Netherlands

I have now moved on to 'Un Crime en Hollande'. Maigret continues to frequent the water, with quite a lot of the stories so far being set either at the sea-side or on a canal - with this one managing both at once, at a place called Delfzijl. Delfzijl is real enough, but the names of some of the other places in the story seem to have been slightly misspelt - perhaps an error of memory in the days before google or perhaps a slight garbling of the names to go with a slight garbling of the geography.

With today's point of interest being a usage rather than a word, with a sailor who makes his living by working a fiddle with the captains of the boats bringing in timber from Finland, using a tobacco pouch made out of a pig's bladder. I have never heard of such a thing before, so perhaps it is a usage of Europe's northern seaboard.

PS: this northernmost bit of the Netherlands is actually in the province of Groningen rather than in one of the two provinces called Holland. Just about as far away from Maigret's home in Paris as you could be while staying in the Netherlands. But a part of the world which I think Simenon once knew quite well.