Old Zeeland

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This entry is more of an update to the last one, because we're still here. The main differences between today and the last piece go something like this.
Lindo was offered another gig, making it 3 on the trot, on Saturday night.
It snowed.
Then the sun came out.
We went on a road trip to Zeeland and saw the zee.

The gig was at a little rockabilly festival that happens every year here. Apparently a German band had been booked but while driving to Nijmegan they broke down at Frankfurt, and cancelled. Now this is a story I find a little hard to believe. If this band was comprised of Germans, which I have no reason to doubt, then how on earth could they have broken down? Their vechile would have been in perfect working order (not to mention the timing being right on the beat) and they would have had a plan b. Lindo reckoned they stopped for some gas or something, met some beautiful Frankfurt Fraulines and couldn't get back on the road again.
Anyway, so one of the people organising the festival had met Lindo the other night after the birthday party gig (the one that involved getting 28) and he called Marit, one of our hosts, and got hold of Mr Puffin. This happened at about 6 in the evening and by 7;30 we were down at this cool little communal artist complex with a bar doing a quick soundceck. This is also how we roll!

Lindos set this time was fortunately broken string free. However there was an awful lot of sweating involved, so by the last song, which was a rolled up sleeves version of Born To Run, his white tee shirt was virtually see through. If someone threw a bucket of water on him I didn't see it. Maybe my sight lines were blocked by all the really tall women in the audience. I asked Marit there was a netball team in or something but she seemed unfazed and so that's how I found out that, apparently, Dutch women are the tallest in the world.

Later on that night the elememts gave us the opportunity to experience Northern Hemisphere snow. Fortunately I was asleep when it happened, in a centrally heated room, and so I declined to participate. However, when I awoke, at about 8am, I could see that the weather had been particularly frisky indeed, and while most of it had melted already, there was at least a couple of centimetres lying around on the cars parked in the street. That was all the encouragement I needed to go straight back to sleep for another couple hours and dream of Indian summers back home.
So, just as things couldn't get any less springlike, the grey skies cleared and we saw the sun properly for the first time in almost 2 weeks. This made taking a small road trip out to the province of Zeeland an attractive proposition. Not only could we get to see some countryside and a windmill or two, but we could visit the place where New Zealand gets it's name from, and see if we could figure out why you would name a rugged, mountainous land in the South Pacific after a flat, below sea level delta in the North Sea. After seeing parts of Zeeland, I'm still wondering why. Perhaps Abel Tasman didn't like it very much, and named our country after his least favourite province as a bit of a joke, kind of like how the Norse people called a large island of ice Greenland.
I dutifully dipped my finger in the sea and tasted it and apart from almost immediately giving me frostbite, it wasn't all that salty.

We will be boarding a high speed train very shortly which is going to take us to the Mediterrainian and temperatures closer to 20 degrees. This is good, as it means I can dispense with my solitary thermal, which has been getting a good outing these last couple of weeks, and in need of a well earned wash...

keeping it real

Olza

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Comments

[Lea]

Zee-Land
I think we forgot to mention that there is also a little town called Zeeland, just a few kilometres outside Nijmegen ;)