Where have all the ravers gone? This is just one of the quandaries burdening the characters in Richard Foster’s latest collection of short stories. 

The mid 2000s were a fretful time for many people in the Netherlands. The euro had replaced the guilder and the impact of the European Union was altering everything from immigration to the price of Douwe Egberts at Albert Heijn.

These changes weigh heavily on the cast of The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club, which includes aging bohemians shacked up in squats to grandparents at circle parties reminiscing about the good ol’ days. Each is worried about a world changing all around them and at a pace they can’t keep up with.

Largely focused on a group of workers in the bulb industry, Foster’s stories transport readers back to that era as they attempt to figure out their next moves or how best to keep clinging to the past. He himself is a veteran of the Bollenstreek and bore firsthand witness to all this back in the day.

In The Heron, the story that opens the collection, a wayward Brit recalls an unfortunate encounter with the titular bird on a painful Sunday morning following a night of debauchery in Amsterdam. Neither he or his cohorts can agree on what exactly happened or if it happened at all.

With each passing day, he’s growing ever closer to turning 30 and more and more of his friends are gravitating into adulthood proper. All their favourite hangouts are closing up shop and, even worse, the Melkweg just hasn’t been the same since the White Stripes played a gig there.

In Forty Minutes, or Thereabouts, a line worker feels increasingly out of place alongside the Eastern Europeans who have been steadily replacing the raver kids and old salts on the factory floor. But it’s either this or moving back to the UK where many of his friends are living on the dole.

While Foster could have widened the stories to include the perspectives of a few more long-time locals, his stories do an excellent job of evoking the anxieties of Dutch natives and immigrants alike as they grappled with the impending gentrification and internationalisation of the Randstad at the dawn of a new century.

But it’s not a total drag. Even his most cynical characters admit joining the EU hasn’t been all bad as they dig into some brie, a cheese that was once unavailable at their local supermarket.

The Punk Rock Birdwatching Club is currently available at the American Book Center.