with a lot of rice. Very tasty after a long day of cycling.
But cycling from where, you ask? My weekend trip was to Ghent this time around, via Antwerp. And this time I had the luxuries of a spare inner tube and multi-tool! I also found some saddlebags, which beautifully compliment the rest of my setup: all torn, scuffed up, and gritty. Function over form is the rule with touring!
So, at first light on Saturday I left Middelburg with a strong tailwind from the west. The worst part of the ride was negotiating the port of Antwerp, 25 kilometers of industrial jungle. There was nothing to see but refineries, containers, and weedy lots. In hindsight I should have avoided this. However, I found Antwerp to be pleasant in my 40 minute stay there. Just long enough to rest and fill up on water. The code to the bathrooms in the tourist info center is 1243 if you’re ever in town!
I stopped at a church in a small town to fill up my water and talked with a guy who was setting up for a fundraiser there. We talked for around 20 minutes and he happened to work in Ghent. He graciously offered me some cold drinks, which I declined. But what a nice guy! I love cross-country trips like these, because of interactions like this with the locals. It’s just like my tour of Iowa from this summer, if I squint.
I found Ghent to be a lovely old city, not unlike Prague without the crowds. My hostel was 20 minutes walking distance from the center, so I spent the evening wandering the canals and eating baklava. There’s nothing better than a well-placed pastry shop at the end of a long day! After all that cycling, 93 miles to be precise, I slept well. Although a mosquito decided to bother me in particular at 3:00 AM.
There was also free continental breakfast in the morning, and bread pudding too! I ate with Tomas, a Frenchman from Brest who was on vacation here. This place was much nicer than the last one I stayed at: tons of cool art and indoor caravans to rent. (Treck Hostel Ghent if you want to look it up) I had time to see the Gravensteen castle in the morning, and it’s gotta be in the top three I’ve ever visited. The audio guide was done by a local comedian and was pure gold. I would highly recommend it!
As the crow flies it’s only 60 kilometers from Ghent to Middelburg, and I was back at 3:00– excellent time considering I left at noon! I cycled the last 40 kilometers like a madman to make the 2:18 ferry across the Westerschelde, and I did so with 8 minutes to spare. I celebrated with some homemade fruit leather that was a little too leather-like. Verdict: a perfect 1.5 day tour.
Next I would address some concerns that I've heard about. Firstly, my affinity for cheap and free food has nothing to do with a shortage of money. That’s just me being a cheapskate! I just like to hunt for good food on the cheap, so don’t worry about me. It comes naturally when you’re a student. But I will say, when the pomegranates are two for a euro, you just have to write about it.
On the school front, only two weeks remain until exams for the first quarter. I worry about these often, since that’s 80 percent of the course grade. So I’ll be studying like it’s the end of the world soon! I love all my classes except for Water Governance, which involves a lot of broad and vague terms in the Dutch bureaucracy. But I would never have known so much about the House of Thorbecke without it. HZ is also very generous with exams to counterbalance their weight. A 55 is a passing grade and there are retakes later in the year.
Last Saturday I rented a canoe with my friends Ethan and Tanon, and we cruised around the canals picking up garbage and cans to return. We stayed out longer than our rental allowed, but the owner was pleased that we had gathered so much trash. That Saturday was a great day for me, since I also made curry and cycled to the beach for a swim. But now the beach, though it is beautiful, has less appeal for me since I’ve seen the industrial zones upstream.
I will leave you with a new discovery from this week. My roommate Emil introduced me to kruidnoten, which are like small, flaky ginger snaps with a peppery hint. A lot of our interactions revolve around cooking and eating, since we only see each other at mealtimes. It’s a good thing we both love to cook! Anyways, these addictive new cookies promise to fulfill my baking and snacking needs for a while.
Thanks once again for reading and please feel free to share or forward these letters to anyone who might be interested, it’s a lot of fun to write them!
With warm regards/met vriendelijke groeten,
Aaron
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10/15/23
Greetings once again,
I’ll begin with Friday the 13th, the day of a field visit to the intertidal zone for Ecology class. There was no rain but the wind was whipping across the Western Scheldt, enough to blast any loose objects (i.e. notebooks, raincoats, and train tickets) over the dike and into the harbor. So we resorted to scrambling along the slippery, salty sea-dike and madly photographing our quadrats: 50 centimeter square areas in which we measured the abundance of species.
Some Dutchies discovered a large crab, around 10 inches from claw to claw, aptly named “Big Pinchy”. While one of them distracted the crustacean with a garden stake, the other grabbed it from behind, whooped in delight, and proudly displayed it for all to see. Suffice to say this was our best field visit yet!
Afterwards I went with some friends to a seafood joint in Vlissingen, where at last I tried the delicacy of maatjesharing. A whole deboned and brined herring, served with raw onion and eaten in the same way a seagull might eat a herring. It was gelatinous, fishy, and salty, that is to say pretty good. The only problem is the salt-preserved fish smell doesn’t leave your fingers for a few hours!
While on the subject of Dutch cuisine, I will mention some other dishes that my classmates have told me about: Groningse Eierbal, sort of like a scotch egg but smaller and surrounded by a thick coat of gravy. Oliebollen, literally “oil balls”, a kind of giant spherical beignet which I can find at the Thursday market. While this dish has no name, I’m told that when farmers are hard at work in the fields they simply mash all their meat, blanched greens, and potatoes together to minimize eating time. Unlike other countries, food appears to be more of a utility here.
What makes me chuckle the most is the names of things. 60 kilometers east of Middelburg is the town of Bergen op Zoom. On the way there you pass by Krabbendijk. (“Crab Dike”) In the market, down at the Hollandse Kaascentrum (Dutch Cheese Center) I can buy cheese fresh from Farmer Jaap’s cows. They have a little biography of the farmer next to each wheel of cheese and a review of its flavors! Down at Albert Heijn, casually referred to as “Appie”, there’s a sale on nieuwe aardappelen and flespompoen blokjes. New potatoes and diced squash for all your autumnal soup-making needs.
I also got my first ever haircut outside Minnesota on Friday. It was a busy day! However, I was not spared from any bad luck. Murad’s was the closest and cheapest barber to my place, so I stopped by to see if they had appointments for tomorrow. But they spoke no English, only Dutch and Arabic, and on entering the shop I was ushered straight to a chair with no time to object. As a result my hair is the shortest it’s been in ten years, and I can’t say I like the look of it either. (though for only 15 euros I shouldn’t complain!) It’s a good thing that I won’t be in many photos before Christmas! Next time I need to learn the phrase: “Not so short, please!”.
I have my schedule now for the next quarter of the year. It’s a little busier, and I’ll have four new classes: Sustainable Development, Climate Change, Spatial Analysis I, and Integrated Water Management. These start on November 13th after a week long break, an exam week, and a project week. By then winter break is right around the corner! It’s a very generous 18 days, for me effectively from December 20th to January 7th.
That’s all I have to say for now. As I mentioned in the previous letter, I have a mailing list now. Send me your questions and the emails of anyone who’s interested, and see you again next week. Thanks for reading!
Kindly submitted/vriendelijk ingediend,
Aaron
P.S. I’ll also send photos from last week, since I forgot to attach them. Gmail gets salty about having too many attachments in one email, so they’ll be sent separately.
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10/22/23
Hello friends,
The first module, or quarter of the year, has come to a close here at HZ. The weather has been cooperative, that is to say bad when I need to study and beautiful when I have free time. On Friday the 20th some friends and I worked for five hours in a meeting room, seriously losing track of time. I’ll attach the report that I knocked out at that time– it was due at 5:00 that day!
My general rule is no homework on the weekends, which are for cooking and sleeping only.
Considering I have such a small kitchen, I do a lot! The plums have been excellent so I made fruit dumplings, švestkové knedlíky. Despite the name it is not a dessert, but a food of Czech peasants that I’ve enjoyed on countless summer and autumn evenings. Whole stone fruits (peaches, plums, apricots, etc.) are wrapped in dough and boiled, and served cut-up with butter, breadcrumbs, and cottage cheese. This is an excellent food for students and they turned out really well, considering I’ve never made them myself.
Living in an all-student housing complex has its benefits and its issues. I’m thankful that all my friends live just a few doors down, and that we’re so close to the HZ building. But, as I’m sure is the case with shared laundry rooms the world over, people always forget to clean out their lint from the dryers. Bikes are knocked over, the garbage-collection mechanism gets jammed, loud music is blasted at 2:00 AM. It adds some variety to life here!
Sunday morning is always nice and quiet after the weekend partying. I’ve become quite the novelty at the church I attend here, the Koorkerk. Just like home, it’s a lot of old folks and a few young like myself. Their first question is always if I understand Dutch, which I don’t. But I can follow what’s going on, and it’s a great way to learn more! I feel welcomed by everyone, and the pastor has invited me to get coffee sometime next week.
A guy, whose name I know how to say but not spell, told me he was glad to see that I chose the liberal congregation. “We call the orthodox congregations zwartebroek, black-trousers.” he told me. From what I’ve heard about the Dutch Reformed Church, I chose my congregation wisely! I’m also invited to coffee at his house later this week.
By chance, he lives out at the Ter Hooge estate where I often walk in the old groundskeeper’s house. After all the rain, the ditches there are full to just a few centimeters below the top. High ground has become mud, and low ground is underwater. I found that out the hard way on one of my strolls, and returned with wet feet. Regardless, I bought a pumpkin to roast at a nearby farmstand and rode home with high spirits.
Meanwhile, in the Green Office, which is responsible for the student gardens of HZ, I’m set to become the next Middelburg group coordinator. Big shoes to fill, and I have big feet for it! Along with this position comes an hourly pay of 2.50 euros, not much but if I’m being paid to garden and clean up litter, I’ll take it!
The can-hunting has been particularly good as of late. After getting to know the area for two months, I know where to consistently find a good haul. Like a trapper checking his line, if you will. I figure that I’ve handled more beer cans and juice bottles in the last month than anyone except the shelf-stockers at Albert Heijn. The all-time total stands at around 35 euros in earnings from cashing them in.
And that’s all I can recall from the last week of life here in Zeeland. As always, your questions are welcome, and please share these letters with whoever might be interested. Thank you for reading!
Have a great day/een fijne dag verder,
Aaron
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10/30/23
Hi everyone,
While in the library the other day, I happened upon an unusual magazine in the reading area. It was Het Weer, “The Weather” and their front-page advertised: “Storm Poly: TYPISCHE KANAALRAT”. Curious, I looked into the title: a canal rat (or channel rat, depending on the translation) is slang for an unexpected and insidious storm that forms in the English Channel. I had a laugh at this, only the Dutch would have such problems with rats and surprise windstorms!
The same day, I was bamboozled by the check-out process. In every library I’ve ever gotten books from, you take your haul up to the counter and the librarian scans them and your card into the system. Here things are different. “What do you want?” the librarian said to me in a flat voice when I appeared. This is a textbook example of “Dutch Directness”. It’s a self-checkout system here, exactly like the ones in supermarkets, and it was explained to me in excruciating detail. The librarians chuckled at the old-fashioned American system and sent me on my way with Amor Towles’ A Gentleman In Moscow.
A new addition to my pantry has been yeast, which I finally found in a jar and not in packets. So, to test my baking skills, I set about making cardamom bread with dried figs. For an hour the kitchen was an absolute warzone! In hindsight a half batch would have been better, since my oven only has about three inches of clearance and this loaf was titanic. It was rather crude-looking, with the dough on the wet side and too much of it, but it baked well and was very scrumptious. A high-work, high-reward afternoon. This is only the beginning!
The bread received critical acclaim from my roommate Emil, whom I haven’t elaborated on for a while. He’s from Lithuania, and studies Computer Science at the HZ. As such, he’s stoic and keeps mostly to himself, but after living with him for two months he’s a nice guy at heart. The unspoken agreement is that we alternate cooking meals, and that I buy fruits and vegetables and he buys staples. As I’ve mentioned before, I won the roommate lottery!
Outside the HZ building there’s been some serious construction. Workers have been replacing the gray brick bike lot with, that’s right, another gray brick lot. My colleagues down at the Green Office have been petitioning to allow a corner to remain unpaved, so that a student garden might be planted there. (it’s south-facing and sheltered from the wind, the spot is perfect!) With the state of things, I’m afraid to say this looks unlikely.
On Saturday night was the Nacht van de Nacht, a sort of city-wide open house and street fair. All nonessential lights were turned off, in theory to enjoy the stars and full moon by firelight. But clouds quickly put an end to that. Regardless, I wandered through a myriad of dancers, fire-eaters, concerts, and stroopwafel stands. It was quite the party until the rain started! I found refuge in the Hans Lipperhey museum, whose namesake Middelburger invented a telescope in 1608. I wandered into a lecture on comets but called it a night when the place got too crowded. Walking back, I was reminded of how 40 degrees with rain feels colder than 0 with sun!
So, that has been the highlight of my studies here recently. I suppose that I didn’t mention any actual studying, which occupies most weekdays in the library. Exams are coming up, so wish me luck! Your questions are always welcome, and have a great week!
Cordially/van harte,
Aaron
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