Hengelo

Hengelo runs on salt and machines. Beneath the Twente town lies one of Europe's great salt deposits, and the evaporators have boiled brine here for over a century — the little drilling derricks dot the surrounding fields like garden follies, and Dutch kitchen salt is, overwhelmingly, Hengelo salt. Above ground the town built the machines: Stork's works made Hengelo a capital of Dutch engineering — boilers, engines, pumps for the world — and the industrial dynasties left the garden village of Tuindorp 't Lansink, a model workers' quarter of arts-and-crafts charm that remains the town's showpiece. The price of strategic importance came in 1944, when bombing destroyed the old centre; Hengelo rebuilt in postwar modern, and its market square is honest about the century it serves.

The temperament is Twents: understated, industrious, attached to its neighbourhood festivals and its brass. The concert record's register — concerts, choirs, church music, community celebrations — describes the musical ecology exactly, with the town's stages (the Rabotheater's drama and music seasons, the Metropool pop hall) hosting the touring circuit for the region it shares with Enschede. Salt below, steel above, band practice on Tuesday: Hengelo is the Netherlands' engine room east — unglamorous by conviction, and quietly indispensable at dinner tables everywhere.