Art, Food, and Fun

#### Rotterdam · Sunday 20 September 2026 · 14:00

On 14 May 1940, Rotterdam lost its entire historic centre in about fifteen minutes. What it did next is the interesting part: it decided not to rebuild what was lost, but to invent something else instead. 🕊️

That decision is why Rotterdam looks like nowhere else in the Netherlands — and it's the reason this hunt exists. For the second chapter of Quest, we're going to read a city that has lived two lives, on foot, in competing teams, one riddle at a time.

***

##### 🗺️ How it works

You'll be split into teams of four and released into the city. From there it's you, your team, and the streets: solving riddles on foot, working out what you're looking at, and figuring out where to go next.

A WhatsApp hunt master feeds you the next envelope as you go — so the trail unfolds live, and the story builds as you solve it. 📱

The route walks you through what survived, what came back, and what the city put there instead — the fragments of the old Rotterdam still standing, the things that were deliberately restored, and the audacious new city that grew in the gap. By the end you'll have seen the whole argument the city had with itself, without anyone ever giving you a lecture. 😏

***

##### 🧠 What you actually need to know

Nothing. Really.

No knowledge of Rotterdam, no Dutch, no history required. Nothing is quizzed, nothing is memorised. Every riddle can be solved by looking at what's in front of you — and by searching for whatever you don't recognise.
And to be clear: phones aren't just allowed, you'll need them. 📲

***

##### 🍻 And then — food and drinks by the water

After roughly 2.5 hours of walking, we regroup and finish the day together with food and drinks by the water — the traditional part where the winning team gloats, the losing teams explain exactly how they were sabotaged, and everyone compares the riddles they got hopelessly stuck on. 🏆

***

##### 🗓️ Practical info

• 📅 When: Sunday 20 September 2026 · 14:00
• 📍 Meeting point: Stadhuisplein, Rotterdam
• ⏱️ Duration: about 2.5 hours of walking, then food and drinks together
• 👥 Format: teams of four — come with friends, or get placed with new ones
• 💶 Price: €10 — includes your briefing pack and prizes for the winning team
• 🌐 Language: English

What to bring: shoes you can walk in, a phone with WhatsApp and enough battery, a contactless bank card, and a coat if the sky looks like Rotterdam. ☔

***

##### 👀 Who's this for?

Anyone who likes puzzles, cities, mild chaos, and the particular joy of arguing with three other people about what a cryptic clue means. You don't need to know Rotterdam — honestly, not knowing it makes it better. Come alone and meet a team, or bring your own crew and go to war with everyone else. 🔍

Teams of four. One city. Two lives.

RSVP and claim your place. 👇

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#### Leiden · Friday 25 September 2026 · 19:00 · (address shared after payment)

Around 1900, a bottle of Riesling from one small hill in Germany cost more than Château d'Yquem. Then the world forgot. This is the evening we remember. 🍷

For the eighteenth chapter of Tell Me Wine, we go somewhere very narrow and very deep: the Saar, a cold, slender valley near the Luxembourg border, barely twelve kilometres long, where Riesling clings to brutally steep slopes of blue Devonian slate — rock that's been there for 400 million years. 🪨

And we spend the whole evening with one producer, on essentially one hill. Sixteen wines. One grape. That's the whole night.

***

##### 👤 Why Peter Lauer

Because this is what happens when a genuinely brilliant hand meets a site the world had stopped paying attention to.

The Lauer family has farmed in the village of Ayl for over 175 years, and the estate is run today by Florian Lauer — who quietly redrew the map of the Saar after taking over some twenty years ago.

Suddenly everyone had to notice that this valley, and one particular sleeping giant of a vineyard, was among the finest places in Germany for dry Riesling — something historically very un-Mosel — and that a completely different kind of sparkling wine was possible here.

Lauer is one of the very few German growers who reach the top level in three separate disciplines at once: dry Riesling, sweet Riesling, and traditional-method sparkling. And there's something quietly radical in how he bottles: instead of Germany's official sweetness ladder, he numbers every barrel and parcel separately — a Burgundian, terroir-first logic. Each bottle is its own plot, its own decision. 🍇

***

##### 🍇 What the evening is

A guided tasting in four acts, and I won't spoil a single bottle. 😏 But here's the shape of it:

We'll climb the same famous hill twice — once through the dry wines, once through the off-dry — so that sweetness only ever rises gently and the palate is never jolted. Then a single sweet jewel.

And then the finale. I'm not going to tell you what it is. What I will say is that it involves something genuinely unique — bottles you are extremely unlikely to have encountered before, and quite possibly won't encounter again. It's the reason the whole evening is built the way it is, and everything before it is a climb toward it. 🤫

***

##### 🧭 What we'll talk about

• 🪨 Slate, and why it matters — 400-million-year-old rock, a 70% gradient, and what that does to a glass of wine.
• 🍬 Why sugar isn't sweetness — the Saar's electric acidity means a wine can carry real sugar and still taste bracingly dry. You'll feel it happen.
• 🪶 Featherweight wine — several bottles tonight sit at just 7–8% alcohol, and they're anything but simple. This style physically cannot be made in a warmer place.
• 📜 The most expensive wines in the world — how the Saar reached the top of every grand restaurant list around 1900, and how it fell out of fashion.
• 👨‍🌾 Three generations — including a grandfather who drank a bottle a day and picked one barrel each year for everyone at his table.

***

##### 🥨 And to eat — the Saar on the plate too

As always at Tell Me Wine, the glasses come with food. Alongside the sixteen wines there'll be a selection of snacks from the Saar region itself — because I'm convinced there's always a deep link between what a land grows and what its people eat. Tasting the food of a place next to its wine is how you really understand its terroir: the full, 360° story of a territory, told through both the glass and the plate. 🍷

***

##### 💶 How it works — please read carefully!

Places are strictly limited to 12 people, so here's the process:

1. Click "Attending" (RSVP) here on Meetup.
2. I'll then send you a private message with the full recap and a payment link.
3. The fee is €40.
4. Your spot is only confirmed once payment is received — the first 12 to pay are in. 🎟️
5. Once you've paid, I'll send you the exact address in Leiden (the tasting is at a private location, so the address isn't public).

Please note there may be a short delay between your RSVP and my message — I send them out manually, so bear with me. 🙏

***

##### 🗓️ Practical info

• 📅 When: Friday 25 September 2026 · 19:00
• 📍 Where: Leiden (exact address shared after payment)
• 🍷 Wines: 16, served in a guided narrative arc across four acts, with Saar-region snacks
• ⏱️ Duration: it's a marathon — expect around three hours
• 👥 Spots: 12 only — first paid, first in
• 💶 Fee: €40 (confirms your place)
• 🌐 Language: English

***

##### 👀 Who's this for?

Anyone who loves Riesling, anyone who thinks they don't, and anyone curious what a single hillside can say when you let it speak sixteen times. You don't need to be an expert — come thirsty. But move quickly: twelve seats, and a line-up like this doesn't come around often. 🍷

RSVP, watch for my message, and let's climb the hill.

#### Hattem · Sunday 27 September 2026 · 14:00

A stately country house hidden in dense woodland. A quiet stream. A cosy little town of tiny gateways and secret courtyards. And, two and a half centuries ago, one of the flashpoints of a genuine Dutch civil war. 🔥

Pastime continues its walk through Dutch history, and this time we arrive at the end of the 18th century — a period that doesn't get nearly the attention it deserves, and that changed everything.

***

##### 🏛️ The story

In the 1780s, ordinary Dutch citizens started demanding something radical: rights. They called themselves the Patriots, and they rose up against the ruling elite and the House of Orange.

What began as pamphlets and petitions escalated into armed militias, occupied towns, and finally open civil war between the Patriots and the Orangists — supporters of the Prince of Orange.

Out of that struggle came the first stirrings of a democratic Netherlands. It also set in motion the chain of events that would end the old Dutch Republic altogether and, in time, give the country the Orange monarchy it still has today.

And Hattem — this small, pretty town on the edge of Zwolle — played a surprisingly central role in it. What happened here in 1786 mattered far beyond its size. Exactly what, and how it ended, I'll tell you on the walk. 😏

***

##### 🚶 The walk

We begin, fittingly, on Orangist ground: deep in thick forest, where the trees suddenly open onto a wide clearing and a stately country house. From there we follow the Molecatense beek — a little stream running through the woods — until we arrive in Hattem itself, where small gateways lead you through into hidden parks and tucked-away squares. It's a genuinely lovely town, the kind that doesn't announce itself.

As we walk, we'll go hunting for the traces of that revolutionary moment still written into the streets. 🔍

***

##### 🍺 And then — beer brewed on the spot

We'll close the day at Herberg Molecaten, a café-restaurant set right in the middle of nature — the kind of place you'd hope to find at the end of a long walk through the woods. 🌳

Among other things, we can try the Herberger, the beer they brew themselves. A pint made where you're standing, after a walk through the landscape that made it. Hard to argue with that. 🍻

***

##### 🗓️ Practical info

• 📅 When: Sunday 27 September 2026 · 14:00
• 📍 Meeting point: the Zuid bus stop, Hattem
• 🚶 The walk: through woodland and along the stream into the old town
• 🍺 After: Herberg Molecaten — house-brewed beer and food
• 🌐 Language: English

What to bring: comfortable walking shoes (there's real forest here, so possibly muddy), weather-appropriate layers, and curiosity about a revolution most people have never heard of.

***

##### 👀 Who's this for?

Anyone who likes history with stakes — real conflict, real consequences — and the pleasure of finding it hidden in a quiet little town. You don't need to know anything in advance: that's the whole point of the walk. Beautiful woodland, a lovely town, a genuinely gripping story, and a beer brewed on site at the end. ⚔️

See you at the Zuid bus stop in Hattem.

📅 Sunday, 4 October 2026
🕝 14:30
📍 Bus stop Marken Centrum

For the first event in our new series Placetime, we head to Marken.

If Pastime is about the big history of the Netherlands, Placetime is about stories that belong to a particular place — stories that may not define an entire country, but profoundly shaped the places where they happened.

Our first Placetime season is dedicated to the relationship between the Netherlands and water — and to the places where water has left its mark on the landscape, on communities and on history.

And few places tell that kind of story better than Marken.

Today it is a picturesque village, famous for its wooden houses, harbour and former-island charm. But in January 1916, Marken stood in the path of one of the most devastating storm surges in modern Dutch history.

A northwesterly storm drove the water up with enormous force.

Houses were damaged, destroyed or swept away. Parts of the island were inundated, lives were lost, and Marken became one of the places most brutally affected by the disaster.

But the story does not end there.

The flood of 1916 helped convince the Netherlands that the Zuiderzee could no longer be left to chance. In the decades that followed came some of the defining hydraulic works of the 20th century: the closing off of the sea, the great engineering projects
that reshaped the Dutch relationship with water, and eventually the connection that meant Marken would no longer remain an island.

For this first Placetime, we’ll walk through Marken looking for traces of that story — through the harbour, the village and the different werven that once offered refuge when the water rose.

We’ll return to a deadly night in 1916, but also to the moment when catastrophe became the beginning of an entirely new future.

### 🍺 And afterwards...

After the walk, we’ll stop at Land en Zeezicht, one of Marken’s most interesting cafés.

It has something of a Belgian beer-café character, with a selection that goes beyond the usual suspects, and it also serves its own locally brewed witbier.

A fitting place to finish an afternoon devoted to a village whose entire history has been shaped by what lies between land and sea.

### 👟 Practical information

We meet at 14:30 at the bus stop Marken Centrum.

Expect a proper walk through the village, so comfortable shoes are recommended. As always, the exact walking route will remain a surprise.

Drinks at Land en Zeezicht are optional and paid individually.

See you on Marken — while it is still dry.