The least Dutch place in the Netherlands

Before I left the Netherlands I had a promise to keep to my cousin Sanne and her husband Erwin - to visit them in Limburg, the least Dutch place in the Netherlands. Their apartment, in a village close to the point where the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany meet, looks out over rolling hills, fields sprinkled with cows, forests, monasteries and half-timbered farmhouses. Even the language is different and, for me anyway, incomprehensible. Together we walked in the hills (not something you can say often in the Netherlands), went cycling, watched cheesy movies and played Scrabble in Dutch. We also visited a Hundertwasser building originally designed for New Zealand but built in Limburg instead - you can expect a news story about that at some time in the future.

It turns out that climate change is not completely bad. It means, for example, that the Dutch now make a palatable white wine - which Sanne and I are sampling here - because the climate of Limburg, in the southern Netherlands, now resembles that of northern France.