Study friends in Amsterdam

One of my good friends in Amsterdam is Gert-Jan. We lived for 7 years together during our university time in Delft, first in a house with 14 other students and later a year in Den Haag. Afterwards Gert-Jan always lived in Amsterdam and offered me hospitality many times during my visits to Holland. Thirteen years ago, I was here with Mark a few nights (when Mark was 15; that trip Mark and I also visited Paris in France for a few days). Last night the guestroom of Gert-Jan and Hollis was waiting for me again. This morning I walked a few blocks to the house of another friend from Delft, who also listens to the name Jos. He is an avid collector of art. It is always a feast to visit him and hear about his acquisitions and his experiences with artists from around the world.

The stairs - as in most older houses in cities like Amsterdam - are quite steep, but also full of books. Along the wall one painting - based on a famous older Dutch artist - is complemented by a bag that Jos once received from the "Rijksmuseum". Look carefully at the next photo...

The bathtub is also used for art storage. In fact, every room is a mini museum. A tour of the house by Jos is always fascinating. Every item has a story, such as this unique collection of small hats...

It was nice to visit his house again, a place where I stayed overnight frequently during the years when I was setting up MSF Canada and visited the MSF Holland office in Amsterdam a couple of times each year (1991-1992). The offices of MSF Holland were then located a few blocks away from the house of Jos in the building below (the upper level of that office building in the heart of downtown Amsterdam).

Next to that office building is the large "Vondelpark" (kind of a smaller version of Central Park of New York City). During the years I lived in Amsterdam (1995-1988 when I worked for Fokker Aircraft), I did many runs in that park during evenings and weekends. Close to the Vondelpark are a few musea, among them the "Rijksmuseum" and the "Van Gogh Museum"...

In the background of the photo above, one can see the "Concertgebouw" (Concert Hall), a classic building in the city. Next to the concert hall is a small restaurant where I met with two other friends from University, Hester and Pieter. They came especially for me from their hometown of Wassenaar to Amsterdam to meet up with me. One of their sons - Wouter - studied an "in between year" after high school at Niagara College in one of the Business Diploma programs (before he started a study at a university in Holland). Pieter and Hester - accompanied by their daughter Pauline - dropped Wouter off in Niagara about fifteen years ago. They promised to come for another visit to Canada soon...