Last days of trip

I had the chance to learn grandfather skills from Coen while watching him keeping an eye on his grandson Feiko. Fun times. On Sunday I walked from their place to a Delft reunion with 10 fellow students, 8 of their spouses, 18 of their kids and 12 grandchildren. On the way to that event I made a photo of one of the landmarks in Scheveningen, the famous "Kurhaus". In front of the building you can see a work of art made out of beach sand, which could be found all along the beach promenade. In front the street on which Coen & AM live. Nice place! Always great hospitality and friendship.

The reunion was organized in one of the many beach restaurants. Around it plenty of fun stuff to do for the grandchildren. Age had it all well organized and it was very nice to meet many of the kids of my friends and some of their grandkids. We were given colored party bands and each family had a color, so it was easy to recognize who belonged to whose family....

The grandkids also enjoyed some food, drinks and treats. A few of them ventured into the ocean...

After the reunion in Scheveningen, I hitched a ride with Age & Lea back to Amsterdam where I spent the last two days of this (third) memory lane trip. Age and Lea live along one of the many canals in the city center of Amsterdam. Always a treat to be their guest. Also great hospitality and friendship.

Another old university friend (like me, named Jos) has had a lifelong hobby of collecting artwork from around the world. During the last few years he had several expositions of parts of his extensive collection and he showed me a half hour documentary about his last exposition. Impressive. I found him in front of his house making a digital copy of one of his new acquisitions under natural light....

His collection is growing every time I visit him. The pieces of art are literally all over his house in every room. It is always very entertaining to visit Jos...

The house of Jos is right next to the "Rijksmuseum" (National Museum) which attracts each days hundreds of tourists from around the world. Nearby is the Amstel River, a natural river flowing through the city and connecting with the extensive canal system.

My last visit during this trip was with Esther, who was our babysitter for Hilary during our two years in the city of Haarlem (1993 and 1994), when I worked at the head office of Doctors without Borders Holland in nearby Amsterdam. Esther visited us a few times in Canada afterwards, and now she is a proud mama of two daughters (16 and 14) and a son (12). What a fun visit to catch up after many years.

Meanwhile one of my friends and colleague during the 25 years of work in the Canadian college system moved into their new house on Vancouver Island, which has a spectacular view over the Pacific Ocean.

Back to Fonthill, Ontario, Canada again today. Another very nice memory lane trip completed....

More beach and dunes

Yesterday I spend the day cycling along the dunes on the shores of the North Sea (Atlantic Ocean) with former house-mates from our years at university. They all live in The Hague which borders the ocean and the town of Scheveningen. They are way fitter (and a few years younger) than me, so they used regular bikes while I borrowed an electric assist bike :-)

Cathrien was the only wise one by wearing a helmet. Those stubborn Dutch folks..... Cathrien, Liesbeth and Auke took a dip in the cold ocean. Joost and I watched those silly folks from the dunes....

It was a fun day catching up with them and we ended the day with a wonderful Indonesian meal, something you can't find easily in Canada. Two more days and I will be homebound again.

Boating and beach

Yesterday one of my old high school friends toured a few of us around in his boat at the "Loosdrechtse Plassen" (small cottage country area near the town of Bilthoven where we grew up). All of us attended the same elementary school for six years, and a few were at the same high school with me. It is fun to exchange stories together from our lives of the past fifty years....

After the boating we had a meal at one of the local yacht clubs. Lots of smaller dinghy sailing boats at this club. I did a fair bit of practice runs at this small lakes area in 1975 to get prepared for racing in the 470, an Olympic class, during a period of three years (1975 - 1977). We ended up in the back half of the fields of boats, but nevertheless it was fun and excellent exercise....

Four old housemates from university I briefly met up with during a short visit to the University of Technology in Delft. All four civil engineers. The one to the right - Huub - visited us last summer with his wife (also an engineer) and two sons (also both engineers). The others - Frans, Bertus and Koos - I had not seen for 45 years. Today I ended up on the beach of Scheveningen on the shores of the North Sea (Atlantic Ocean). I will be here for two days before the last two days - in Amsterdam - during this four week trip. So lucky to be able to make these memory lane trips....

Happy reunions

The beauty of my memory lane trips back to Holland is catching up with old friends and former colleagues. Yesterday I met again with several of my colleagues from my years with MSF (Doctors without Borders). On the photo two members of the Management Team of MSF Holland during my time as Director Human Resources & Training (1993 & 1994): Annedien who had the Communications portfolio and Joke who oversaw the Finances of the organization. The husband of Annedien, Marc, worked at the Dutch Embassy in Maputo during my time there (1988-1990) and through him we were able to rope in Annedien in our expat team there on a local contract. She was always fantastic! During the years I was coordinating to set up MSF Canada (1991-1992), Annedien was my liaison with the European sections. Seven years of working together in Mozambique, Canada and Holland. Marc was during all those years always the epicenter of positive humor and relativity, a hugely important influence when you are constantly at risk of losing yourself in the challenges of international medical relief work in war zones and refugee camps....

Freek ended up working with MSF after an early career in the tourism business as a project logistician. Later he worked in our HR team in Holland and started a not-for-profit travel business organizing travel for relief workers around the world. Currently he owns a company called Better Places which aims to have people travel in a sustainable way. His idealistic entrepreneurship never stops to amaze me!

Friesland - northern province

The past three days I was able to visit several old friends and colleagues who live in the northern province of Friesland. The Frisians have their own distinct language and my youth memories of the province are all linked to memories of sailing races. Nienke - here on the photo and with whom I worked in the Amsterdam office of Doctors without Borders during 1993 and 1994 - took me to the island of Terschelling (one of five islands on the north shores of The Netherlands), where she has a small property. It takes a two hour ferry ride to get there, because the ship has to make an elaborate slalom course to avoid getting stuck at the many un-deep areas. That body of water is known as the "Waddenzee" and people do walking tours from the islands to the mainland during low tide periods. I have done that once during my university years.

The island has the tallest lighthouse in Holland. The first layers were constructed some 500 years ago. The lighthouse still sends very important signals for the ships passing The Netherlands along the northern islands which forms part of the Atlantic Ocean. The small towns on the island house a total population of around 4,000 people and some of the houses were built 300-400 years ago (but probably rebuild many times after fires and storms).

Throughout history the population mostly lived of small scale fishery, but nowadays these ships are there mostly as showpieces for the many tourists visiting the island during all seasons of the year. Nienke is undertaking a project of demolishing two old vacation homes on her property and instead placing two modern Swedish prefab cottages.

The view out of the northern windows show in the distance the extensive natural dunes area on the Atlantic Ocean side of the island. On the south side of the island one can find the manmade dikes where many sheep graze as natural grass mowers....

Nienke lives in the city of Franeker, an old town with an impressive history. The "Planetarium" is a small museum - recently named a UNESCO world heritage site - in which the history is described of an astrologer who constructed a mechanical model of the universe during the mid 1700s.

Like so many old towns in Holland, the center is constructed around small canals which formed part of the transport systems. The townhall is still another historical building.

Another historic building is this church - constructed about 400 years ago. An old friend from my high school lives next door. It was about 50 years ago we last caught up. Still a real fun person!

A friend from my university years lives in another part of Friesland in an old farmhouse, where he is trying to restore on his property some of the old original eco-systems. Wouter and I travelled together to one of our university reunions last year in September (see blog posts from that event).

These days in Friesland started out at a cottage of a former colleague at Fokker Aircraft. We had a small reunion of our old boss (on his 84th birthday) and a few of his team members during the period that I worked at Fokker (1985-1988). The host has an old model "platbodem" (flat bottom), very common transport ships during the history of this province. We had a wonderful day on the water...

Along the route our host took, we saw this statute of three local ice-skaters who had completed the "elf steden tocht" (100 kilometer skating race past eleven cities in Friesland). This race was very hard during the decades that the winters were still very cold and harsh. The last version of the race is now more than twenty years ago (global warming "victim").

And my old friends in Bilthoven send me this photo afterwards (see previous post about their place).