Port Zélande, Netherlands –
“Which one of you is into cooking?”
It was the first thing out of Dore’s mouth the moment we first met our flat-mates for the weekend. No “Hi, good to meet you.” Not even any effort to feel them out and see if they cared about food, much less cooking it.
And from the looks on their faces, they didn’t. Or at least they hadn’t considered doing any while here.
Nope, Dore was determined to leap head first into recreating our flat-mate experience from the previous time we were here.
It was our second time to venture to the great biennial Anorak gathering by the sea known as Marillion Weekend, where this little-known band and their fans take over the Center Parcs resort in Port Zélande for a three-day love fest of concerts, band trivia, and other assorted band-related activities. An event so obscure that it sells out in a micro-second the moment tickets go on sale about nine-months earlier. It’s as if the fans from around the world (there was something like 52 countries represented at the event) are all poised at their computers, with their mouse hovering over the Buy button, waiting for it to light up. As a result, the band added two additional weekends, one each in Montréal, Canada and Wolverhampton, UK to try and satiate the demand.
We had ventured to the mother ship gathering four years earlier and had been assigned two wonderful flat-mates, Wes and Christine (who just happen to be the owners of Case Study Coffee in Portland. If you’re ever in Portland, go visit them, and tell them that I sent you). They had come prepared to cook gourmet dinners every night (I even accused them of packing more food than clothing in their bags). Since cooking is one of Dore’s favorite artistic pursuits, she was in heaven, working side-by-side in the tiny kitchenette of our cabin with Christine every night. We ate very well that weekend.
But that was 2009, and this was 2013. Wes and Christine were not our flat-mates this time. No, this time it was a father-daughter duo from Australia, and they obviously didn’t feel the same way about food that Dore, Wes, Christine, nor I felt. No team cooking would be happening here this weekend.
Dore was not a happy camper.
We found that one of the restaurants in the central resort facility had a pretty good pea soup, and since that was one of the dishes Dore had been determined to eat on this trip to the Netherlands, it partially made up for not having the same food-related experience as we had four years earlier.
So, the flat-mate part of the weekend being a bust, and not really interested in spending all of our time cooking only for ourselves, we had to resign ourselves to enjoying the other things the weekend had to offer. Meeting the band, buying band merchandise, seeing other musicians perform, having numerous beers with Alan Reed, the former lead singer with Pallas, and going to the concerts every night (which we totally enjoyed).
Somehow, we still managed to have a good time, despite not being able to recreate the previous time we had been here…
For more photos of the Marillion Weekend, click here.
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