Hoi! 👋 We're Michelle and Alex, an American couple in the Netherlands.
In 2020, we quit our jobs to travel the world, and... well, that didn't happen. So in 2022, we decided to make an even BIGGER change: to pack up our lives (and our cats 🐈) and move from Austin, Texas, in the United States, to the Netherlands.
De Spuishuis you were asking for stood infront of you when you walk to De Gevangenepoort you even pass it. It was on the point where De Noord and De Zuid Zijde Haven split, it was in the middle of it. Nice tour. Thank you for your visit here. Houdoe !
you made a great choice this is my home town if id knew you would go there id givven you some tips cus there are loads of hidden gems in bergen op zoom
If you come back and (promise not to film me 😉), I'll show you around. Know the good places to eat, to see (last day you should go flower picking in a pluktuin), go to Van Kessel or Vereecken for the best cherries (and liquors), go to boerderijwinkels (farmer shops), Heerenhoeve for ice cream, vla, yoghurt and tapped milk (pasteurized). Go to Ghent for the best vegan and vegetarian food and if you come in the thirth week of july for the Gentse Feesten, go to Philippine (mussle capital of the Netherlands) and go to het verdronken land van Saeftinge. ☺️
So happy to see you visit a forgotten part of the Netherlands. There is so much to do (though it's better to have a car available). Many Dutch call it an island (even though it's fully attached to Belgium) or don't even know it's Dutch. 😕 About the German mistake. In Zeeland the majority of the tourists are German (in Zeeuws-Vlaanderen combined with Flemish), so often they start with German. When you are on the observation desk, behind you you see apartments. Even though Zeeuws-Vlaanderen usually has lower housing prices (the toll tunnel, the location and in comparison to other places, little high paying jobs), but the coast is very expensive with million euro apartments. A few weeks ago in Cadzand (a little more to the south) a holiday home was sold (so you can't stay there permanent) for 8 million euro.
De 1e hit van de Nederlandse band Bløf heet "Aan de kust" en heeft de tekst: "hier aan de kust, de Zeeuwse kust, waar eenieder onbewust in het Duits wordt aangesproken". Misschien kunnen jullie een video maken waarin jullie de canon van Nederlandstalige popmuziek beluisteren?
@@buncharted2 I live in Bergen op Zoom my self. And I saw you missed some good locations you could better have shown also pitty you did not come when there was an evend. Maybe you like to do this one over again and make a better revieuw maby in connection with a bit of history and a larger area
Hey you guys talked about Perfetti Van Melle. They got a large factory in my hometown (Breda) and my parents used to have a summer job there back in the 80's lol
no we want to explore it again, but on a bike we didn’t see that much of the area since we didn’t rent a bike (we were too cheap and we didn’t have enough time that day)
Everyone gets addressed in German in certain areas of the Netherlands. If they have a high percentage of German tourists, the probability of you being German is just high.
Zeeuws Vlaanderen! This is my home area haha, There is lots more cool places to see like Sluis / Hulst / Terneuzen etc in this area, i'm personally from near the Philipinne / Braakman area with some nature & woods stuff and lots of farm fields hehe. The ferry to Vlissingen used to be a bigger different one to also transport cars before the Tunnel was created under the Westerchelde. All in all cool video and crazy to see American vloggers in spots i visit very often haha
Being talked to in german? We have the new zeeuwsch volkslied ("Hier aan de kust" by BLØF), it's about Zeeland. One of the lines is "waar je in het Duits wordt aangesproken" ("Where you are being spoken to in German") which is what happened to you. It's so common to see Germans on holliday that at some times of the year (hint, German holliday seasons) easier to just start talking German as it's the lingua franca at that point.
That's so nice! I used to live in Breskens for a couple of years when I was young, around the age of 6-7. We're talking mid-'60s. We used to live just behind the dunes, near the old ferry ramp. In a newly built park with all low bungalows. In hindsight, a great time. My parents knew that living in Breskens was only temporary. 2 yrs or so. My mother kept me away from school and home-schooled me. Every morning, we started with the school chores and then we went to the beach. In my memory, every single day. No matter the weather. Once back home and after dinner, I had to learn to read. I remember the old municipal swimming pool next to the Marina. A saltwater pool. I learned to swim there. Nobody wondered why a little boy was having swimming lessons instead of being in school! I remember going with my dad on the ferry to Vlissingen on stormy Saturdays. Just for the big waves. I guess that my love for sailing started there! And I remember making a 'lampion' (a lamp that you carry) around St. Maarten (± Halloween time) out of a sugar beet! With a small candle inside. Not only did it look great, it also smelled like caramel! Those sugar beets were all over the roads when the big machines harvested them to get them to the sugar factory. After 2 years, when we returned to the town where we originally came from, I went back to an ordinary school. No one ever noticed that I was home-schooled. Not bad for someone who was not a teacher by profession! Nowadays, keeping your kid away from school brings you in front of a judge and you leave with a hefty fine! Thanks for posting this video. It brings back very happy memories!
Also very funny i am from Belgium i speak same language and my boyfriend also and ever time they speak Netherlands to me and to my boyfriend in English 🤣 so i get the menu in Netherlands and his English 🤣
Sounds like that server had a lot of trouble understanding and switching you two are a whole different deal. Doing your very best speaking Dutch and still get spoken to in German, ridiculous!
A very sweet little video. Beagles, discarded Christmas trees, Michelle getting ready, and Sashimi preparing for her first on-screen attack. Good times.
I knew one of the sons of the van Melle family. They are still very bummed out that the company was sold before the huge success of Mentos...He did tell me that he hates sweets because they had to try out every new thing and all the faulty candies were taken home every day.
A lot has changed from the 60s to today. In the '60s we had real seasons but now, from what my family tells me, "Jeetje, het weer is KU...uh....bad"(a dirty word they still use 'till today and I don't like it) In regards to the chickens running around, that reminds me of Key West where they also just run in the wild.
3:40 In some of those places along the Dutch coast (esp. in Zeeland and the Wadden islands) they just assume anyone is German, especially if you're clearly a tourist 😅And they have their main focus at German tourists, like restaurants with their menus mainly in German etc.
This is fun to watch, because this is where I do all my groceries 😊. I live in Groede, which is about 5 km away. And in summer 80% of the people you see here are indeed Germans, it's absolutely insane. And I've had to wait for chickens to cross the road there haha, always makes me smile when I see them walking around completely unbothered by anything.
Next time you are mistaken for German, have Michelle say Straaaandhouse. There is no way anyone would think you are anything but American after that. :)
I used to be a shareholder (actually a mere certificateholder) of Van Melle from the early 1980s until the sale to Perfetti. There was no Van Melle willing to succeed as director of the company, and the Perfetti family business seemed a good match. - Mentos sweets were (are?) manufactured at Breda, Fruittella at Weert. As I remember it, licorice maker Klene had been taken over by Van Melle in the late 1980s. Like often, these three were family companies, preferring a good match over a one-time profit. Van Melle was in the vanguard of companies minding the environment (in Biblical Dutch: "goed rentmeesterschap"), even voluntarily including a "green" annual report beside the financial one. And they had a social annual report. A really great atmosphere! Yes, I think that Van Melle originated at Breskens, as did another sweets maker: Verduyn (Verduin?). Verduyn made these hard lemonade-like sweets with a liquid core. I seem to remember that Van Melle had also incorporated Verduyn. Trivia: cimmamon-flavored Mentos were produced at Breda, but for export only. According to a top dog (former CFO?), there was no market for those in the Netherlands. So I had Dutch friends bring me some of those (two rolls) as a souvenir from the USA... While on the subject: during the same period I happened to be a (real) shareholder of the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland. The SMZ would operate a ferry service between Vlissingen and (I assume) Harwich, with fast connecting trains (by the NBDS) running to Germany via Boxtel and Wesel, the "Duits lijntje", to Berlin. Later, Vlissingen was swapped for Hoek van Holland (Hook of Holland), and in 1989(?) the one-ship company was taken over by DFDS. It was another great company, and you'd better travel by train to the annual meeting on board at Hoek. <hiccup><burp>
3:42 ah no, that's just Zeeland being Zeeland. Even I get addressed in German whenever I visit Zeeuwse steden. And I'm as Dutch as they come. You can even order in Dutch but you'll get the bill in German.
That's quite funny. So this American, of German heritage, fell in love with Zeeland on my first visit many year's ago. Walking on the beach near Zoutelande I see a group of teenagers having fun, being a little loud but nothing terrible. The thing is they had planted a good sized German flag, with pole, in the sand to mark their place. I came foolishly close to going over there to suggest this really isn't a good look given the history. But, common sense took over... they were just having fun, no insult intended. 🙂
Hmm, je zou best Duits kunnen zijn Alex. Ik zou dan denken dat je Helmut heet.😜 Michelle heeft wel echt een Amerikaanse kop. Je moet gewoon zoveel mogelijk stug nederlands blijven lullen. Hoe vloeiender je wordt hoe minder vaak mensen engels tegen je gaan praten. Het gebeurt me heel af en toe nog wel eens dat mensen engels tegen me praten maar ik reageer dan gewoon op een botte manier en maak ze zo duidelijk dat ze geen engels met me moeten praten.
About the German thing: Many German tourists visit the coast of Zeeland for their holidays. Even I as Dutch person who was born and raised in Zeeland will be initially addressed in German... I still don's know how to feel about it 😅
Nice video again, Alex and Michelle. The fact that people think you speak German has nothing to do with what you look like. In the summer, both Zeeland and Harlingen (and some other places) are flooded with Germans tourists, that is the reason. Finally: Yes, that anchor is absolutely real and used at some point.
