Tweet28-05-2010 om 17:47 by Sueli Brodin

My husband was born and raised in the city of Dordrecht, or Dordt as it is commonly called, in the Dutch province of South Holland. It is a historical city about the size of Maastricht located on the Island of Dordrecht, 20 km to the south of Rotterdam.




My mother in law lives in a row house where my husband grew up until the age of 18, in a residential area close to the polders in the outskirts of the city. My family and I took advantage of the long Pentecost holiday to spend two days with her.

Visiting my mother in law always feels to me like a profoundly Dutch experience in a typical Dutch home. As usual, we were welcomed with a cup of coffee – fruit juice for the children - and a piece of homemade cake. This time though, instead of her famed Dutch appeltaart, or a boterkoek as a special treat for my husband, my mother in law had tried out a recipe for a French “tarte aux pommes” she had seen in a Dutch women’s magazine and was very happy when I told her that it looked and tasted perfect.

My father in law passed away two years ago and is buried in a cemetery nearby. In the evening after dinner we took the short 15 minute walk to his grave.

My children were very attached to their grandfather and often talk about him. After taking care of the flowers on his tomb, we walked through the quiet and peaceful cemetery.

My husband pointed out the tomb of a man who perished during the great North Sea Flood of 1953 (Watersnoodramp), when a violent storm tide caused the dikes in the provinces of Zeeland, South Holland and North Brabant to break open, leading to devastating floods which killed 1835 people. My husband says that he used to be terrified as a child every time there was a storm and that it feels much safer to live above sea level in South Limburg.

On our way back home, we were met by my sister in law Marian and her husband Wim who live in a farm some 45 minutes to the east of Dordrecht in the agricultural Betuwe region and who had decided to take advantage of our visit to come and see us. We spent a pleasant evening together, catching up on family news.

We enjoyed a complete breakfast on Whit Monday with hard boiled eggs from our own chickens, yoghurt and muesli, Dutch rusks, bread with homemade jam or chocolate flakes, and hot tea.

My mother in law had even bought some fresh Dutch strawberries to be eaten on the rusks in the traditional Dutch way, with a bit of dark brown sugar sprinkled on top.

My mother in law’s kitchen cupboard looks so different from mine. She keeps the Dutch rusks and the various types of chocolate flakes in old metal canisters, of which I don’t have a single one.

I also like going through the basket where she puts her daily newspaper and magazines. The Dutch women’s magazine Libelle is one my favourite reads, because it is full of stories written from a Dutch woman’s point of view.

As for my children, they cannot get enough of my husband’s old Donald Duck comic books, which my mother in law has carefully been keeping all these years.

This time, we all spent a long time looking at old photo albums. My father in law used to have his own dark room and develop all his photographs himself. That is why there are countless pictures of the whole family. Obviously, my children particularly like all those that give them a glimpse into their father’s childhood.

One of the old black and white photographs even showed my husband as a teenager sitting on the city walls of Maastricht during a holiday in South Limburg.

In the afternoon, it was the turn of my brother in law Peter and his wife Annette to visit us. My husband and I were delighted to see them because it was the first time we were able to talk to them since they moved to Sierra Leone a year and half ago.


Peter and Annette are setting up a Dutch agricultural project in the town of Makomp in the northern province of Sierra Leone. The goal of the project is to introduce commercial and mechanised farming using advanced GPS guided equipment for the production of rice. My husband and I avidly listened to their fascinating account of their new life in Sierra Leone, the challenges they’ve met and the steps to take ahead… The topics we talked about were a concrete illustration for me of many of the questions that were discussed during the last event organized by Maastricht Debates on the role of the EU in Africa. Peter is returning to Makomp next week and Annette will be joining him shortly afterwards.

When the time came for us to say good bye, my mother in law thanked us for our visit and the “heel gezellig” (very cosy) weekend. It was a beautiful sunny afternoon and our two hour drive back to Maastricht went smoothly. When the welcoming sign announcing the border of Limburg appeared on the side of the highway, we knew we were almost home.

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