ExpatLens: Have you herd of cows?
The first European who reached New Zealand was a Dutch explorer: Abel Tasman. Centuries later, a PhD found himself equally astonished by a country of mysteries, with as far as he could see – not a cow in sight.
Cows are roaming on the UT campus, chewing cud in the golden sun – even on rainy days, and generally they feel euphoric, all the while grazing in the meadows on campus. Most students enjoy the Twente landscape, when the weather is pleasant.
Andrew Fussell, however, joined the Optic-Physics group last winter at a time when cloudless skies represented only an elusive desire for the sun. When you’re a stranger in a strange land, it’s sometimes impossible to notice what is right underneath your nose. Not guilty of ignorance, he wanted to know if anyone had ‘herd’ or seen cows? Once discovered, he felt the first pangs of nostalgia for his homeland.
‘I recently attended a lunch meeting, where I was served a container of milk, along with my meal, and this struck me as odd in a number of ways. But it also got me thinking: ‘Where are all of the cows?’ In New Zealand, we have approximately four million cows, 40 million sheep, and four million people, which go to show that the cows have almost started to outnumber the people. You do not have to go far to see some form of farm life. They will find you on the roads while driving or walking somewhere. As a child, I enjoyed frequent trips to my uncle’s farm, where I would chase the sheep, be chased by the cows and sometimes even be shocked by the electric fence. It was all part of growing up in my homeland.
In my country, we have a breed of cows called Friesian, originating from the Netherlands, so I knew that there must be cows somewhere in the Netherlands! I didn’t know very much about the real ‘Dutch life’ before I came here: all I knew was that Friesian cows came from here and so did André Rieu (he is very popular in New Zealand). However since arriving here, I had not met either of them. I was sure one day I’d find the illustrious Dutch cows, and be sure to thank them for my lunchtime milk.
Yeah, I might grumble a little bit about Dutch licorice and elaborate too much on its peculiar taste. But in all honesty, nothing tastes better with my glass of milk than a packet of Dutch licorice. Yet the main issue is there are so many varieties to choose from, that it’s hard to decide which licorice to eat. In New Zealand, we don’t have much of a licorice selection, so the choice becomes easy. Nevertheless, this is not the case in the Netherlands, there are so many varieties: hard, soft, sweet, salty, and double salty. I will just have to try them all, even if I can’t find a sympathetic cow!’
Leila Nahidi Azar
Andrew Fussell, PhD candidate, Optical Sciences group, Faculty of Science and Technology Photo: Gijs van Ouwerkerk
