NETHERLANDS SPIRIT WITH A BITTER DASH OF BELGIUM

We’ve got a bucket list the length of the 33-story building we stay in. The problem is it’s not as easy as starting at the top and ticking them off. We spoke about it earlier this week and saw ourselves as opportunistic travellers. So we jump around on that list a lot. We tick things off little by little and bit by bit. Sometimes even failing and putting it back on the list (yes, Aurora Borealis, I’m talking about you).

A tulip is my favourite flower; if chocolate came from or was a flower, it would be T’s favourite. Add to the mix a 10th wedding anniversary, and it’s a no-brainer. We jump on the opportunity when T has a conference in Rotterdam.

Castle – Kasteel De Haar

The Netherlands are a lot smaller than we anticipated. With our early start from the airport hotel, heading south to our first Airbnb, we had some time to kill. After a quick Google search and chatGPT conversation, our scenic alternative route was in motion. Along with a touristy stop for the day… Kasteel de Haar.

We’re not the museum type and would rather admire old buildings and nature from the outside. The main attraction for us is usually the gardens, but we had time. The ticket to explore the parks also included the inside, so we thought, why the heck not?

I understand that with time, the insides of historic buildings and museums accumulate the smell and feel of dust, mould and they age. Somehow Kasteel De Haar is the best preserved and maintained castle we’ve visited. Everything look’s frozen from history without “that” smell and feel.

The castle was initially constructed in the 14th century but fell into disrepair in the 18th century. It was restored and expanded by architect Pierre Cuypers between 1892 and 1912 into the glory we can admire today.

The detail of the tapestries, stained glass and furniture were out of this world. The gardens were in impeccable shape, although still not in full bloom and what I think could be spectacular due to late winter. Even the little church looked like something out of a fairytale.

Netherlands’s similarities to our Afrikaans culture

While visiting the Netherlands, we started to understand our South African (mostly Afrikaans) culture much more. We saw so many similarities, probably brought by Jan van Riebeek and his men.

Some of these similarities were

The language. So many words overlapped, and sometimes we could communicate better with the Dutch in Afrikaans than in English.
Food. My love for bread, pastries and potatoes (chips/French fries) soon became clear to me.
Religion. The Dutch settlers brought over religion, NG Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) and is today one of the largest reformed churches in South Africa.
The value of their houses. As long as I can remember, this value was constantly added to owning a house. It would be your pride and joy. Every Saturday would be spent working in or around it. The gardens are to the house like pretty wrapping is to a present. I would even go as far as to say that many measure one’s status by their house.

T and I kind of broke that “own a house” mould when we moved to Dubai. We couldn’t afford to buy a big lavish house and ended up renting an apartment. Then we discovered our love for travel. Now we prefer the more basic apartment up in the sky, which we can lock up and go. We even have maintenance covering the cost and doing all the hard work.

After discovering the lock up and go travel concept, we were confused. Why do South Africans love their houses so much? If it’s so much work and money, and if all that could instead be used toward travel? After visiting the Netherlands, it became clear to us that it’s part of our history, roots and DNA.

Intratuin

So why the house rant, you might be thinking at this point? Well, this brings us to Intratuin. A house shop that would make any proud homeowner in South Africa pop out of a burrow like a meerkat catching the morning sun.

There’s anything one would ever need for the perfect home and garden. I’ve started typing out everything I could remember but ended up with a list longer than our travel bucket list. So to sum it up, it contained anything garden, bbq, interior, exterior, entertaining, pet, kitchen and even food related you could think of.

In all of our travels, this was the first store both T and myself wished we could teleport our parents. They would have thought they had gone to heaven in there.

Excuse the multitude of photos, but it’s the only way to try and capture the magnitude of this store. Believe me, if I say that even with all the photos, this was only the tip of the iceberg. I think we ended up spending hours in there.

Belgium

Our first stay in the Netherlands was in a town called Tholen. We weren’t that far from Belgium, and with T and myself’s love for chocolate, we decided to take a day trip to Brussels to indulge.

The drive there was quite tedious. But it was a city, after all, so we persevered. Finding parking turned out to be a bit challenging, but thanks to T’s homework done the previous night, even that we took in our stride.

Brussels Cathedral – Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula

Cathedrals have become a big part of our European travels, like I would guess it has for many. And although cathedrals are more of the same, they still amaze us every time. Plus, it seems like the uniqueness lies in the detail.

Chocolate shops

Once you see the pictures of the chocolate stores, Brussels might be the next trip you book. It looks like something in a movie. Before you leave my blog to start booking that trip, hold back for a sec. These shops might as well have been in a movie in our opinion. Everything was in the appearance, but it lacked the experience for us.

I think our expectations might have been elevated a bit too high. We’ve done wine, whiskey, coffee, and even chocolate tastings worldwide. We’ve paid for all of them and don’t mind doing so. Many of these also included a tour, teaching us more about the product, and we love that. We would then usually spend even more money on their products on top of the initial tour/tasting amount.

Thus we were taken aback quite a bit when we entered the first store and found the rudest response after asking about a tasting. The experience never really got any better. The shops that did offer a tasting was a bowl full of scraps that everybody would dig into with their hand. The biggest turn-off was that nowhere were we able to learn more or experience what Belgium chocolate is all about.

With our disappointments running high, we had a Belgium waffle (also nothing to write home about) and decided to head back. The city was dirty, the people unfriendly, even rude, and the expectation we came with were unrealistic.

We spent more time driving to and from Brussels than in it. Fate may force us to one day give Brussels another chance like we were forced to give London another chance; we would change our minds. But until then, it’s probably one of our biggest, if not the biggest, disappointments to our travels yet.

Conclusion

Visiting Brussels wasn’t our fondest memory. Maybe we didn’t even give it a real fair chance and were just in a bad mood to start with. The Netherlands’ countryside, however, was very insightful.

The cities we’ll visit later felt like they evolved a bit more(think of their red district and cannabis legislation as an example). However, visiting the countryside had the same conservative feel I have in an Afrikaans home. Don’t take the word “conservative” as a bad connotation. For us, it means normal and home to us, with the warmth of family and the strong weekly routine topped with certain rules that need to be followed. We don’t always agree with all this history and roots. Thus, we think and feel we’re evolving in our own way and creating the new normal for us.

In our next post, we’ll eat cheese (duh), see a windmill or two (double duh), get chased by a chicken and enjoy an unexpected light festival.