Visiting a Dutch Fishing Village on Market Day
After spending Saturday morning at the Dog Club, Astrid and Gert drove us to a fishing village that was a few miles from their home village of Hoogland. This village is one of Gert’s favorite places. He shared that he spent a lot of time here as a young man. I was surprised at how hard we had to look for a parking place, but Astrid explained that it was market day, and folks come from miles around to do their shopping in the village square. The carillon bell tower was ringing a ‘nooning‘ song as we reached center of the village. It was crowded with every type of vendor, offering fresh produce, cheese, meats, baked goods and of course, fish, fresh from the local lakes and the North Sea. There were clothing vendors who had something for every member of the family and toys for kids.
On our trip up the Danube and the Rhine Nick and I have visited several towns on Market Day. I was always struck by how family oriented Market Day is. It didn’t matter if the Market Day was in Austria, Germany or the Netherlands, the gathering of folks to buy, sell and trade in the Market Square was a time to chat, eat, trade and have fun. The food was always local and fresh, the breads were unique to the village or town, and the sausages were just the way the locals had been making them for generations. The combination of the old, the new, and the continuum of family and community relationships forged in time, place and tradition, struck me as something we Americans have lost. As you look through the galleries of pictures Nick and I have taken on Market Day, you will notice we tried to capture the interactions of the people at market. The women catching up on the news, the vendors who are working to sell what they brought into town, the kids playing, and sometimes negotiating for one last treat.
The restaurant Astrid chose was on the market square, just a few feet away from the green grocer selling strawberries. We sat at the outside tables. The restaurant would easily seat more than a hundred folks inside, but It seemed like the Dutch were unwilling to be confined indoors on a what was probably one of the last sunny Saturdays of the Fall. The menu’s were in Dutch, so we asked Astrid to order us a typical Dutch market day lunch. Barb, Paul and Gert ordered a traditional Meat Croquet, Nick and Astrid had a Dutch sandwich plate, I decided on a salad. While we were eating, young women came by wearing very attractive outfits. The girls passed out cards with the vendor location and the name of the outfit they were wearing. Gert explained that the girls were modeling the clothing from a vendor further up the way to show the quality and how pretty they would look on you. The older women of the village still wore their traditional dress on market day and I have a few pictures of them shopping. They are the older women who look like they have the linebacker shoulder pads. I assume they were originally quilted and padded for warmth against the North sea winds. There was a bronze statue of a young woman in traditional dress in the market square.
Astrid was planning to feed us a typical Dutch Saturday evening supper, so after we had lunch, we walked through the Market buying food for later that night. Barb and Nick were both brave enough to try the Dutch tradition of pickled herring. My pictures of Barb’s great herring adventure are some of my favorites. At the end of the village is where both the fish mongers and their vessels where located. The village was also home to a traditional ship builder who builds and repairs the ships. Gert explained that these hand-crafted wooded fishing vessels were now very expensive and it was getting harder and harder to keep the traditional family fishing business in the village. He explained the the Dutch fisherman were a tough, stubborn and resourceful lot and would fight to keep their way of life. The shipping canal reached into the center of the village. The vessels were so beautifully crafted that Nick and I took numerous pictures of the many types of boats in the canal.
Gert and Astrid took us to their home through rural back roads, past the small farms that produce the vegetables, fruit and meat for the local villages. The country is beautiful, green and fertile and peaceful. It seems almost strange that an hour or so up the road is the crowded, concrete and brick mad-house that is Amsterdam; and that after a quiet dinner with friends and a few hours of sleep, we would once again find ourselves in a busy International Airport starting our journey homeward.