It’s a cliché. Farmers mostly stay on their land, and no horse could get them into the big city.
Not necessarily true, as I now know.
Since yesterday, I’ve met a potato farmer who dared to make the long journey from northeastern Groningen to Berlin. His farm is in Roodeschool, which isn’t just in the northeast of the Netherlands, but also in the northeast of the northernmost province. And it’s the last train station in the Netherlands. That’s where everything ends. (Okay, there’s also Eemshaven, but for the sake of convenience, I’ll leave that out of this column for now).
That potato farmer from Roodeschool is the father of my former roommate from Groningen. She’s the reason I even know what a farmer is and what he does, why everyone talks about potatoes in August, and that it’s actually possible—to live on the land, bike kilometers to school, see nothing but barren plains, and still survive.
This farmer and his wife (who does at least as much work on the farm and also handles the paperwork) are now waiting for me on Knesebeckstraße. In front of a nice hotel. “Wonderful! Everything! This! The city! And Potsdam! And the traffic! Brilliant!” they exclaim as I approach. They’ve been in the city for three days already, so they’ve seen a bit of it.
When I heard they were going to Berlin, I suggested taking them out for the day. I stayed with them once, years ago—sat at their kitchen table, admired the enormous barns and the mountains of potatoes, and asked them all about how it all works: where they sell them and whether you can make a living from it.
I learned something new from them again this time, too. As we sit on bus 100, traveling from the west to the east of the city, they tell me that they often go on vacation around this time of year. The potatoes are in the ground; now it’s just a matter of waiting, so May is a great time to take a break from the farm and do something for the body and mind. It’s not their first time in a big city. They’re driving to Denmark, visited Dresden a few years ago, are interested in history, and don’t mind walking for hours on end.
It’s a real treat to show them around. They ask me all sorts of questions, and I regularly have to consult Wikipedia to answer them. They thank me, pay for my Flammkuchen, and gaze in fascination at the remains of the Wall on Bernauer Straße. They know a lot about the two Germanys, followed everything closely back in the ’80s, and almost feel sorry that I was only 10 years old when the Wall fell. Because otherwise, my memories might have been just a little bit more exciting.
We’re waiting for the subway. “That’s so nice, isn’t it? That you can see exactly how long you have to wait! Look, just two more minutes. And they tell you exactly which stations are coming up. You don’t get that on our buses.”
They think the city is wonderful. And they mean it. They look around with wide eyes, and I’m glad they’re having a good time. Tomorrow they’ll head back to the quiet of their countryside. Back to the barn and the tractor. Back to all those hectares of land with nothing but open fields stretching out behind them.
Every now and then, they might think of me and how many minutes it will be before my next subway leaves.
Mooi! X