Tripette to The Netherlands (which is very, very close)

Afternoon out at a town in the north of the Netherlands called Appingedam. Can’t really call it a ‘day out’ because it is close by, less than an hour’s drive away. After that my host — no names, no pack drill — who has lived or been based in Germany for more than 40 and is a tadette didactic, took us — our younger brother has joined us — to a kind of Dutch ‘new town’ called Blauwestad a few miles from Winschoten.

This really is a new town, being built on the banks of a new canal/lake called Oldambtmeer (the Dutch like doing things with water, according to the Germans turning it into a sliceable form and selling it as ‘a tomato). Appingedam was by far the more interesting, though not particularly interesting.

We wandered around the ‘old town’ with my sister pointing out house fronts, windows, gables, roofs and I don’t know what else to admire, but to be frank there’s only so much admiring I can do and I tend to flag after a while.

My fear is always that if I don’t demonstrate the required level of enthusiasm, I am ‘being difficult’, and ‘being difficult’ was a label hung around me early on in my life in my family, so situations like that demand some diplomacy. For all my ‘tactlessness’ (which I prefer to see as a dislike of being forced to dissemble) I can be and am far, far more diplomatic than a great many realise.

Certainly, the obvious point to make is that ‘diplomacy’ is essentially dissembling, but here I crave your goodwill and accept that there are subtle differences between the two, not least that ‘diplomacy’ in our private lives is intended to avoid bruising the feelings of others whereas dissembling is usually a great deal less admirable. But it was good to wander around and get some fresh air. I would like to see ‘old Dutch architecture, but there are I’m sure more interesting examples elsewhere in the country and I shall make a point of seeking them out in the future.

Blauwestad? Well, the first question is, what exactly it the point. It was not created to ‘provide more homes’ as the new houses — they are all new houses, though some a year or two less new than others — are not cheap and from what I saw through open blinds they all looked like the ‘second home’ refuge ‘in the country’ of professionals from Amsterdam, and Rotterdam (which are easily accessible just down the road).

Notably included in the house price was a berth for your own small but no inexpensive motorboat in the mini marina just yards from your front door. (My phone was low on juice, so I left it in the car to charge and didn’t take any pictures. I wish I had.) With no exaggeration the interiors might all have served as ads in interior design magazines. These were not ‘new homes from working class folk otherwise priced out of the market’. There also seemed to be few folk at home for a Sunday afternoon. Who knows what was going on.

Here are a few piccies from Appingedam, suitably dicked around with (the new phrase for ‘artistically processed’ if you haven’t yet guessed).