The Vanishing Haringhandels of Amsterdam

by D.A. Whitney

Pruc Vlaardingse runs one of the last pure haringhandels in Amsterdam. In the past, there were many dozens, according to the six-or-so remaining owners of these traditional canal-side stands in the popular Dutch city. Serving herring on a paper plate or a bun, with optional chopped onions and pickles, they are dwindling in number, restricted by inheritance rules, supplanted by modern sugar-based snacks, and hot dog and hamburger stands.

All except Pruc's have diversified to serve chunks of fried cod (kibbeling), fried mussels, pickled herring, eel, and other delights from the sea.

A visit to a haringhandel is an essential part of the Netherlands experience, for a traditional Dutch snack on the street.

A Little Herring History

These stands serve traditional Dutch raw herring, Hollandse Nieuwe, one of many herring preparations found around the world. These are made from young, immature, nine-inch long, fatty Atlantic Herring, often caught on Norwegian ships, that has been soused, that is, cured in brine. This maatjesharing, or just maatjes in Dutch, is cured for a few days in oak barrels. The pancreas from the innards of the fish is left in, the rest cleaned out, because the pancreatic enzymes support the curing and make this herring especially mild and soft. A fragile fish, they are easily skinned, cleaned, boned and the heads taken off, leaving a tail holding together the two filets.

This process is called gibbing, and was invented by a fellow named Willem Beukelszoon, a 14th-century Zeeland Fisherman in the early 1380s. He created an entire industry based around the very popular export of barrels of preserved, salt-cured herring that the Dutch monopolized: previous versions of preserved fish at the time were comparatively high in salt (like lox,) or smoked. They built ships to move the herring, the ships brought wealth, wealth and ships brought colonization and the Dutch Empire. He became famous enough that Queen Mary of Hungary sat on his tomb and ate a herring.

The Dutch still celebrate 'New Herring' on Flag Day, Vlaggetjesdag, each spring. Herrings are caught mostly in June and now mostly by the Danish and Norwegians in the North Sea before the breeding season starts, when their oil content peaks above 15%, and before their roe and milt develop; the roe from later in the season is sold and eaten with relish as well, but not in this form. There are five families along the coast in fishing villages that are the source of most of this treat for vishandels and haringhandels across the Netherlands.

How Herring is Served

Hollandse Nieuwe is presented two ways: the first comes on what is to Americans soft a hot-dog bun, which the Dutch simply call boodje, bread, often sprinkled with diced raw onions, and when in Amsterdam, sweet pickles.

The second comes on a small herring-shaped paper plate, nowadays usually cut into pieces: in the past, one grasped the tail, that joined  the two filets of cleaned haring, dredged it in the chopped onions, and lowered it into your upturned mouth; this is still done at festivals in June, when the haring reaches optimal content.

Almost all of the five or six the Haringhandels in Amsterdam that remain have added traditional mainstays such as kibbeling (nuggets of fried cod or salmon), roast eel, fried mussels, fried shrimp, and a variety of fish in the form of salads like tuna and whole or salad of smoked mackerel, tiny little shrimp, salmon in other various forms, and more recently some carry modern options like salmon sashimi and wraps.

A bit about Pruc Vlaardingse


Pruc runs Vlaardingse Haringhandel from a stall on the Western end of the Albert Cuypmarket in De Pijp "The Pipe,") a bit south of central Amsterdam's ring of canals, past the Heineken factory. He grew up in this neighborhood, in the NW corner of De Pijp, and has seldom left it, and never been out of the Netherlands.

A middle child of fourteen, he is the third generation in his family to run the stand, which they opened in 1916. Right behind him is one of the many Vishandels, brick-and-mortar stores selling fish, kibbling and other items - Pruc only sells haring in a bun or on a plate, with pickles or onions of you want them. A herring on a bun goes for €3.50, and doesn't leave you full: it is just enough to take the edge off before your pre-lunch or pre-dinner stroll.

Every day except Sunday, Pruc gets up at 6 AM, goes five blocks to his storage spot, and drives his 4 meter by 3 meter wooden stand and a barrel of herring, jars of pickles, onions and bags of paper plates and buns to the market, where he chops the onions, cuts the pickles into quarters lengthwise, and cleans the morning's herring, while he listens to American pop music... which is a thing here.


He is probably the last of his family to run the stand; as he is in a market, and not one of the shacks over a canal or on the street, he doesn't have the same inheritance restrictions that the other's face, but he finds it hard to make a living, although his herring is considered the best by many. Haringhandel owners have various stories about ownership, inheritance and licensing, noting that the local city hall only allows them to pass on their stands to family members; or that they are the last generation that will own the stand as a haringhandel, or they change the subject.

Where can I get one?

Most towns and cities in the Netherlands have haringhandels, and haring en broodje can be purchased at most vishandels. The only place in the US that I know of where you can get haring en broodje is that queen of smoked fish and herring, Russ & Daughters in New York City, and they have it available seasonally, starting in late June. It is one of the mildest herring preparations they serve.

1. Stubbe's Haring: Google Map: Stubbe's

2. Jonk Volendammer Haringhandel  Google Maps - Jonk


Haringhandel Jonk was established in 1987. In 2002, when the new metro line was built, the stall moved to their current location at the Spui, and has gone through some upgrades - it is the most modern looking of the Central Amsterdam Haringhandels. Their website says: "The owner Jan Jonk and his son Jack thought it was time for a more modern herring stall. "We are very happy about the new stall. It meets the latest conditions. We are ready for the future." You can see the next generation proudly serving their New Herring in buns and on plates, as well as some other fried seafood and salads.

3. Haringhandel Frens: Google Map: Haringhandel Frens

 

4. Haring & Zo Google Map: Haring & Zo

There are other haringhandels to be found to the south and north of Centraal, along major streets, if you walk south along Ferdinand Bollstraat, or in Amsterdam Noord at the end of Meeruwenlaan where it turns into Waddenweg. The ones to the south are shy of publicity and the internet...

The thing about pet spiders.

Oh, slavinken You attest to the fact that, if you wrap anything in bacon, it becomes fantastic. And, you stopped my weight-loss in it's tracks. Classic love/hate. Here, let me demonstrate how much I need to practice food photography:

Salvinken

It has been an interesting few months here in Amsterdam, complete with highs, lows, many visitors, great loss, a few wins, not-quite-as-many harring en broodje, a bunch of photography, financial terror, insomnia, some mounting of pictures on foam-core by hand, some remarkable heat, and some remarkable cold. Rain. There has not been enough writing, no studying of Dutch. I traveled to Hardinxveld and walked about that quaint, quiet town and did a decent shoot there.

In this episode's one-thing-leads-to-another story, the first two weeks of August were hot - 30+/ here with a ton of humidity. No AC here except in a few stores. You cool your place by a cross-breeze from front to back. Also, there are no screen doors. And, in my first floor shop, the windows don't open, so it is the doors. So, the insect population explodes, and invades the nice, shady indoors, mostly from the courtyards that are enclosed by every block, filled with greenery, short trees, detritus, because the street-level shops often don't use the street-level courtyards.

This apparently leads to a massive, consistent, persistent, apparently delighted spider population, small, large, huge webs, with whom one must form a sort of détente: they get as many of the bugs as they can, and you keep the walls clean but try not to, er, bug them too much in the corners so they can do their job. I'd like to think I'm taking after my sister the Buddhist when I occasionally move them outside when guests come by.

Then, in the middle of August, the temperature dropped to what Americans call 65°, and has pretty much stayed there - some rain, some sun, many clouds, some hope that I've chosen a good place to avoid global warming.  All I need is a boat for my (inland) back yard. You know, like every resident of New Orleans should have.

I got some part time gigs maintaining a few websites, and that has been challenging and entertaining, as I have ot produce content. Producing photographic content is easy. Producing written content is HARD.

Along the way there has been some very good beer, in small quantities. (A friend visited from NYC, which was entertaining, but I can no longer drink like I used to. tolerance is shot.)  There has been a lot of "Stone Soup".* I've discovered Slavinken.

I of course have a fantastic small local butcher, Nico, who perhaps unfortunately is right across the street, which as mentioned, is doing nothing good for my waist, very much like the fantastic beer. All the labels are in Dutch, which is instructive, and there are quite a few Dutch-specific preparations, including 'carpacciosalad' which is basically steak tartare; potato and other 'salads', and the aforementioned Slavinken.

Nico

Wikipedia says:

"Slavink is a Dutch meat dish consisting usually of ground meat called "half and half" (half beef, half pork) wrapped in bacon (the Dutch equivalent of bacon is, however, not smoked), and browned in butter or vegetable oil for about 15 minutes. "

My butcher wraps his around beef filet. He has other stuff:

"A variation called blinde vinken is made by wrapping ground veal in a thin veal cutlet. Slavinken and blinde vinken are usually prepared and bought at the butchery or the supermarket; a standard slavink, before cooking, weighs around 100 grams/less than 1/4 lb. The bacon is "glued" to the filling with transglutaminase, an enzyme that bonds proteins."

*All ingredients fall under 'if you are so inclined or have it on hand', based on the c. 1548 European folk tale:

STONE SOUP
- 3 cups leeks and/or a couple onions or other alums, chopped and very well washed
- clove garlic, peeled and crushed
- 3 tbsp olive oil or a big nut of butter
- Raid the fridge for fading vegetables, chopped: may include greens, lettuces, leftover potatoes, carrots, cooked beans, broccoli, cauliflower. Just no peppers, as they tend to throttle the rest of the flavors... but hey, maybe you really like peppers, it is a free country, suit yourself.
- leftover rice from Chinese delivery
- Salt, Pepper, Chili flakes, to taste, a teaspoon of thyme
- leftover tomato sauce or paste, if you go for that sort of thing
- Got bacon, spam, leftover lunch meat? Chop it and add it.
- Cup or two of white wine
- 2 Quarts, ± based on the amount of soup base you've generated and room in the soup pot, of veg, chicken, or other stock, or water.

1. Sweat the leeks/onions/garlic in olive oil or butter until clear and happy, with the herbs/spices
2. Add the vegetables, hard ones like carrots first, but not the greens, save them for last
3. Add wine, cook until bubbling for 10 minutes to reduce, add stock/water, cook at the lowest heat until the veggies are soft, usually about 30 min., but an afternoon on the stove making the house smell nice isn't going to hurt anyone
4. Add the leftover rice, lunch meat, or bacon
5. Add the greens, cook for another

Serve with toasted baguettes with some nice runny cheese spread over it, and a glass or three of sancerre or chablis.

Amsterdam, Spring 2018

April 2018

It has been an interesting month. Last Friday, I got notification that I can pick up my Residence Permit — I picked it up — this means I can stay 2 years. If I learn Dutch, I can re-apply to stay 5 (total?) and then apply for Netherlands citizenship.

All I have to do now is earn enough for housing, food, insurance, electricity, water, internet, gas, and that stuff that you wonder what happened to the rest of the money in your wallet and realize that it later went to q-tips, light bulbs, and a mysterious credit card entry labeled 'Goat rentals' which last you decide you might not really want to look into.

Meanwhile, taxes. Complicated! Quarterly Dutch filings, the Belastingdienst (NL Tax folks,) are right on top of things. It's an interesting exercise in financial management. They beat out the IND immigration people by weeks. Very attentive.

Amazingly, my horrendously expensive education finally earned me a few shekels doing tech resumes which made people happy, and, hopefully, some pro photography. I built a website, found out it was terrible, found a cheaper one, set up photo purchasing on it, fiddled with the tools, re-learned a bunch of DNS stuff, and considered doing User Interface Quality/Acceptance Testing for a living.

I've been visiting the Vishandels ('fishmongers'), and Harringhandels, the places that sell Herring-dogs, and I'm down to every three days or so.  (Thank you for all the concerned emails.) I'm starting to take notes. I may write an article, or even several - it seems a good thing to do with my time, although it will involve actual work, and unfortunately some eating, but the Amsterdam scene is ripe for some regular food writing.

I have been thinking about small countries. Having made some friends here, mostly related to the field of photography, but also neighbors, I've noticed that people here are highly direct and tolerant, and willing to share their stories, which is kind of what a street photographer or writer does. Or, exploits. Small country residents have fewer differences and seem to care less about them than the Giant US ofA. They are more approachable, too.

So, I've been working on my street photography game. 

Two cooks on a smoke break, De Pijp, Amsterdam

I started out photography in High School, and I got pretty decent, they even gave me a nice letter saying so, and that was a type of live shooting thing, with film which I processed from camera-store film to print, which made it all the harder and more enjoyable. I can't say I've got my game back.

I'm not the same person now, and I think I've forgotten how to do some parts of that right, specifically taking the actual shot. I think there's a digital thing I need to figure out. But, I've been practicing with friends and their kids, and they in combination tend to move a lot and fast, and that's both helping and making me nervous. I've also been meeting locals and hanging out with them.

I'm still not sure why people walk up to me and start sharing though, and it has happened while I've been hanging out with other Dutch people, at, say, a cafe outside or on a stoop, (the Dutch are great stoop-hangers, reminds me of 106th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on a summer night,) even when I'm sitting in the back of a group, and they tell me a thing or story, and then say bye and amble off, and the group I'm with comments, "Well. That was weird." And then I have to tell them about the other times.

Meanwhile, jobs, jobs, jobs... language, as that guy says; I am vexed at my inability to study Dutch regularly.  I usually resist change, and then go over a hump of some sort and make a thing habit, but it hasn't been working here. If I was fluent in both Dutch and English, I'd have it made, and I kinna really need to pick up the speed if I want to stay. The Rosetta Stone should help. At 53, about to be 54, learning languages is hard, and I'm not talking Dutch enough with the natives, though the shop keepers happily assume I'm Dutch when I'm not wearing a baseball cap and chatter away very fast.

My landlord offered me the apartment below, which has a storefront, just before my lease runs out on this one, which is interesting, but when I suggested I'd use the storefront, she ghosted me for one round, suggested I keep my residence upstairs while I lived downstairs, and as she's a bit ...interesting, I don't want to rock the boat. But that would make a mess of internet, gas, water, mail, and my Registration. The alternative is a painfully large downpayment on a new place, farther out but not much, maybe larger with better light. I like my shoppy, lived-in neighborhood, though. De Pijp is pretty interesting. Hoping for good luck there.

Amsterdam II

End-of-MArch, Beginning of April 2018

There are not many cities at Latitude 52.35 North. You have Battle Harbor Newfoundland, Canada, and Nikolski, Alaska, lots of Russia, and lots of other cold places. It is cloudy, it rains, it sleets, there is an occasional flash of hilarious sun and blue sky. There are some cities *north* of Amsterdam, but those people are nuts. I know this: several of them are very disturbed and entertaining friends of mine. They often liked to play evil characters in our D&D games, and they did some very bad things.

Uh, back to Amsterdam: Right now, there's some "Goddammit. Why not Hawaii? I mean, Hawaii, ...right?"  Hawaii is the only tropical/temperate climate in the world that's not dangerously, discouragingly chaotic to live in: South of France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, India, Indonesia all seem like a hot mess, for someone seeking The Least Amount of Annoyance. The whole equator, except Hawaii, is screwed, and Hawaii is a bastion of Liberalism. Normally that'd be great, but perhaps not under this regime.

Here I am, waiting for various documents, so that I can freelance. I prepare, I practice photography on a minuscule budget, I'm going to wedding boutiques and googling stuff. In a brief moment of terror, I misplaced my passport and all my apostilled (internationally certified,) documents, acquired with great mental and physical peril. I visit with my friends in Amsterdam-Noord. I walk around a lot building a mental map. Like many people with nothing to do, I'm inordinately busy.

I still have a bit of the Bilbo "I'm going on an adventure!" thing but finances being what they are, I hope to have until July at least, and there are a few promising things on the horizon.

As previously mentioned (see: Onions, Vol. 2) things are small: not just onions, but cars, tiny trucks, portions, motorized bicycles carrying six middle-schoolers at a clip, buckets in front of bicycles carrying two children, the rear-wheel bike platform that 7-year old girl was standing on in front of the Rijksmuseum, her hands on dad's shoulders while he pedaled blithely along. She wore no helmet. Concern for personal safety. Lots of small non-chain shops, selling kebbling (hot fried cod with a side of tartar sauce), clothes, photography equipment, meat, liquor, keys, food, lingerie, pastry and bread, coffee, 'coffee', you name it. The total number of bicycle helmets in the country, which, so far, approaches zero.

There's a lot of alert people — each time you have to cross the street as a pedestrian, you have to cross three to six lanes of lively, dangerous traffic: two bicycle lanes with people mostly going in the same direction at relatively high speed, who have the right of way and expect you to get the fuck out of it while they chat on phones, text, smoke cigarettes. Then two roadways often one in either direction of cars that are paying attention because if a car hits a bike an angry crowd assembles and summarily executes the car driver (that's what I was told) or gets run down by a tram, and one or two tram lines with 20-ton train cars that don't stop so fast. I nearly got creamed by a tram grabbing my hat off the windy street at the Dam Square. The driver rang the bell at me longer than usual, ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-ding, one or two being usual, more than that getting you a look... and when I boarded and thanked him for not running me over, laughed and said, "Almost!". Then I went home and put easily-found emergency numbers in my wallet.

I have a serious problem however. I'm wrestling with an addiction. It's not every day, but I'm irresistibly drawn to the insidious harring en broodje, a sandwich with two slices of Hollandse Nieuwe Haring in what looks like a hot-dog bun but is real bread, sprinkled with a tablespoon of raw onions and with three to five pickle slices. I want to have one a day, sometimes two by accident, but I'm hitting about every other day. I think about them all the time. It's really very disturbing. Some places use a pickle spear. I like the spear.

The herring is mild and smooth, boneless, pleasantly fishy, and cut by the pickles and onions.

The place selling these often has a host of other fried fish (kebbling, lekkerbek, shrimp, mussels, in various serving sizes, seared, sliced tuna in containers, smoked salmon, eel ('paling'), and a host, a plethora of other immediately edible fish things most of which you can get onna bun or hot in a paper dish with a side of sauce, which fish-munchies you generally order to eat right there, just outside the store's open-air no-doors front, in the -2° weather, steam coming from your hot food and your mouth, at one of those 3.5 meter tall cable-spool tables, on the street, onions going everywhere, and the world goes quiet about you.

Ok, not really, there are half-a-dozen people sharing and chatting and being friendly and telling you weird stories. I'll tell you about the Dutch-randomly-accosting-you-with-a-random-story thing when I put it together: right now it's a head-scratcher. But I know I'm not alone in observing it.

Amsterdam I

Around March 1, 2018.

AT FIRST everything seems 25% more expensive, due to the € exchange rate. But once you start doing things, food is about the same in the Netherlands, and housing is about half as much as NYC. A friend has a 4-bedroom apartment for his family for €1,400.

There are many other weirdnesses.  The toilets are different.  the showers are inscrutable - who thought that putting a piece of glass half-way across a slippery bowl-shaped tub was a good idea for a shower curtain?  It's just not, ok? Showering in this configuration is bloody death-defying. Clothes dryers are rare, clothes washers are small, the food is disappointing, many vegetables come in plastic bags, there's no metal/can recycling. The onions are small.

Its a pretty great country, though, in general.  The public transport - trams and trains, subways and buses, work well, and the pricing makes sense... as a former New Yorker, I'm pretty put-out by that. I have a not-very secret desire to be a tram driver. People exiting shops in Amsterdam proper have a smile on their faces more often than not. Almost everyone speaks English.

The beer is fantastic, the bar menus, not so: tosti (pressed grilled cheese sandwiches), burgers (very rare), a meatball in gravy, hard sausage and cheese, omelettes. Most things are a bit smaller, except the seats on the bus - lots of very tall people here, tallest of any country or so I read. There is also a cultural attitude around getting along, and contributing to the general good. People in cars don't honk at each other impatiently. Taxes are high, but not a lot higher than the US, and go to infrastructure.

I stayed in an AirBnB on a street called Princengracht - the Prince's Moat - about 10 minutes south of Centraal Station. It looked out over a square that had a playground and a playhouse/restaurant. Huge windows, UNESCO building.  And, a feature shared with many houses in Amsterdam: a long set of terrifyingly steep stairs, 6 inches deep, and a spiral staircase set on top of that. I found there was indeed something scarier than going up or down these with a 50-lb suitcase - going up or down them when the light times out, in the dark!

My goal is to move here, so there's the DAFT - Dutch-American Friendship Treaty - and a lawyer. Consulting with the lawyer, my first assignment was to find a place to live where I can register as a resident at my local City Hall.

While at the AirBnB, I engaged in my usual "if it doesn't work, fix it," routine. I oiled door hinges, set the clock and replaced the light bulb on the stove, fixed a leak on the washing machine, took all the kitchen knives to the sharpener because cooking with them made me sad, fixed a leg on the faux-zebra chair, fixed a chain on a blind, and some other things.

Letting the host know I had done these things, and explaining I was there searching for a more permanent place, turns out she manages properties, rental and AirBnB, mostly working remotely from Portugal, where she now lives with her husband, who has had five bypass operations. She comes back about once a month to work on them. She had a tenant leaving a place down in De Pijp (pronounced de pipe,) a slightly fancy neighborhood, and offered to let me have a look.

It was a nice apartment, all on one level, 15 steps up from the street, and I put down 3 months on it. It is big enough and has enough doors to have a guest over, or even two, for a few days. Current resident, a pleasant young woman name redacted, is Indonesian, moved here by her company, just bought a place.  She said the landlord was very pleasant and predictable, even though there might have been some issue around late rent. I described the apartment, cost and area to my friend and he said, "Dude, you scored." Satisfaction in getting a good place for a good value was just as great as the one you get in NYC.

It helps if you say you are looking for just six months or a year to try out your new business and are willing to prepay rent, often called a short-stay lease. Mine is for 6 months; we printed one in Dutch off the Internet, I went over it with Google Translate's camera feature, and we signed.  I move in on Monday the 29th.

My second assignment is to get an opening balance for your new business from a Dutch accountant.  After trying to save €125 by using my own accountant, I realized I was going to have to screw around explaining how to work with my lawyer for three hours, and relented and used the layer's accountant, and had my accounting statement in about 3 hours instead of a week or more, last Friday.

Lawyer churned out my Visa application under DAFT by Sunday night. Sent it in by privatized, registered mail by Monday noon. Should have an appointment with Dutch Immigration in 2-3 weeks, at which point I'll get a BSN (Dutch Social Security number,) and will be able to work freelance and have clients, which means I can create or run a business, but I can't "get a job" or be an employee with an existing corporation or business here, even part time, except as a consultant.  If I do get a full-time IT Project Management job, that company will have to sponsor me, and I'll have to change my Visa application.

In the event, I'm still looking for a steady job as a project manager in IT with a company that will sponsor me, something of a long-shot, and, networking with photographers and models who know photographers.  I'm going to do a faux-wedding shoot in the apartment, by way of getting some wedding pictures into my portfolio, and see if a local photographer needs a helper/apprentice/second camera. I did a couple of portrait shoots with local models in the lovely airbnb. I also walk around the city creating a mental map and taking photographs.

I've had endless sausage and cheese, been unable to find stew meat at the market (oh, for England's gently-priced butcher shops!) Wine is plentiful and mostly comparably priced to US prices. Ingredient names are a pleasant puzzle - some are cognates, some not at all. I have not been eating out at all (with the exception of the herring, see below,) or drinking very much.  A Boston-based US model and advocate came by with her man, and we had a lovely dinner!

When the AirBnB ran out on Dec. 15, moved in with my friends and their 4 kids, ages 6-18, in Amsterdam-Noord... he owes me about a year of couch time, from about 15 years ago, and it has actually been rather fun.  I've been cooking dinner for them - tonight is spaghetti and meatballs.  We tried to see if I could just rent a room from them, but that didn't work out. A neighbor, Ben, is a retired teacher, knows German, French, English, Spanish and Dutch, and comes over and tutors us on Sundays.

One thing that is pretty amazing are the snack stands, in mall parking lots outside the supermarket, and on bridges over the canals... an amazing selection of herring, Hollandse Nieuwe - new holland herring, in January (! You can only get it in NYC at Russ & Daughters starting in June,) served sliced or on a nice hot dog-like bun but better, with chopped raw onion and pickles, a dish called Matjesbrötchen.  It is heavenly, and I try to have one every day. Another is the bakeries, which are plentiful and filled with a vast selection of fattening sweet and savory pastries, and loaves of bread, and sandwiches.

Still to come: Indonesian food, farmers markets, discount grocery stores (thanks, !) wandering through Jordaan district in search of a sandwich, the Dutch Resistance Museum, some not-Van-Gogh/other museums, the FOAM photography gallery, getting paid to do something.

Walthamstow

Sorry this is all out of order, but then, we are in no particular order. And we found this half-finished, this morning. Written around December 15, 2017.

Walthamstow: https://goo.gl/maps/vnT7U85WHH82

About 45 minutes by double-decker bus northeast of London is the village of Walthamstow. Getting there from Gatwick was quite a slog dragging 30 kilos of not-very-many personal belongings, all that you thought necessary to start a new life.  That's 66 pounds, which unless you practice a lot, or have wheels on your luggage, is a great deal of weight to carry. Alas, I did not have wheels or practice, a mistake I shall not repeat. My friend had a nice EMS backpack.

It is actually two villages: quaint "old" Walthamstow, whose main street is Orford Road, and the new more modern center of town, about a 10 minute walk westward.

We stayed in Connaught Court, which used to be the town hall on the main street of old Walthamstow, and is now a set of apartments: in front, up top, it has a dark, square, shingled third-story turret with a small fence around the peak that would be appropriate on an old haunted house. Behind that, there are two stories of apartments arranged around a gated square courtyard that you can imagine people riding horses into, cloppity-cloppity-clop, where a groom, probably named Freddie, would hold the reigns while you dismounted, and then walk it off for a good brushing and some oats.

Arriving in 'old' Walthamstow, we were early for AirBnB check-in, and stopped at the pub across the street, called ...the Village Pub. The street 150 yards long consisted of a few residences like ours, and row of shops with residences above, all except ours two-story buildings: 3 pubs, a deli/bakery, a wine store, a small supermarket, 4-5 restaurants/eateries, a sausage store (OMG A SAUSAGE STORE) called the East London Sausage Co., an art gallery, a few package/bodega-like stores (OFF LICENSE... meaning, they have a license to sell you liquor you can take off premises,) and the Queens Arms pub. Apparently, "The Queen's Arms" is an extraordinarily popular name for pubs in the UK. A local street market on Saturdays had many marvelous things, including cheese. a lot of cheese.

We had snacks of "Houmous" and shrimp scampi at the bar, and a couple of decent pints served by a surly Eastern European who seemed pretty annoyed at having to pour beer.  Our not-very-modest pile of bags were widely ignored by the locals, as were we. We went and checked in with our host across the street, a charming, willowy 30-ish redhead. We returned only once to the Village Pub, the evening we got Bobbed.

In the event, a few nights later in for a pint of something different than at The Queen's Arms, and oblivious to Rory-the-bartender's urgent warning look, I asked the fellow to my left, Bob, what he thought of the Brexit. I know the words he replied with were technically English, although, a foreshortened, non-rhotic, h-less, T-glottaled, metaphor-filled, alveolar stopless version of English that left it quite a puzzle. Eventually, I think probably that he didn't hold with this whole EU thing, had some troubles getting his pension from the government after a lot of years of service, and there were troubles with the wife.

The Rory-the-bartender rolled his eyes every few minutes.

Bob talked on.

My friend and I exchanged a look about 10 minutes in... no way to get a word in edgewise. Not a chance. We managed to escape politely deep into the teens, or was it more, thanks to a brief opening made by the compassionate Rory. As we hit the street, we heard Bob continuing his curiously dialectic discourse.

The rest of our pubbing occurring at the Queens Arms, where we became regulars, partly because we took the time to learn every staff member's name, and partly because we went there most days for 2 weeks for a pint, or on a few occasions, dinner, and mostly because they had lots of really great beer that was quite cheaper than elsewhere, usually £3, though we got a feeling that we were getting a 'local's price' or maybe a 'not an annoying pain' price of £4,30... our budget was pretty tight. It was clean; lots of parents and children from 4-6 pm, and a good place to stop at on the way home from the bus station after a day of walkabout.

Double-decker buses are fantastic.  For one pound fifty (no cash, only your Oyster card please, and keep it topped up,) you can cross all of London in any direction in about two-and-a-half hours. You can sit upstairs in the front with your camera, watching people and bicycles dodging out of the way, a wide variety of ethnic people going about their London day, buildings, neighborhoods, every shop in every town center; you can take different buses with different routes to see different towns along the way, thus expanding your mental map of London, and if you are going to spend a month there, you need a mental map.

Every bus trip in London on a double decker is more than a little like that bus trip at the beginning of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - the Knight Bus scene. How they turn that large tall vehicle around those sharp corners and hairpin turns, along narrow streets fitting only one bus in one direction at a time, and manage not to destroy people and the bus over the frequent speed bumps, while missing bicycles, other buses, trees, signs, roadside fences, posts, and cars by a very few inches, is more than a bit magical. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FArmRa092H0

Walthamstow 'downtown' has a bus/rail/Tube station. I like the tube, or trains of any sort for that matter, such a pleasant and efficient means of travel. If only all the trains leading out of London weren't such a decentralized, expensive mess. Downtown also has a long outdoor mall, the longest in much of London, which I was assured wasn't nearly as long nowadays, that ran for about 1500 feet.

On the street were many of those blue-tarp tents you see at outdoor markets, hosted by a largely Muslim population: underneath the tents were greenmarket things: fruits and vegetables, a few of them strange and new even to me; clothing; two men who had baskets of every kind of power cable, adapter and charger you could imagine; a wide selection of luggage; household amenities like toothbrushes paste band aids; clothing; cell phone accessories; a few food carts; and other miscellany.

Arrayed in shops behind and in gaps between the tents on the wide walkway are many many shops: banks, cell phone stores, Caribbean/Pakistani/Indonesian specialty food markets, fabric shops, five butchers (four halal, one crowded British, with lots of amazingly priced Scottish beef in oddly-named cuts), two fishmongers, a couple of pubs and countless and diverse small, inexpensive ethnic restaurants.  You wonder how they all stay in business.

Days were spent catching the bus or Tube into Central London to engage in the activities outlined in the prior London story. Evenings were spent cooking (pasta, oatmeal), reading, or at the pub: my friend did some Tindering and went out a few times, eventually running off in late December, as our trip wrapped up, with a chef from Plymouth.

Often I'd go across to the (OMG) East London Sausage Co. and look at the 16-or-so kinds of sausage arrayed, with a dreamy trance-like look on my face that annoyed the proprietor; staring at the streaky bacon, a few steaks, shanks, lamb, chicken, eggs... and get some inexpensive garlic or Toulouse or Old Spot or venison sausage from the gruff butcher. With this in hand, and a proper, fist-sized onion, I'd make bangers and mash for us for dinner, along with some Swiss chard, or, surprise surprise, brussels sprout greens, which seemed to come with every order bangers and mash, anywhere. A lot like collard greens, not as soul-destroying as kale.

Lots of exercise walking about, lots of areas of London learned, didn't get to some places I wanted to, namely Trafalgar Square and the Naval Observatory at Greenwich. I did have several very good savory pies. I look forward to returning.

It was nice to be living in an active village, clean, middle class. I could imagine moving there... actually yes, I did imagine moving there.

London I

I arrived in London December 1, 10:30 AM, (2017) or so.  It was grey - usual for me for London, but there were some nice sunny days, too.

Customers sitting down, lunch only

Over the next few weeks, dined at several places that make me happy: twice at Sweetings, just Southeast of St. Paul's Cathedral, a simple, ancient lunch fish place where they serve about a dozen kinds of very fresh fish, two kinds of oysters, smoked eel or trout, fat scallops roasted in bacon, and a thing called a Black Velvet, which, at Sweetings, is a dented, worn and loved silver tankard of Guinness and champagne: first made by a bartender at Brooks's Club in London in 1861, to mourn the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's Prince Consort. My server told me she has a customer that comes in and drinks ten of them, which I was not able to do, even a little bit.

Begonia, at Sweetings, London

You enter for (only) lunch, you sit with your server-for-life, (mine, Begonia, from the Canary Islands, has been there 9 years,) you order an appetizer, some of the simple, unfussy cooking here - fried grilled or baked dover sole, hake, cod, salmon... perhaps some lobster mash.  You eat in the peaceful sunlight, get to know your neighbors a bit, and have a better time than you would have at the Grand Central Oyster Bar in New York. http://www.sweetingsrestaurant.co.uk/menu/

Another fine place to eat simple, unfussy food a few times was St. Johns Bread and Wine, the eastern outpost of Fergus Henderson's 'Nose-to-tail' empire of five places. Cauliflower, Leeks and White Beans; Beetroot, Red Cabbage and Creme Fraiche; Snails and Oakleaf; Dried Salted Pig's Liver; Radishes and Egg; Ham and Gubbeen; Fennel and Berkswell Cheese; Smoked Haddock; Mussels and Leek; Beef Mince on Duck Fat Toast; Pork Pies; Roasted Marrow with toasted bread and parsley salad; A Cheese course, Madelines, Eccles Cake and Lancashire - very simple old school British cooking at its finest, in a dining room that is painted white, unadorned except for coat hooks and a counter of bread for sale.  No music, no rugs, no art, just the wild, unusual food, and company. https://stjohnrestaurant.com/a/menus/6

If you like your food fussy and complicated, this is not your place: I took my friend and a young chef there: she ordered a single dish (cod's roe on toast, kind of like a taramasalata mayo) and knowing nothing of the chef or it's history, or, apparently, the history and current state chefs sharing her profession, pronounced it 'rubbish!', and pledged her devotion to multi-course tasting menus of clever combinations of half-a-dozen ingredients. All based on one dish. I wasn't impressed with her opinion.

Under her suggestion, later we went to a pace called the Frog and had the tasting menu for dinner and I was confirmed and had a disappointing evening. http://www.thefrogrestaurant.com/menus/  I also went to the Jugged Hare and had a decent meal. It is possible to pick delicious bargains at these places and not spend an enormous amount, but you have to pass on the drinks, and choose wisely. 

Some British drink an enormous, disabling amount. Out on the street in front of the pubs in the cold. I didn't try to keep up: young people lying on the curb dresses up, no coats, showing their undies and laughing, young men throwing up or arguing or staggering around. 

I did, however, have many good (full) pints of English bitter (NYC pints are no longer a pint, they are a sham.) 

I have mastered saying "sorry," at every possible opportunity, have come to recognize, without taking my glasses off the coins for a penny, two pence, five pence, ten pence, 20 pence, 50 pence, a pound, and two pounds.

I visited the Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery, the Churchill WWII Museum under Parliament, and the British Museum.  The British Museum is/can be endless, especially if you go quarterly - I went in September and there was all new stuff now in December! You can spend several days there and not go over the same thing twice.  The Tate was a bit like a larger MOMA, but without Tilda Swinton in a glass box being weird.

The other museums are all startling, sometimes a bit worn (Churchill's needs a refresh,) and I hope to hit some other places before I leave on Jan 2.

I went to Mattins at St Paul's Cathedral, on a couple of early Sundays, the home of the Episcopalian Church I was raised under.  Though an atheist, I do enjoy Mattins - a purely sung service with its choral work, majesty and beauty, and the chance to tell Oprah Winfrey in my head that my sense of wonder is doing just fine without her cruel, capricious, childish 'god' and give her a virtual finger-up, as they sometimes call it here.

I rode three kinds of buses, buses everywhere: I was staying in the NE, in Walthamstow and Upper Clapton/Hackney, so the bus was cheaper, and I got to see a lot more of the villages/townships as I went about my touring, and it was a lot less expensive and more photogenic, especially up top up front on one of the two kinds of double-decker bus. One has one entrance and one set of stairs up front - the other, three entrances, and front and back stairs. The other is a regular bus but still has lots of handholds and easily reached buttons for getting off, better than NYC.

I went to book stores, camera stores, walked until my feet hurt, went to a photography exhibit including shots of Prince, at Proud near Trafalgar Square and the National Portrait Gallery: https://www.proudonline.co.uk/ ...  I also went to The Photographer's Gallery and saw some amazing works: https://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/ including Orkney and Shetland Islands in early winter.

Time to move on, almost. But I do love London, and I'll not likely get a chance to do that again.