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).

Holland - Greece - BC

These weeks I enjoy again going to visit friends in all corners of (the small country) Holland by train. This is the quaint station in Soestdijk, close to where my sister Han lives (and also close to the palace of the former Queen Beatrix of Holland). Today I was at the beautiful hobby farm of old friends....

Pieter is a wine expert and during the past 50 years he opened some beautiful wines during my visits (not today, because it was a morning visit). He keeps some of the empty bottles of the best wines all over the house such as on top of a cabinet. Left next to the cabinet is a map of the "Binnenhof" as the old model farm is named (there are three living units, so they have two neighbours). The houses are surrounded by one of the best golf courses of the country, and Pieter has thousands of golf balls which were misdirected and ended up on his property. He has a nice little side business selling these second hand balls....

Pieter has a fifty year old TR6 and he took me for a fun ride in that old-timer. In the meantime is Mary visiting Hilary and Shayd in Penticton, where they put her to work....

And Carly and Mark enjoyed the last few days of their honeymoon on the Greek Islands and in the old city of Athens. Back to the reality of work this week again for them....