Zeeland cuisine

After a generous amount of playing time in the modern city hall tower of Vlissingen, we returned to the Roosevelt Academy, and from there I took a quiet alleyway towards the market. And just like in the movies, distant accordion music swelled to full blast as I came from the quiet alley into the bustling Friday market. My first purchase was a small slice of basil-garlic cheese. Thinking it'd last me the whole week, I ended up nearly finishing it off in a few minutes. Next, I bought a packet of assorted island poppy seeds (after an entire year of searching in Belgium) that I'll bring home with me, reversing my original plan to grow California poppies in Belgium--both of which are probably forbidden by customs.

Best of all, I found the black A-line summer dress I had been actively seeking for an entire week...in the first market stand I've ever seen in the Low Countries selling clothes I'd wear! The dress is unfortunately tainted with a white pattern and not of quality manufacture, but for 20 € and after so many hours of searching, I can't complain.

As if things couldn't get any better, I bought raw herring and smoked eel sandwiches, thinking I could finish both as they looked quite small. Now I have the eel sandwich waiting in the fridge. Man is that stuff delicious!!! Way better than the filets I was buying at HEMA. Even the woman selling some sort of special Zeeland caramels exclaimed "Lekker!" when she saw me toting two plates of fishy things, and the repair guy hanging around the Bagignhof wished me "Smakelijk!" When I left the house again to practice, he and his buddy were still seated in the lawn chairs in the same direction, and exclaimed "Bye!" in unison when I waved at them.

How is the food so good here? Chiaki says the restaurants serve much more interesting food than they do around Amersfoort. It must be the proximity to Flanders. This is the Burgundian Netherlands, after all. Not the super-Calvinist north.

The most difficult belltower staircase I have ever navigated is officially that of the former Town Hall of Veere. Veere is an incredibly charming seaside village that never even filled its city walls or its grand church, which Napoleon later wrecked and renovated as a hospital. (It's now a museum... amazing the fates that befall churches.) The automatic drum is connected to the carillon via an incredibly complex and lengthy--to the point of being slightly hilarious--broek system. The Van den Gheyn carillon itself is very fine, and the view from the tower splendid. Even the pistachio soft ice on a cone was the best I've had so far this summer, with the ice cream going all the way to the bottom of the cone so one doesn't have to choke on dry cone--or feed it to the dog, as Bauke suggested.

Bauke is very tall and perhaps that's why he plays so high... but he's damn good. I need more carillon classmates like him. Although I guess I'll get my fill of formidable classmates in the Eastman organ department.

Unfortunately we had a little run-in with another car in Middelburg. All the passengers saw the truck, but none of us reacted in time to say a word! I feel rather bad about it, but at the same time the resultant dents hardly compare to the damage done and experienced firsthand last November.

Besides that unpleasant experience, I realize now that I have somehow managed to combine study with vacation. I wish life was always this way.