Grand Café Milligers

Wait a minute - we're not in Scheveningen? If you'd blindfold and kidnap me and drop me at Grand Café Milligers, I might guess at first that this is a beach club in Scheveningen. It's got it all: unfinished wooden walls, chesterfields gathered around cozy fireplaces, wooden decorations and soul music on the sound system. And at first glance, there's the beach in front of it and the sea. But that's not the sea, it's a large lake and the beach is surrounded by grasslands.

But no, we're in Zwolle and the lake is the Milligerplas, a large lake in Stadshagen, a modern suburb of the provincial city in which I was born and where I grew up. My mother lives here, nowadays, in a large appartment overlooking the Milligerplas and the farmlands beyond it. Rihanna Gaga and I left The Hague early this morning to visit her. That's an almost two hour train trip, after which my mum picked us up from the station in Zwolle. Rihanna Gaga was all sweetness during the entire trip. We chatted, she did some drawing, she played with her doll and then we chatted some more. She wanted me to tell her stories and we sang together, on a Monday morning rush hour on one of the most busy commuting tracks of the country. I don't know if the people going to their jobs appreciated our company of two having such a great time together.

Now, there's five of us at Grand Café Milligers: we are joined by my mum and my nephew and niece, the son and daughter of one of my brothers, who are staying over with their grandmother during their spring break. Rihanna Gaga has a great time: her nephew is seven and her niece is ten and it's always nice to spend some time with older kids who she can look up to and learn from. We order with the very friendly waitress who shows an admirable amount of patience with the chaos of three kids trying to order and two adults who have difficulties understanding the menu (in our defense: it really is a bit unclear what belongs to the lunch and what to the dinner part of the menu). I  have a gamba salad with French fries, Rihanna Gaga has a pancake, the two kids have French fries and that quintessential Dutch snack, a kroket. My mum has a croque monseur. It's nice to spend some time with my brother's kids. They live quite far away, in Groningen and of course when we were living in Tunisia we hardly saw them at all. Before that, there was a nasty family quarrel and all together, I really missed a large part of them growing up. Which is one of the reasons why I made sure to travel up to Zwolle and spend the day here, so Rihanna Gaga could get to know her cousins a bit better. The other reason is that every once in a while I have to be in Zwolle anyway for an appointment with my personal life coach (which is a horrible term, but I have no idea what else I should call the woman I pay for helping me to sort out some of the things about myself that bother me).

Being the only decent place to eat out in the area and with its top location overlooking the lake, Milligers could get away with a lot, because customers have no other choice, really. So it's quite admirable they don't even try to get away with anything. Serive is very good, a lot of effort clearly went into creating a pleasant atmosphere and the food is nice. I always love going here with my mum.

The kids go out and play alongside the lake. I watch them running around while I chat with my mum. When the three of them return, they all have a yellow nose from smelling the dandelions. This is a new favourite pastime from Rihanna Gaga: picking flowers and offering them to people to smell them. Her cousins are very sweet kids for humouring their little cousin - I imagine older kids don't always have patience with kids of Rihanna Gaga's age, but she's being pampered by the two of them who go out of their way to play with her. After I've paid and get ready to go to my appointment, I hear my mum announce to the three of them that now there'll be icecream. Granny's spoiling them!