Guus Bosman

When you come back to your hometown after two years, you'll notice the changes. The bakery has a new owner (although the personnel is partially the same), the Kroon clothing store is out of business (which is no surprise since there was nobody ever there), the library moved to the same building as my mother's school and the old building is now in use for the biljart club, the Beurs is called the Oude Beurs again but is sadly closed and will be demolished, just like one of the three old churches.

And other things stay the same.

The butcher 'Van het Riet' is still there, and the Duizendpoot (which was Poot until years ago), the cute Wieringermeer museum is still there (open on Saturday afternoon's and by appointments), and of course the grocery store which I'm looking forward to to visit just to ogle all the familiar-but-now-slightly-unknown brands and products, including the wonderful and super cheap cheeses.

My parents house has changed some too, with a new kitchen, light in color and without the old piano. The living room is nicely light and more spacey now. New positions for the plates in the kitchen though. The server for the website is still going strong, but it's more noisy than it was two years ago. The hard drives and fans must be wearing out after 5+ years of non-stop use. When I went up to the attic I found a smoke detector that was beeping every few minutes to warn it's losing its charge; that battery lasted five year also, amazing. I think there's another one up there.

Around the village of Middenmeer things are changing also. There's now a huge area of land with hothouses, for tomatos, peppers etc. The number of windmills hasn't significantly increased recently. There's a plan to create an artificial lake between the old island of Wieringen and the Wieringermeer, connecting the island with the mainly through bridges, in the hope to attract more tourism to the area. I understand that desire but somehow it doesn't feel right to reinundiate parts of the polder, only 50 years after it was reclaimed from the sea.