Tweet16-08-2011 om 20:56 by Sueli Brodin
For the first time since I live in the Netherlands, I have met up with Dutch friends during my summer holiday in the south of France. Up until now, only some family members from my husband's side had occasionally come to visit us in my parents' summer house in the Provence, but this year represented a big change in the sense that we had the chance to get together with some good friends I have made in South Limburg.
It was a funny and pleasant experience for me to see our roles suddenly reversed: it was now my turn to be their host and they were my foreign guests. I was very happy to invite them for lunch and enjoyed serving them some regional culinary specialties, such as the famous olives from Nyons.
One evening, we all went to see an outdoor screening of a French animation film in the neighbouring village. The film, a fine adaptation of the comic story Le Chat du Rabbin by Antoine Delesvaux and Joann Sfar, was entirely in French and proved a bit tricky to follow for my children and our friends because it contained a lot of French cultural references. This didn't prevent us however from thoroughly enjoying our evening. The mountainous setting of the French Prealps was splendid and we even saw several shooting stars in the clear night sky during the film projection. My friends and I commented that we were lucky to have our own Cinema Luna in the south of France, just like in Maastricht.
My daughter Sacha's best friend and her family who live further down our street in the Netherlands had booked a spot in a camping site on the mountain just opposite ours. As soon as they arrived, they sent me a text message saying: "We are neighbours again!"
We met several times for lunch and dinner and visited a picturesque village in the area together.
It is a tradition in our family to climb up the mountain behind our house and hike all the way to the top of the plateau to enjoy the magnificent view on the lavender fields and watch vultures flying by. This year, our friends accompanied us on our walk and found it quite adventurous.
I have known the region since the age of four and have spent a great many holiday seasons there throughout my life. I was very happy and proud to show it to my friends and to see how enthusiastic they were about it.
It may sound paradoxical, but spending time together with them in the south of France made me feel more attached to my home in the south of the Netherlands.
It is definitely an experience I would be delighted to renew.
A bon entendeur, salut!
Comments
17-08-2011 at 09:31
Hi Sueli and family!
Nice comments of a nice meeting!
Hope we'll meet again somewhere in our environment!
Bye,
Esther
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Sueli Brodin has been living in the Maastricht Region since 1994. She is the website editor for the European Journalism Centre (EJC) in Maastricht and produces the EJC's daily Media News digest. She is also a team member of PechaKucha Night Maastricht, an informal English-language initiative where creative people get together and present their ideas in a concise format. View Sueli's video portrait on www.zuidlimburg.nl.
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17-08-2011 at 12:48
Hi Esther, it was lovely seeing you all in the sunny Provence.
I'll send you more photographs :-)
Take care and see you soon! Sueli