Sojourn in the Netherlands

Two weeks in the Netherlands*, my lucky break this year. "How come, Maria?" I was often asked, as if it isn't common to travel abroad for work purposes. The short version of the story goes something like this: It was being increasingly noticed by various people that I have special skills, which were deemed useful enough and good value for the money I would be paid, so that I could be borrowed for a short period of time from my Greek work space by another EU member state. I spent two weeks based in Leiden from the last week of July to the first week of August.

On arrival at Schiphol Airport, I noticed my hosts were wearing coats, stuff we cast aside in Crete sometime in May, and don't use again until September. Cool, I thought, no more roasting in my own skin. My family was most jealous of this aspect of my working holiday. After settling into the hotel (a room of my own! no cooking - or even cleaning! - for the next two weeks!) and tucking into a lunch snack of satay, I visited my new work environment, which my boss explained was a short two-stop bus ride from the hotel (something like €2.20 return). "Can't I walk?" I asked. I was 'warned' that it was a 15-minute walk. Walking in Holland (which is not the same thing as saying 'The Netherlands' - there is an important difference: click here) is a breeze: cool weather, no hills, clearly marked paved roads linking the whole country seamlessly. (Pavements in Hania often come to an abrupt end, leaving you wondering where to walk, when there is clearly plenty of land ahead of you.) Being holiday time, the traffic was light, and there were fewer walkers and cyclists on the road, which meant that I often felt I had the whole place to myself. It sometimes rained when I was on the road, but if you are Cretan, you will find such Dutch summer weather very refreshing.

My work environment was a very peaceful one. You would not have suspected that there could be ten people working in the half dozen rooms of our office space in the Van Steenis building. Again, it may have had something to do with summertime; the university cafes and restaurants were closed, for instance. But generally, people don't create a lot of noise while they're working. They keep their voices very low. Even laughter is 'contained'.  It helped that my boss liked peace and quiet enough to make sure the environment was always as peaceful as a library. It made my Greek work environment sound more like a 'laiki agora'. (Είμαστε για κλάματα 😂 )

Office hours were not as rigid as I had initially feared. The people I worked with were mainly PhD students and professors, so work hours are more fluid. But there was a tacit agreement that hours must be put in, so a physical presence of at least 6-7 hours was required by all concerned; in other words, not much different to how we work in my own environment. The boss liked to see this kind of self-discipline in his team, and he expressed his appreciation. Some people happily stayed on until the building's guard came round to throw them out (at 11pm). They were mainly the ones that were feeling the pressure of needing to finish their PhD soon. Remembering my own study years, I suspect there are also other good reasons for staying on in the office: it's warm in the winter, the coffee is free, there are cooking facilities (microwave), and in this way, you can reduce your expenses in many ways. Student life is not cheap in our times. 

My new work routine entailed a fresh start with a huge hotel breakfast where I could also make a sandwich for lunch, which proved quite useful because, as I mentioned earlier, most food outlets in the Leiden University campus area were closed for the summer. After freshening up, it was time for a brisk walk, taking a new route as often as I could, before arriving at the office by 8.30am. I took advantage of the long daylight hours (the sun rose at about 5.30am) to see as much of the area as I could (urban, suburban, forest, recreational). I mostly left the office some time around 5.30pm, making my office hours in Leiden possibly the longest that I have ever worked; this mainly had to do with the project we were working on and the time pressure (we had two weeks to complete it - and we did). I also liked to come into the office early, before we began the project work, because I was able to finish some of my online Greek tasks (meaning that I had caught up with most of my Greek work by the time I returned home). During the day, there was also an obligatory coffee/lunch break. This was deemed very important by my boss because it meant we could catch up on non-work news. So the work day was broken into 'parts', and I still had plenty of time after work to do some exploring because it got dark just before 10pm. (Imagine the trip taking place in the winter - I'd be leaving for work and returning to the hotel in the dark, and it would have been quite cold.)  

One thing that surprises me was that no one actually left the indoor office space during the working day. So they didn't go out for 'fresh air' (not even on the day we were in the office from 8.30am to 8.30pm to meet our deadline) and they had no contact with the world outside the office, apart from the views from the office windows. If they smoked, they would have had to go outside. But smoking is definitely frowned on in the Netherlands and this is probably why I never saw any of my colleagues smoking. In the Netherlands, you get the feeling that smokers should not even be seen. For those who desperately need a cigarette (or is it a joint?), 'drop pits' are strategically placed outside buildings and many public outdoor spaces have 'rookzone' cubicles. Not that everyone obeyed such smoking 'laws' - cigarette stubs are found on the road (as are laughing gas canisters), and I saw people smoking right outside the rookzone. It is said that laws are made to be broken, but these ones in particular are just too easy to break: they make smokers look like pests (which is probably how most non-smokers regard them anyway), which probably has some backfire effect.   

I was based in a spacious room that was filled in a highly organised manner with very old books and journal articles on anthropological/ethnoscientific matters, most of which had been saved from destruction in the second world war. Some of the material contained in the room required the wearing of gloves and masks in order to use them. In the middle of the room were three large antique tables which were salvaged when another department wanted to renovate its installations and decided to throw them out. My boss asked to take them; to get them into our work space, the partitions of the office walls needed to be removed and put up again. A fair bit of recycling took place in the process. I felt very privileged to work in this room, especially when another professor asked me why I was placed here! It just seemed to be the most convenient room for the trio that made up our team to get the work done. 

My Dutch boss is a professor who had been born in a concentration camp during WW2 when Indonesia was under Japanese rule. He returned to the Netherlands with his parents in his early teens but due to his work interests, he has maintained long-term contact with Indonesia. One of the most memorable things I heard from him was that whenever he visits Indonesia, which is quite often, he always feels like a stranger in the midst, even though he speaks the language fluently, has an Indonesian wife, and is well known and highly respected: "The white English-speaking man enjoys unfair advantages wherever he goes," he told me. Together with the professor, I also worked closely with an Indonesian university lecturer. Every day we worked on our project together, and every day we measured our progress. We agreed on many things, and when we didn't agree, we still managed to work out an amicable functional solution: it's a Dutch quality to be very open-minded and to explore alternatives. So in essence, a mix of four cultures cooperated on the project: I had clearly brought in a double dose with my very Greek looks and my very native English accent. I was constantly asked about that. For some reason, it made a very clear impression on people. They were always wondering: "Which part of the English speaking world does she come from?" And generally speaking, it often came as a surprise to them that I would call myself Greek. I can't work that one out exactly; it may have to do with the unfair advantage that the professor had mentioned earlier. 

My team shared many qualities, among which I would include a cooperative spirit, a hard working nature, a disciplined work regime, and a rare highly prized human trait: humility. Some of the most influential people in my life were very humble. The supervisor of my Master thesis would tell me never to use university degree abbreviations after my name because it would detach me from the people I would be involved with in my research work. The point was not to use our privileged background as a way to open doors. Likewise, my uneducated mother who was very proud of her university educated children never let me hide behind my degrees. She never praised me about this in front of friends and relatives: 'It doesn't make you a better person than the rest of us', she would often remind me. She was aware that as a family, we didn't actually have any connection with university educated people, and her anxiety probably had to do with the fear of her children losing contact with the world she had brought us up in. So in my family we never bragged about being highly educated. When I mentioned this to my Dutch boss, he told me I was also a humble person, which I found to be a humbling experience - until I realised that our team all shared ths trait, and it is probably what made the team successful. It was a source of pride for me to be included in the company of such people.

It rained almost every day I was in the Netherlands, with cloudy grey ominous skies to match, but being summertime, it wasn't really cold. I had packed clothes I would normally wear in Crete in spring. The rain did not bother me, as anyone in Greece during the summer would tell you. Water is life, and the Dutch clouds are quite spectacular to look at, especially in combination with a view of a windmill. (In contrast, the burning Greek summer heat is hell. The average Greek will agree with me: most of us are very tired of the heat by now.) The way that the Dutch constantly battle with water against all odds probably explains their progressive outlook, and the way they embrace the future and the technological advancements it brings. The past is a history lesson for them, not a way of life (like it is in Greece, where people still fear losing their past, something that cannot be lost in the first place).

Food was an interesting concept in the Netherlands. You could eat all kinds of food you wanted to eat. But food in the Netherlands is not just for eating: food is business. The Netherlands is so highly urbanised that it is nearly impossible to 'grow/raise your own' food. Business provides you with food both to sustain you and for your pleasure. It's rare to hear someone say - like we often hear in Crete - that they were given food grown directly by a friend/relative. Everything you eat comes from a shop. In essence, you can only know about the origin/contents of your food if it is labelled. This raises the question of whether you trust food labels, which, increasingly, we find we cannott. But we have to eat to survive, so we will buy and eat food whether we trust the source or not. As an example of this, the Dutch egg scare broke out while I was in the Netherlands. My friend texted me over breakfast: "Don't eat the eggs!" As I left the breakfast room, I noticed an egg picture on the first page of the morning newspaper. And when I went to work, my boss also told us not to eat any eggs until the end of the week. Never mind the eggs you have already eaten, or avoiding whole eggs which is easy; but what about egg as an ingredient? It goes into so many ready-to-eat foods which have been prepared a long time ago: mayonnaise and mustard, cakes and biscuits, processed meat products and ready-to-eat meals. The whole country must have already ingested toxic eggs in some form well before they were warned about the batches which had the toxic substance (fipronil) identified in them. This kind of problem shows the hazards of leaving all food production to business; in a highly urbanised society, it is unavoidable anyway.

I didn't really miss any food from Greece while I was in the Netherlands, except perhaps our evening summer meal of watermelon, paximadi and mizithra, and mainly for sentimental reasons.  I could eat anything I wanted in the Netherlands. The hotel breakfast was based on international hotel food and included Dutch treats like poffertjes, hagelslag, ginger cake, and raisin bread. For lunch, I bought something from the supermarket which could be eaten at room temperature or heated in the microwave oven in the common room of my work space. (In my Greek work environment, we have fresh warm meals and salads, all cooked by a resident chef, who also cooks for dormitory residents and conference attendees). I found supermarket food democratically cheap enough for all pockets, and there was a wide range of prepared foods to choose from - but not necessarily very tasty; it had a certain 'sameness' about it. Not being able to prepare food in the hotel (I didn't have a kitchenette or even a fridge), I wasn't able to keep food in the room for too long, so a lot of my food was heavily packaged. I was quite surprised by the lack of recycling facilities in both the office and the hotel. Greeks are often berated for our lower level of recycling in general - I didn't expect to encounter a lack of easy recycling options in a highly urbanised north European country; I thought this kind of thing would be a priority here. I think it's safe to assume that 100% recycling is not really happening anywhere in the world.

I enjoyed tasting whatever took my fancy as I exploring the town, like frites (€2.50), 'kapsalon' (€3.50) and Thai takeaways (€8). The most memorable weekday meal I had was after a visit to Leiden's Burcht: a meal of mussels at a restaurant right in front of the castle steps (€27.50 with wine). I was also treated to a home-cooked meal at Den Haag, where we ate on a rooftop, it being such a lovely warm evening. Every Friday in the late afternoon, our department had a communal meal (highly unusual in this kind of work environment, or so I'm told), with contributions by all members of the department, including wine. I got to taste a lot of Indonesian delicacies here. I always carry Cretan specialties (mizithra, paximadi, olive oil) with me when travelling, so I was also able to take part in preparing something for this meal. My weekend meals were had in various parts of North Holland: fish tapas in Hoorn, Chinese stir fries cooked by a friend in Bergen, 'bitterballen' for a lunch snack at Alkmaar, dim sum in Rotterdam, tuna melt by the North Sea at Egmund ann Zee. This really was a working holiday for me, as I made the most of my new surroundings.

Dutch hospitality is not the same as Greek hospitality, but it is a great form of hospitality nonetheless. The Dutch are an incredibly well informed race, and everyone speaks English. So when you ask for information, the Dutch will share it with attention to detail, and always with a smile. They aren't snobs, and see you as their equal. They like 'direct' talk. They also believe that they are a fair society. They celebrate diversity and for this reason, they treasure assimilation - in the Dutch people's eyes, we are all subject to the same rules. I felt quite safe in my new surroundings. Privacy and personal spaces are well respected in the Netherlands, as are cleanliness and tidiness. Working towards the common good is of greater priority than personal interests; this cannot be said for all societies. Last but not least, it was quite surprising for me to discover that the Dutch are quite family-oriented, something not always associated with highly Westernised societies.

Flat spotless Holland and hilly dusty Crete could not be more opposite to each other. The landscape makes you in some way: the Dutch live in a highly interconnected small densely populated country, in contrast to a sparsely populated Greece with highly concentrated populations in only a few major urban centres. The Netherlands are only slightly larger than the Peloponnese, yet the population is more than one-and-a-half times that of Greece. Grassy, cloudy summertime Holland stands starkly against brown-dry, blue-skied Crete. But the starkest difference would have to be the peace and quiet of a country where law and order are regarded as a sign of civility and highly regulated. If you're Greek, the concept of a quiet peaceful coastal road in summertime is stuff made of dreams. Cars and motorbikes screech past you, horns honk at the drop of a hat, people shout at each other, the neighbours' hens cackle all hours of the day, children's cries fill the streets in summer (even Dutch kids sounded 'quiet!), dogs (both homed and homeless) can be heard barking even in the wee hours of the morning, and cicadas chirp well until the late evening. You also have to put up with everyone's different tastes in open-air music. Greece is a very noisy society. This made me wonder: how do northern European tourists tolerate us given that they are used to such quiet surroundings? One answer could lie in the old adage that opposites attract. Then again, maybe things are peaceful up there now, because half the population is on holiday - in Southern Europe!

*Sorry, no photos, because it takes ages to upload them! I have posted some on facebook if you care to see them.

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Clogs (Τσόκαρα)

When I was in Holland, I visited an open-air windmill museum in Zaanse Schans. One of the windmills was being used to show the history of the clog, and there was a display in the windmill of how clogs were made. Dutch clogs look kind of strange, and I didn't think anyone would wear them now, as they look so dated, stemming back from a time when people had less and didn't have access to much else - until I saw an older-looking gent wearing a pair of bright yellow clogs as he was riding his bike in a quiet suburb of a Dutch town in the north.


When I decided to buy a pair of clogs (in the Swedish style and not the Dutch, even though they are made in Holland, because I'd really stand out if I ever chose to wear the latter in Crete), my husband thought I was mad. But they suit my kind of lifestyle - I only wear shoes when I have to, and if I can slip them on and off easily, all the better. I was given instructions at the clog windmill as to how to wear them "Always with a thick pair of socks, so they don't cause you any discomfort."

I began wearing my clogs in Hania in late autumn. I noticed that they made a lot of noise as I walked on the bare tiles of the floor, but I only put them on just before I was ready to leave the house. They were relatively quiet on the carpeted areas. But still, they did not pass by unnoticed. I wore them yesterday as I was taking a piece of moussaka to yiayia (which we cooked in the wood-fired heater). She looked down at my feet and said "So it's you who's been wearing tsokara!"

"Oops," I started apologetically. Yiayia lives downstairs from us, so I was obviously making quite a clatter as I walked about the house in them. "I  didn't realise they were that loud, mama, sorry."

"I haven't heard that noise in years," she continued, as if she hadn't heard me. "They were the only shoes we had when I was a young girl, and throughout the war years. Our fathers would hew them out of wood, and nail a piece of leather on top for your feet. Most people didn't actually have any shoes at all, so I was very lucky that my father had made me a pair. And my mother never let me wear them without socks, unlike other children, whose feet were always looking red and sore, because they had no socks to wear with their clogs. And they had no other shoes, so if they didn't wear them, then they'd have to go barefoot. So many children had dirty feet in those days."

"They must have been useful in the fields, mama," I said, hoping to coax her memory to tell me more.

"Well, they never got left stuck in the mud, but if you were walking on the flat road, you often tripped because they were quite slippery. They needed a bit of rubber on the sole, but we didn't have anything, especially when the war broke out. We had nothing, not even any food. And I walked in those clogs without socks to the neighbouring village where we took refuge with another family. By the time we got there, my legs were so red and sore that my ankles had swelled and I collapsed."

Although she went through a terrible ordeal during WW2, she still has the courage to talk about it. Even though she says she'd like to forget those times, it seems that in her older age (my mother-in-law is 88), she remembers those days even more clearly. 

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Bami goreng (Ινδονέζικα νούντλς)

Food can be cheap, but it never needs to be as boring as something out of a packet.

Just add boiling water and oil and Serves 2, the wording stated on the packet of the VITASIA Bami Goreng Stir-Fry Noodles (which, coincidentally, cost more than twice as much as what is shown in the photo - the one-time offer took place at LIDL in Greece at the same time as in Holland and Belgium). Sounds good, I thought to myself, taken in by the exotic-looking photograph. I bought two packets (Produced in Switzerland) and decided to prepare them for that night's evening meal.

This didn't happen as I discovered my husband preparing a big tomato salad, swimming in oodles of olive oil and decorated with slices of pungent onion and aromatic pepper. The air was redolent with the aroma of crusty bread slices. The table was already laid, centred by a plate of feta cheese. I put aside the noodles and forgot about them until only just recently when the weather had cooled down and we had begun to run out of tomatoes. I decided to prepare one of the packets for a quick fix meal.

The food in the bowl looks almost like the photo on the packet - all except the vegetables. The complete meal packet did not even fill a whole soup bowl!

The instructions on the back of the packet stated that approximately 10 minutes were needed to prepare the whole meal (less than the time needed to prepare the recipes in JO's latest collection). Instead of a wok, I used a saucepan. As I tipped the finished meal into a serving dish, I realised the whole meal looked enough for one, not two meals. It was closer to a snack than a meal. The appearance of the cooked food (80% noodles, as stated on the packet) had lost its exotic appeal, possibly due to the cooking speed. The finely processed vegetables (6.4% of the total meal) resembled lifeless papery fragments - bits of dried orange peel instead of carrots, limp rotted grass for mushrooms, camouflaged slivers of onions and Savoy cabbage - temporarily revived by the warmth of the liquids, with a buzz of radiance provided by the oil. Only the celery seemed to remind me of its fresh self.

I knew I could have prepared a more appetising version of this meal if I had devoted just a little more time than I needed to cook it straight from the packet. Most of the ingredients listed are staples even in an urban kitchen (eg pasta, onion, garlic) while most are cheap to buy. They are also the kind that we normally keep in the fridge anyway (carrot, leek, tomato). Recipes on the internet for bami goreng (apparently a very popular dish in Holland from their Indonesian influence) make the dish sound very easy to prepare. I used the noodles from the second packet that I had bought in conjunction with one of those recipes, to prepare a more colourful and much more enticing meal (not just a snack) for the whole family.

Instead of ham and shrimp, I used smoked Cretan pork, and went easy on the coriander. Ground ginger was replaced by fresh and sambal oelek is now seen regularly on supermarket shelves marked 'tastes from abroad'. This is influenced possibly by the source of imported foods for each supermarket chain: AB Vasilopoulos, for instance, relies on DelHaize, a Belgian importer. 

Bonus trivia: The nutritional value of 100g of the packaged contents amounted to 169 calories. Each packet weighed 125g net, ie 211 calories per packet. Only water and oil are added in the cooking process. Water is calorie-less, while olive oil contains approximately 120 calories per tablespoon; the whole meal therefore contained approximately 450 calories. If the meal were divided into 2 servings, that's about 225 calories per serving. The average recommended daily calorie intake is 1940 for women and 2550 for men. If the meal is meant to serve 2, it would have to be supplemented by other foods to constitute a complete meal. A small steak (or juicy sausage) on the side would have complemented it quite nicely!

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Zaanse Schans (Ζάνσε Σχανς)

During our recent travels in Holland, we visited Zaanse Schans, a small village a few kilometres out of Amsterdam. A lot has been written about Zaanse Schans, and all of it good. Zaanse Schans is considered to be an open-air museum, but I also found it to be a functional permanent residential area. Given its proximity to the capital of the Netherlands, it's easy to access. Most of the jobs there are concerned with tourism, but even most of those jobs are connected with a trade that is still important today in Holland, making Zaanse Schans a sustainable tourism site. It's really easy to spend the whole day at Zaanse Schans, because there is so much to see and do, and most of it is free. You won't get tired either - Dutch countryside is, generally speaking, as flat as a pancake, so you'll forget that you have been walking all day.

If you're a foodie, Zaanse Schans has a lot of food experiences to offer. But there was also something else about Zaanse Schans that made it so endearing: Zaanse Schans is the epitome of Dutch imagery. Windmills, clogs, canals, dykes and fluffy clouds - Zaanse Schans introduces you to the best of Holland in fairy-tale style. And if you are lucky to visit Zaanse Schans on a fine sunny day (like we were), you will never forget the colours and the clarity of those images.

 

 Windmills, water and fluffy clouds - typical Dutch scenery under a blue sky.

A train line takes you directly to the village. On exiting the station, the first thing that strikes your senses is the aroma of chocolate wafting through the air, coming from the chocolate-processing factory built by the river. The road towards the windmills (some of which were eventually transported to the 'museum' area from other parts of Holland) is full of old workers' homes, which  have been renovated by the local residents and remain true to their original style, as they were built in the 17th-18th centuries.The brightly coloured ones in traditional green and brick orange colours made a striking contrast under the fluffy white clouds and blue sky on the day we visited.

The Albert Heijn museum in Zaanse Schans

One of the first museum houses you'll come across is directly related to food. The oldest supermarket chain in Holland (Albert Heijn) has its origins here. It started off as a typical grocery store, selling bulk goods behind a counter. Further along the river, you come across renovated barns and farm houses, which now serve as sustainable tourist enterprises. My favorite was the clog makers: a brief history of the clog is provided, together with a demonstration of how to make clogs and a range of clogs to choose from if you wish to buy some. Don't think that Dutch clogs are a thing of the past - I saw a (somewhat older) gent wearing a bright yellow pair near Alkmaar as he was riding his bicycle through the town, and I'm guessing there must be more of his type too!

The clog factory

The cheese factory wasn't giving a demonstration that day, but it was one of the most popular attractions. Dutch cheese is very famous all over the world (especially Gouda cheese). It's quite different from the sharp grainy graviera made in Crete, but we found it tasty enough to buy some and take it home with us: one round of mustard-grained cheese and a roll of smoked cheese.

 The cheese factory - these are all replicas, as far as I know...

The windmills are a spectacular sight at Zaanse Schans. Not all the windmills originated in the area; some were transported there once the area was turned into a tourist site. Each one continues to be in use today, powering or grinding various things. Since they all work on natural wind energy, you need to come to Zaanse Schans on a windy day (plenty of those in Holland). Whether you will be as lucky as we were in coming on both a sunny and a windy day with no rain is not so certain. We really were very lucky!

 The spice mill was grinding cinnamon when we visited - really strong stuff!

Holland's reputation for trading spices is accentuated by the 'De Huisman' mill, which grinds all sort of spices, and enjoys fame for the mustard it produces. The famous speculoos biscuits wouldn't be anything special if it weren't for the spices that go into the them. It is ironic when something so typically Dutch as speculoos busicuits and mustard-flavoured cheese need Asian ingredients to give them their distinct taste.

 Coloured flavoured sugar snow, called muisjes, is a specialty of Dutch cuisine. 

Feeling honored by the good weather, we took in the breathtaking scenery of Zaanse Schans, which encompassed all good things Dutch. It was easy to walk such a long time without getting tired - as I said before, Holland is as flat as a pancake...

Apart from the quaint environment, I also got a glimpse of what it means to live below sea level. It's quite obvious in the photo below that the level of the sea is above the ground, and the position I took the photo from is below sea level. The dykes where the people are standing are artificial.

... Speaking of which, there aren't many restaurants within the museum area; there are more in the general village but they aren't all open all the time, quite unlike the Greek tradition of encircling a tourist site with cafes or tavernas, which is why the food is beeter (more competition). We came across a quirky (and over-priced) pancake restaurant: after placing your order via self-service, you are then given a buzzer which will beep when your pancake order is ready.

Farmer's pancake with cheese and bacon, and kiddies' delight with chocolate and cream. The restaurant also served soup and drinks. 

After waiting patiently for what seemed like a long time and hearing no beep, we simply asked for the pancakes, which were waiting for us, getting cold - system breakdown!

Zaanse Schans is a good example for Greece to base her future tourism on: organised tourist sites that offer people a look into Greece's past could include coastal areas that have been associated some time int heir past with ancient civilisation. It pays to note that the windmills in Zaanse Schans weren't all there originally - some were moved there form other parts of Holland, which allowed the area to become an open-air museum in modern times, a kind of 'little Holland' that encompassed all the images that tourists assoicate with Holland. The biggest problem I envisage in such a project would be to change the traditional mindset of the Greek people. Maybe they all need to go to Zaanse Schans to see how it could also work for them. 

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Cheap 'n' greek 'n' frugal: Potato mash (Πατάτα πουρέ)

Prices are in euro (valid in Hania). All ingredients are Greek or locally sourced; those marked with * are considered frugal here because they are cheap and/or people have their own supplies.

At the supermarket in a small town in Holland, I was astounded to see so many packets of potatoes in the fridge section. The potatoes were all ready to be cooked. No dirt, no skin, no eyes, just pure white raw potato gleaming in the packet, cut in all shapes and sizes. Similarly, in the home of my London friends, the only potatoes to be found were the bagged ready to heat and eat type.

If you peel potatoes and don't place them in water, they lose their white colour. The surface will turn a dirty grey and the potatoes will look rotten and wholly unappetising. Something must have been placed in those packagings (or the potatoes will have undergone some kind of treatment) that allows them to remain lily white.

As yet, I haven't got myself round to picking up bags of ready to cook potatoes. It doesn't sound natural or even cost-efficient. Since the Potato Movement started in Greece, the potato has dropped in price considerably. Nevertheless, Cretan supermarkets stock mainly ready to cook potatoes, some in the form of fresh boil-in-the-bag (cleaned, with their jackets, from France), as well as frozen potatoes cut as chips that are ready to fry or seasoned potato chunks that go into the oven as is. Potato mash powder is also widely available, even though potato mash is very easy to make.

I had a delicious mash flavoured with spicy horseradish mustard at the Ladywell Tavern in London, with leek and onion slivers incorporated into the mash, which I wanted to recreate in my own kitchen.

Gravy is not a Greek culinary phenomenon. My rudimentary gravy was made with a piece of leftover lamb roast, mashed into a water-and-oil mix. The sausages  

You need:
600g of potatoes (~ 0.30 cents)
1 teaspoon of mustard (optional - you can buy really good cheap Greek ones now)*
1-2 glugs of olive oil*
salt and pepper*
a few slices of crisp-fried onion*

Mustard made in GR, NL and F (left to right)

Peel the potatoes (for a cleaner whiter look to your mash; if you boil them with the jackets on, the potatoes will discolour slightly on the surface). Cut into even medium-sized chunks and place in a pot with plenty of water. Make sure there are at least 5cm of water above the top of the potatoes. Boil till tender.

When the potatoes are cooked, drain them well and place them in a bowl. Add the oil, mustard and seasonings, and blend all the ingredients with a fork till the mixture is smooth and lump-free. Finally, mix in the onion.

Bread isn't really necessary with this meal, but bread is never missing from the traditional Greek home. While in Germany, we bought some Krakow sausages (the packet contained 5 for €5.95). 

Mash can be eaten on its own, drizzled with some lemon juice and olive oil. It makes a good evening meal. My kids especially like it after they come home from their basketball sessions. As a lunch meal, it's perfect with sausages (LIDL sells good quality cheap Greek-made German-style sausages). And some more crispy fried onion (slice them in thin rounds and cook them in a frying pan with very very little olive oil, stirring constantly until they become crispy).   

Total cost of the meal for four people: about €3, together with the sausages; about 75 cents per serving.

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Dutch cuisine (Ολλανδέζικη κουζίνα)

Although it is rare to hear of a restaurant specialising in Dutch cuisine, there is a range of meals that are very representative of Dutch cuisine, despite Hollands' many culinary influences since the 16th century. While we were staying at a friend's place in the Netherlands, we got a brief introduction to home-cooked Dutch food and local pantry/fridge staples.

My friend's fondness for cooking is how we met. For our introduction to Dutch cuisine, she made a vegetable soup with tiny meatballs. What made it particularly Dutch was that it was heavily scented with finely chopped paper-thin herbs. The Dutch use these herbs a lot in their food, including in their ham and cheese products.

The soup was served with a spicy garlic Dutch butter, a product of Holland's famous dairy industry. The Dutch cheese market in Alkmaar close to where I was staying is well known internationally (it opens once a week during the warm months - alas, I was not there on that day). And the idea of the Dutch adding spices to their food is also a typical feature of Holland's cuisine,. Since the 16th century, the Netherlands was the main trader of spices throughout Europe, via the formation of the Dutch East India Trading Company in 1602, which actually controlled the spice trade between Asia and Europe for two centuries (like all empires, it eventually went bankrupt).

With so much butter and cheese, the Dutch are naturally keen on their bread too. The shape of the loaves reflects the Dutch culture of being very neat and tidy, with a uniform shape. Our friend spread us a large table full of the best of Dutch breakfast food every morning, with a range of sweet spreads for bread (like applesauce and rosehip jam) and hot drinks like cocoa and coffee (also very important Dutch trade items). She also showed us something the Dutch do with chocolate snow - they sprinkle it on buttered bread!

"I know it sounds crazy!" my friend laughed. "But when we see what other people do with chocolate sprinkles, like spreading them on cakes and muffins, we think they are crazy!"

I also got the chance to taste a quintessential Dutch semi-sweet custard with a yoghurt consistency called vla. It is available in tetrapaks in the fridge section of a supermarket. I had expressed my wish to eat rhubarb; this chard-like vegetable is not grown in Greece, and few people would understand its use here, since the leaf part isn't actually eaten, and the stem becomes a sweet. My good friends made a rhubarb crumble especially for me, and served it with vla. Apparently, vla is eaten as a pudding or afternoon snack, and over fruit. And it's very very Dutch.

While touring around Holland, always in the company of our friend who acted as a personal guide and an ambassador of her country, I had the chance to ask about the different kinds of Dutch street food, and eating in the the Dutch way. Some things we tried, while others, we just got a glimpse of, as our stomachs couldn't fit it all in. 

I like making poffertjes because it's a 'happy' kind of food - it's also a good way to introduce children to cooking; the special pan makes it much easier.

Pancakes, small and large, are popular all over Holland, and generally in Northern Europe (Britain excluded). A particular specialty of Holland is mini-pancakes called poffertje, epsecially popular as a birthday party treat and in the summer. Out of curiosity, I asked to see my friend's poffertje pan (something every Dutch person has in their home), which in her case was a very heavy cast-iron pan with moulds ready for making mini-pancakes. I bought one of them too (a more modern much lighter version!), because pancakes are popular in my own home and the poffertje tin makes them more fun to make.

Olliebollen are deep fried donuts, which I've also made at home, according to a reicpe my friend gave me; I could say my Cretan olliebollen are a very healthy version since I use only olive oil.  As you can see by the way the children are dressed, the cold was quite intense in late April. My friend kept telling me that we are very lucky not to have been caught in the rain while we were walking.

 

Doughy sweet treats are very much a part of Dutch cuisine. Special Dutch donuts, olliebollen, are made for New Year's, but they can also be bought at major Dutch tourist attractions throughout the year which also sell waffles.

Processed meat products in a bread bun are as popular in Holland as they are in most Northern European cities, but the specialty in Holland is frikandel with or without various toppings. A typical Dutch way to sell them is from an automated dispenser which we found more amusing than the frikandel itself! Our stomachs were always too full when we passed one of those, so we didn't taste the 'real' thing (we managed to scoff down a regular hot dog at a stand with the typical frikandel toppings).

Another very Dutch street food item is the fresh raw herring sold at stands that specialise in fish-based street food. Apparently, this delicacy is very good for when you are suffering from a cold with a sore throat, which are common ailments in Holland, as the weather is very cold most of the year round. The fresh raw herring is served simply as it is, with some chopped onion, which sticks to it. The eater takes the herring by the tail and eats it from the head-end first (the head is removed during the cleaning/preparation process), making sure to re-stick it with onion after each bite. I personally liked it vry much - it reminds me of own marinated sardines at home.



My friends also presented us with some food items before we left, which left us with some happy memories as we continued our trip: coffee, chocolate, biscuits, applesauce, sweets, along with some Dutch smoked and herbed cheese varieties that I picked up are all being enjoyed back home in my Mediterranean kitchen. But one of the treats didn't make it that far.



The Westfriese Broeder sweet bread - kind of like a filled flat tsoureki - kept up our strength while we were walking around Berlin. Spicy currant-fruit filled breads are a personal favorite of mine, but not so popular in Crete. This bread is going to be a bit tricky to reporoduce back in my kitchen - all the recipes are in Dutch!

I found only one aspect of food shopping a little shocking: vegetables at the supermarket are often individually vacuum-packed (remembering the golden Dutch rule of being neat, clean and tidy), and with a price per item, not by the kilo (again to do with rules of hygiene presumably). In mid-April, aubergines cost €1.29 each. It's cheaper to eat ready-prepared food than it is to cook...

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Rain (Βροχή)

In the last six years, I've been to London four times, at about the same time in the year. In mid-March of 2006, it was freezing, but the only rain we felt was a light drizzle that really didn't last long. There was even a hosepipe ban in place due to drought conditions. In early April of 2007, the weather was so mild I hardly ever wore a coat - and still no rain. In mid-March of 2010, again, no rain. But we are often led to believe that the weather in London, and the UK in general, is cold, wet and miserable.

If it's raining in Hania, the outdoor street markets will lack customers. In Lewisham, there seemed to be a steady stream of shoppers accustomed to - and well-equipped for - the wet climatic conditions.

During my most recent visit to London last month, I took with me a sleeveless jacket (body warmer) and nothing heavier than that. Not only did I freeze, but I also got very wet - this time, not only did it rain, but it was also very cold. My London relatives told me that this was in fact unusual. London had again been in the midst of drought conditions this year and although the winter was cold, it didn't rain much. Again, there was a hosepipe ban. It was our bad luck that we visited in mid-April, which is in fact the latest time in the year that we have ever been in London.

8/2/2012, Hania

Cretans aren't into rain. When it rains, they stay indoors. They get so many opportunities to enjoy the outdoor life with the island's mild climate, that it seems unnecessary to go out in the rain. The general belief is that if it's raining, it will soon stop. So if it's raining, Cretans are very likely to change their plans and stay put. But last winter, we got much more rain that we expected. The rain stayed with us throughout the autumn and winter months. This was considered a boon: rain is the best way to irrigate your winter garden and excess rain (and snow generated from the very cold weather on the mountain tops) ensures plentiful supplies of much needed water during our dry summers. Another personal boon for me was that my car remained quite clean (on the outside, anyway), and the windows were dusty less often than usual. Not only that, but the atmosphere seemed cleaner and greener most of the time. Instead of a hazy steamy misty horizon, we often had a clear view of our mountains and I could see the port of Souda so clearly from my balcony window that I could even tell which ship was in port.

30/1/2012, Hania

There was only one real side-effect of too much winter rain in our case: rainy weather in village areas creates too much mud. If your vegetable box consists of your garden, to get to it, you tend to carry a lot of mud, soil, dirt and dust in and out of the house. I would often leave the outdoor staircases dirty until the rain stopped and I was able to brush away the dried dirt. It didn't make any sense to mop them down - they would cake up with mud the next moment.

As spring neared, the rain didn't quite diminish, but it underwent a transformation: it became red. Red rain is the most detested form of rain in Crete. Cretans usually experience it before the rest of the country, although it doesn't always reach most of Greece. It is a predominantly southern condition. When the wind is blowing from the south (ie from Africa, and it is always warm) and it's raining at the same time, the raindrops are fat and thick - they are full of desert sand. And when that falls, wherever it falls, it sticks to the surface like glue. To get rid of it, the last thing you should do is try to wash it away with water, because you do more damage than good. You need to wait till the atmosphere dries up. First you brush/sweep it away, and then (if necessary), you rinse the surface. This doesn't always work for clothing - if you had your clothes drying outside on the line, you'll need to re-wash them.

Red rain is unfortunately part and parcel of spring weather in Crete. It's rarely as bad as the photo depicts - this time, it obscured my driving (that's my windscreen - more photos in the link).

Crete suffered her biggest freeze this year. I prefer the cooler weather because it allows you to keep a clear mind. Overly warm weather makes you sluggish. But even I looked forward to a drier period. The simultaneous economic and climate crisis had dampened my family's mood completely. We started to have doubts about our Northern European holiday when we were faced with London rain at the outset, which continued into Brussels. But amidst our bad luck on the first leg, we were pleasantly surprised with good weather throughout our stay in Holland and Berlin, where it remained dry and cool, so we were able to take long walks on the flat low roads of Holland without getting wet and/or sweaty. We kept our coats on and never felt too warm.

7/3/2012, the view form our house

We also noticed a huge change in our northern friends' temperament when the weather became sunny:

"Oh, look, the sun's out, we've got to leave the house NOW!" they kept saying, as soon as the skies cleared.

They would literally jump at the chance of getting out in the shinshine. We could understand their anxiety. Very often, while we were travelling by train/car/bus, we would also feel quite despondent when we saw raindrops on the window. It was just our luck that it didn't actually rain (although it did often remain quite cold) while we were outdoors.

My Dutch friends kept telling me that we were very lucky with the weather, but I reminded them that I had promised to bring some Mediterranean sunshine in my suitcase, which is what appears to have happened, although not without side-effects: the Dutch government fell the day after we arrived (with a hilarious offspin: the next day's front-page Metro newspaper headlines were discussing the inability of the Dutch politicians to decide on a date for the forthcoming elections, especially as the logical one in their case coincided with the semi-finals of the European cup).

While she accompanied us on our visit to Amsterdam, my friend asked me if I missed the mountains. The fluffy Dutch clouds, a characteristic feature of Holland's skies, made up for the lack of height in the country. The Netherlands' clouds are very different from Crete's. Ours seem to sit on top of our heads rather than hanging like a wall as they did in Holland, and they don't have the same bulk as the Dutch ones (I found them quite a wondrous sight).

This is in stark contrast to ourselves: although in Hania, the weather is warm and sunny now, after 11am, it's literally too hot to be under the sun. Our spring tourists are loving it; they are warming their chilled bones. For us, it's back to a dry and very dusty atmosphere, which is likely to continue until September. I don't think I saw any dust in my friends' homes in Northern Europe. That's an advantage of the northern climate: it keeps a clean look, and it's easier to keep things tidy.

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