Three months ago I received an e-mail about a weekend host family program in the Netherlands. Write a bit about yourself and your interests, and click a button to show how far you were willing to travel to meet your host family. Less than 5 kilometers from Utrecht? 10km? 25? I picked “Doesn’t matter”. And so, this weekend, I traveled 120 kilometers to the town of Aalten.
Uhh, where is Aalten? (say most of the Dutch students at the student bar downstairs)
Aalten is a small town of about 10,000 people in the province of Gelderland. It’s so close to the German border that the Germans were afraid of bombing it during WWII, so the town was relatively untouched. You could walk from one end of Aalten to another in about twenty to thirty minutes, and the city center is big enough for a five to ten minute walk. It comes with its own dialect, Low Saxon (which even native Dutch speakers have trouble understanding), and is also the home of Angus Young, one of the lead singers of AC/DC after he fell in love with a Dutch lady.
Judging from the stares I got as I walked around town, I’m guessing they don’t have too many international students visiting.
I lived with a family of six, quite big by Dutch standards. A mother, father, two sons, and two daughters, with most of the children in their twenties. The father keeps a few aquariums in the household as a hobby, with glow-in-the-dark shrimp, snails, fish, and an entire tank in the kitchen dedicated to snails. And when it comes to beer, he won’t drink anything other than Hertog Jan and Grolsch, which is typical in the area. He won’t even drink the special Grolsch flavors – only the original normal one. He doesn’t like the taste of the rest, he says.
The eldest daughter was quick to point out that he’s never actually tried them. Why should I? said the father. I know what I like.
The mother cleans up most of the mess that the children and father make. There’s Babs the pig in the backyard, and Luka the dog. Babs gets her own house, and is clever enough to poop in the same place each time without being asked to. Grandma and Grandpa live right next door, and they stop by to say hello throughout the day. Grandpa even baked an apple pie for us one evening.
It was cozy.
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The eldest daughter, Suzanne, showed me around town during the weekend. There are four pubs in the entire city, and we went pub crawling through each of them. The Malle Babble is the newest one, with the latest popular music and a regular customer base that’s at least twenty years younger than those of the other pubs. It’s also her sister’s favorite.
The Turkish snackbar in town was our last stop at the pub crawl. There’s a single HEMA department store, and an Albert Heijn grocery store. Seven churches including one synagogue, although Suzanne said that there can’t be more than twenty people in the entire town using the synagogue.
I came to Aalten at a special time, as Sinterklaas came into town. Sinterklaas is like the Dutch version of Santa Claus, and while the real holiday isn’t until December 5th, Sinterklaas arrives in each city in the Netherlands a couple of weeks beforehand to make a special appearance for all the children. I even got to shake his hand. Sinterklaas and his (controversial) helpers, Zwarte Pieten, are all volunteers from the town. Suzanne says she can recognize some of the people behind the make-up and costumes, but it makes no difference to the children.
And no Sinterklaas is complete without pepernoten, a Dutch holiday treat that tastes like gingerbread cookies. We baked those together. The fresh homemade ones have a nice hard shell with soft insides, and aren’t as crunchy and brittle as the store-bought pepernoten. They’re both delicious though.
While Aalten is not small enough that everyone knows everyone, it’s small enough that Suzanne could bump into old friends while walking the dog, and point out new faces in the school volleyball team as they played against another town. The people here even say “hoi” to strangers passing by – something that rarely happens in the big cities.
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It’s quite a gamble when you think about it, inviting a stranger into your home. Come when you want and leave when you want, they told me. I brought Hoegaarden to the home as a gesture — a sort of sour wheat beer (and one of my favorites) – but as I said earlier the father only drinks Grolsch. The mother liked it though.
Anyways, it was nice to be spoiled by all the attention and Dutch hospitality over the weekend. I drank a liter of tea each day I was there, along with Suzanne. Not sure if that’s typical, although I’ve noticed I’ve had more cravings for tea since visiting the family.
