LIKE THE SAILORS, HINDELOOPEN, NETHERLANDS: Landscapes and old sailing ships, channels and timeless furniture.

Not far from Amsterdam – my city – I’ll take you in a “little-big” place, co safety to leave a precious memory. I knew Hindeloopen (Friesland), many years ago, with my father. Today, back in the small village of sailors, I will show you and tell you what it has never disappeared from my memory. As you can see, those who live in this place has special inclinations, as almost always happens when those who looks out the window of their home – lucky him – has the good fortune to let lead from the environment that surrounds it. http://www.hindeloopen.com/en/hindeloopen/tourist-information

My name is Glauke, are a professional painter and I love viscerally Hindeloopen, a treasure chest of Lake IJsselmeer. His dam, strangely, is for me like a catwalk on the sea. Always, without fail, when I’ll be back in these houses, I retrace the paths of memory, the ones I’ve seen through the eyes of a boy – with my father – but only after his death, premature, I have seen with new eyes. You are not Dutch. Well, listen. To understand the Netherlands, I’ll tell you a little anecdote: the gift that our Queen (Beatrice), had chosen for his first-born, was a wooden sled, built and painted here in Hindeloopen. http://www.touristinfohindeloopen.nl/?lang=en

Walking with me, you will have noticed some particular houses – the house-workshop-atelier – where normal-looking people, inexplicably, repeating his acts of their ancestors: decorate furniture and paint, like a second nature. Green and blue, black and red, flowers and birds, sailboats and stormy seas. If you want to stay for a few days, write down this address: Hotel Kaatje bij de Sluis (Catherine at closed), Zuiderstraat 20, Blokzijl. If you go there, you will find a piece of the seventeenth century, surrounded by brick houses. http://www.zoover.ro/olanda/overijssel/blokzijl/kaatjes-residence/hotel?page=1

Among the workshops that I have indicated, I prefer not to say which I prefer, leaving you absolutely free to go where your eyes have looked longer, fantasizing, beside trays decorated and model sailing ships. If you have time, I would take you in Koffiekamer Bootsma – Kleine Waide, 1 – because not only your eyes – but also your taste buds – they retain the preciousness of this corner of Flanders: “penneckoeken”, our crepes (you can choose between those sweet or salted). Before saying goodbye, observes once again that surrounds us: what you see is the result of a far intervention of hydraulic engineering (a channel to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea). What a century ago had damaged the commodity economy of this city, miraculously, it has preserved. Even for you, and for me. Glauke. http://www.roughguides.com/destinations/europe/netherlands/north-and-the-frisian-islands/hindeloopen/

The editors of Meeting Benches thank our friend Glauke. Thanks to him, what is small has become large, that is simple and become valuable. Normally, we are accustomed to moving quickly – in our cities and in our travels – without eyes to see. The feeling that all of us, in the preparation, we felt, was to look with different eyes, things of every day. If you’d tell your own trip, do not forget this address mail: info@meetingbenches.com