Wine on the Rhine

Our friends Mike and Meredith bought a house with a cellar and decided they needed to buy some wine to fill it so they invited us along as traveling companions/translators on a day trip to the German Riesling vineyards on the Rhine. The wine in this region has improved in quality faster than in reputation so you can buy quite a decent Riesling for €8 a bottle (which thanks to Brexit is now the same as $8).

Rieslings are categorized by the amount of sugar in the bottle and the ones we saw ranged from 5 g/L (trocken) to 200 g/L (beerenauslese). I liked the halbtrokcken and feinherb, which have sugar levels in the teens, the best.

Lunch with a view of the Rhine and vineyards. Hendrik at the Lorelei rock.

A delightfully Dutch delivery

I came home from work last Wednesday and checked the mail as usual. We live in a large apartment building so there is a block of mail boxes by the door on the ground floor. I was surprised to find no mail but instead a small plastic baggie with fluffy, dry, green contents. Confused and somewhat in a hurry, I asked myself, “what would I do if I got someone else’s package?” The answer was just leave it on top of the mailboxes where they could find it, so I did. I had a work dinner that evening so I asked my Dutch colleague what I should have done. His answer: uh, smoke it? He also said it was the most Dutch thing that could have happened to me. When I got home from dinner, the baggie was gone. The only lasting effect is that our mail smells a bit pungent. Hopefully their supplier gets the right mail box next time.

Ice cream and rain

Here we are, eating ice cream in the rain on the longest day of the year. Because we live in Northern Europe.

-Hendrik

Umbrella Superstition

We learned a bit of Dutch umbrella lore at our Dutch lesson yesterday. Apparently it is considered bad luck to open an umbrella indoors. Too bad there isn’t a cute saying to go with this superstition.

Rabarber

After I bought far too many strawberries (in northern Europe, strawberry season is one of the most important religious events, along with asparagus season), we decided to bake strawberry rhubarb (rabarber) pies for a week’s worth of breakfast:

We’re constantly impressed with our little combi microwave and oven. When we first got here, we wouldn’t have believed one could make pies in that thing. Now time to eat more pie.

-Hendrik

Dutch Spices

Every time we need to buy new spices (or find them in the spice cabinet) for cooking, figuring out the translation is an adventure. Most recently: tarragon = dragon (or sometimes slangenkruid, literally snake herb).

Here are a few other fun ones:
Kerrie = curry
Basilicum  = basil
Rozemarijn  = rosemary
Gember = ginger
Uien = onions
Knoflook = garlic

The easiest one is:
Tijm = thyme (same pronunciation)

The funniest part is the word for powder is poeder (pronounced poo-der).

Dutch Dentists

We had our dental check-ups and cleanings today with our favorite Dutch dentist (tandarts). It really isn’t all that different from going to the dentist in the US except the dentist does the cleaning himself. Also it is a lot faster but it feels just as thorough.

Visitors and thunderstorms

Our friends Michael and Lizzie visited us in Maastricht last weekend:

as part of their tour of western Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. This coincided with (ongoing) incredible rain and thunderstorms blowing through the region. This has caused flooding elsewhere in Europe, but seeing rain was a welcome change for our friends from California.

We’re now busily planning a summer full of yet more traveling.

-Hendrik