A Night In Emmen

One of the things we were very much looking forward to on this first leg of our trip was to see Luit and Marian, a wonderful couple we met while on our honeymoon in Vietnam back in 2001. They live in Emmen, a small city northeast of Amsterdam, and we planned to take a train out to see them and spend a night up there. It turned out to be a fantastic evening.

The train ride out was very nice, the countryside here green and full of fat and happy cows and horses, canals separating one pasture from the next, the brick houses enveloped in fog and mist, a gorgeous pastoral. We got there without a hitch (nice to feel like we know what we're doing), and they picked us up at the train station. They were exactly as we remembered, she very tall and blonde and stunning, the archetypal Dutch girl, and he also very tall, head shaven, rectangular spectacles. They drove us to their house in the vacation-home area of town, a gorgeous bungalow that was done very modern inside, a sprawling Japanese garden in the backyard that they'd just made the year before. Fantastic place. We sat down in their living room and started talking and drinking coffee and looking at photos and talking some more, having a very nice time.

Luit is an artist, a painter (representing the movement of Toysim, a Dutch manifesto-based art movement that has about 6 active participants right now), and he currently has a show hanging in San Antonio, TX, which is apparently going very well. We talked about art and our respective cultures and political situations (SSOOOOO much to talk about there!) and coffee turned to beer turned to wine and cheese and sausage and we were looking at paintings and talking about everything under the sun.

Marian had been preparing dinner for all that day and part of the preceding day, and it turned out to be just perfect, a multi-course affair from different sections of SE Asia. We started with spring rolls and a peanut soup with veggies and chicken which was better than any similar thing I've eaten. After that, we had fish done in garlic and ginger, reminding us very much of our visit to Hoi An in Vietnam, served with rice, and followed by a Thai curry of chicken and green beans, just fantastic. Dessert was this brilliant dome of chocolate cake, hollowed out and filled with ice cream. Wow. These Dutchies are trying to fatten us up, some sort of Hansel and Gretl plot, I'm sure.

After dinner we talked and talked some more, and by the time we made our way to bed we had been at the eating and drinking and talking for a good 12 hours. We loved every minute of it.

The next day we strolled through Emmen proper, taking a look at Luit's studio, seeing from the outside the biggest zoo in Europe, and talking over a couple coffees. They were on their way to Marian's parents' home for Sinterklaas, so they dropped us at the train station and said good-bye (3 kisses on the cheek, one then the other then the other again, in the Dutch style, which I love) and they left. Very nice time.

Side note: This Sinterklaas thing is a very strange turn on Santa Claus. Sinterklaas comes in from Spain on a boat, some time in November, and then he travels the Netherlands for the next few weeks, accompanied by his Zwarte Pieters (Black Peters), a group of helpers, made up in black face, who shimmy down chimneys and either leave gifts or take nasty children away and back to Spain with them. They leave carrots in their shoes the night before, for Sinterklaas's horse, much like our plates of cookies. It's all very similar, except that it happens on 12/5, and somehow I think the Black Peters would not fly in the U.S., and that our elves let us feel better about the servant's role they play. Very funny to see, walking the streets of Amsterdam, the occasional actor done up in black face, in some sort of Shakespearean garb, acting the part of Black Peter. We saw a few stumble out of a pub, quite drunk and happy.

Also, Sinterklaas and Christmas are separate, the former being about the exchange of gifts, and the latter being about--imagine this--the actual religious holiday. The two are distinct, the one not polluting the other, which seems to me a great idea.