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Floris met me at the train station within ten minutes of my arrival, despite my failure to warn him when I was 20 minutes from town. It was awfully good to see him. We didn't quit grinning for... well, I'm still grinning.
He asked if we should go home first or go to town, and since my stuff wasn't heavy and I wasn't tired, I chose town. And I am so glad. He took me to the cathedral, where his whole family sings in the choir but his mother, and she is the organist. It was closed.
You guys, ( this is a secret. )
Anything else in town would have been utterly anticlimactic, so I agreed when he suggested we go home. I had the choice of bus or riding on the back of his bike, and I figured since I'd had practice with Celina and Stephanie riding on the backs of Dutch street bikes, I could handle it. It was a comfortingly familiar good time, and the scenery was sweet in the same way it was in Haarlem. We ran into a friend of his named Tomas on the way back, but didn't stay to talk for long.
Floris lives in a little prefab suburb with an irregular triangular courtyard every block and canals in between the major streets, and geese on the road (he hates them. They always attack him). His mom greeted us as we came in the door, and promptly offered me food, sleep, or anything else I might need after traveling. We put stuff down in the coatroom/entry and came further into the house, and it's just as I'd imagine a designer Swedish house would look like if someone actually lived there. Everything is spotless and immaculately tidy; there's no clutter, only open surfaces and vases full of real flowers and the occasional row of matching glass tealight holders. The furniture is minimalist but comfortable, and there is nothing that doesn't have its place and stay there when not in use. I was a little intimidated, but it's aesthetically consistent.
Floris's room is a little more chaotic, but the floor is still both empty and clean, and the under-roof slant makes two of the walls more avant-garde than it might otherwise look. In any case, we hung out in there listening to music and squeeing about it till dinner called up it was ready. What kind of music--guess. The King's Singers? Good guess.
His mom made a lovely casserole for dinner and they did the whole Guest thing where I sat at the head of the table and nobody started till we all had food on our plates. Me, Floris, his mom, his dad, and his sister (whose name is the Dutch version of Wilhelmina and I think is spelled Willemijn), and it was both very welcoming and very formal. But soon Floris and I were back upstairs for more music, and we also ended up watching all of Nightmare Before Christmas, which neither of us had seen in years.
Floris had a doctor's appointment in the morning, so despite staying up till the wee hours he was gone by the time I was showered and down at breakfast. His mom gave me cereal and yoghurt and we talked about life and music and how you plan for either. His dad brought him back before too long, and they'd stopped at a bakery and got tarts and cheesecake and apple turnover, so with that plus the cereal I basically had dessert for breakfast. We recovered with tea in the living room, and we all hung out listening to music, including some of the recordings of their cathedral choir, which is an affair both family and serious. Floris's friend Tomas (a different one) showed up and turned out to be in the choir too.
Before it closed for the day, we went to town to go see the cathedral on-the-books this time. His dad drove us and gave me the whole tour with the architectural history and fires and restoration efforts (they're near the end of a 40-year process right now, and all the stones are clean and the anchors between stone and brick replaced and the statues are restored or replaced). And we saw the organ from inside the sanctuary.
Floris wanted to show me some music, so he and Tomas and I went to the neighboring building where the schola cantorum is, and we looked through the choir books (the Christmas pieces have been put in since last Friday apparently). They've got some serious rep, and some serious tours, and some serious composers working as their director through their history.
Floris and Tomas walked us down the charming Dutch square and over a couple streets to a cafe called Opium, where they ordered us the most distinctive 's-Hertogenbosch delicacy, bossche bol. They're basically round, softball-sized eclairs. SO GOOD. Dessert for both breakfast and lunch. We took a little while to recover (or I did; the boys were fine) and walked through town a bit more, and ran into the other Tomas again, so the four of us toured the town and looked at what there was to see. The oldest building in town, with an adorable turret, is now a gift/souvenir shop, still with whitewashed plaster inside and the same time-blackened rafters.
Eventually we wandered (purposefully) into a park, where there was a) a playground and b) a huge concrete chessboard on the ground. Floris had one match against each Tomas, and utterly destroyed both. It started rain-snowing halfway through, but the convenient thing about raining ice is that it doesn't stick to you and get you wet, it bounces off and gets the ground wet instead.
Floris's dad was at the cathedral to pick us up when we took our leave of Tomas and Tomas, and we spent the rest of the day at home, listening to music in the living room with his parents, in his room without them, talking about the cathedral choir with the whole family and looking at (some mighty impressive) pictures of their tour, eating dinner (Willemijn made a family recipe of Indonesian food passed down from a grandfather who lived there for the first ten years of his life, and it was excellent), watching another movie, listening to more music... I say "listening to music", but you might get the wrong idea. When it's two total KS addicts like both of us, every discovery and show and reclamation of the speakers is an urgent, vital business. And when the right thing is playing, there's gleeful adoration and joyous melting and despairing sighs of awe.
For which I give thanks.
He asked if we should go home first or go to town, and since my stuff wasn't heavy and I wasn't tired, I chose town. And I am so glad. He took me to the cathedral, where his whole family sings in the choir but his mother, and she is the organist. It was closed.
You guys, ( this is a secret. )
Anything else in town would have been utterly anticlimactic, so I agreed when he suggested we go home. I had the choice of bus or riding on the back of his bike, and I figured since I'd had practice with Celina and Stephanie riding on the backs of Dutch street bikes, I could handle it. It was a comfortingly familiar good time, and the scenery was sweet in the same way it was in Haarlem. We ran into a friend of his named Tomas on the way back, but didn't stay to talk for long.
Floris lives in a little prefab suburb with an irregular triangular courtyard every block and canals in between the major streets, and geese on the road (he hates them. They always attack him). His mom greeted us as we came in the door, and promptly offered me food, sleep, or anything else I might need after traveling. We put stuff down in the coatroom/entry and came further into the house, and it's just as I'd imagine a designer Swedish house would look like if someone actually lived there. Everything is spotless and immaculately tidy; there's no clutter, only open surfaces and vases full of real flowers and the occasional row of matching glass tealight holders. The furniture is minimalist but comfortable, and there is nothing that doesn't have its place and stay there when not in use. I was a little intimidated, but it's aesthetically consistent.
Floris's room is a little more chaotic, but the floor is still both empty and clean, and the under-roof slant makes two of the walls more avant-garde than it might otherwise look. In any case, we hung out in there listening to music and squeeing about it till dinner called up it was ready. What kind of music--guess. The King's Singers? Good guess.
His mom made a lovely casserole for dinner and they did the whole Guest thing where I sat at the head of the table and nobody started till we all had food on our plates. Me, Floris, his mom, his dad, and his sister (whose name is the Dutch version of Wilhelmina and I think is spelled Willemijn), and it was both very welcoming and very formal. But soon Floris and I were back upstairs for more music, and we also ended up watching all of Nightmare Before Christmas, which neither of us had seen in years.
Floris had a doctor's appointment in the morning, so despite staying up till the wee hours he was gone by the time I was showered and down at breakfast. His mom gave me cereal and yoghurt and we talked about life and music and how you plan for either. His dad brought him back before too long, and they'd stopped at a bakery and got tarts and cheesecake and apple turnover, so with that plus the cereal I basically had dessert for breakfast. We recovered with tea in the living room, and we all hung out listening to music, including some of the recordings of their cathedral choir, which is an affair both family and serious. Floris's friend Tomas (a different one) showed up and turned out to be in the choir too.
Before it closed for the day, we went to town to go see the cathedral on-the-books this time. His dad drove us and gave me the whole tour with the architectural history and fires and restoration efforts (they're near the end of a 40-year process right now, and all the stones are clean and the anchors between stone and brick replaced and the statues are restored or replaced). And we saw the organ from inside the sanctuary.
Floris wanted to show me some music, so he and Tomas and I went to the neighboring building where the schola cantorum is, and we looked through the choir books (the Christmas pieces have been put in since last Friday apparently). They've got some serious rep, and some serious tours, and some serious composers working as their director through their history.
Floris and Tomas walked us down the charming Dutch square and over a couple streets to a cafe called Opium, where they ordered us the most distinctive 's-Hertogenbosch delicacy, bossche bol. They're basically round, softball-sized eclairs. SO GOOD. Dessert for both breakfast and lunch. We took a little while to recover (or I did; the boys were fine) and walked through town a bit more, and ran into the other Tomas again, so the four of us toured the town and looked at what there was to see. The oldest building in town, with an adorable turret, is now a gift/souvenir shop, still with whitewashed plaster inside and the same time-blackened rafters.
Eventually we wandered (purposefully) into a park, where there was a) a playground and b) a huge concrete chessboard on the ground. Floris had one match against each Tomas, and utterly destroyed both. It started rain-snowing halfway through, but the convenient thing about raining ice is that it doesn't stick to you and get you wet, it bounces off and gets the ground wet instead.
Floris's dad was at the cathedral to pick us up when we took our leave of Tomas and Tomas, and we spent the rest of the day at home, listening to music in the living room with his parents, in his room without them, talking about the cathedral choir with the whole family and looking at (some mighty impressive) pictures of their tour, eating dinner (Willemijn made a family recipe of Indonesian food passed down from a grandfather who lived there for the first ten years of his life, and it was excellent), watching another movie, listening to more music... I say "listening to music", but you might get the wrong idea. When it's two total KS addicts like both of us, every discovery and show and reclamation of the speakers is an urgent, vital business. And when the right thing is playing, there's gleeful adoration and joyous melting and despairing sighs of awe.
For which I give thanks.