A short story of a romance . . .
The Hague, Welberg, Amsterdam and Penzance: route first holiday Jan & Mieke
Jan and
I met in The Hague in 1977. I saw him at a party of the Librarian School.
I was surprised to meet someone of my age. I studied at this school after I had
worked as a teacher in primary education for several years. That's why I was 5
years older than the other students. Jan was a computer engineer at Datasaab
(later Ericsson Information Systems). He visited the party as a guest and I
thought he was very nice and very funny. After this meeting we started dating.
After I had finished the Librarian School in June
1977, I had to move to Amsterdam. I started to study Education Science at the University
of Amsterdam. I did not have a drivers licence. Jan had one and I asked him if
he could drive a hired van for me.
He had a better idea. In the weekend we had permission
to use the van of his company Datasaab.
His colleague Rinus, the truck driver of the company, would drive.
I am still grateful to Rinus, because he had accepted
a tough job. He thought it would be a piece of cake to move a student from one
small room to another. He did not know that, during my life as a teacher, I had
bought a lot of furniture and other stuff such as a washing machine, a dryer
and a fridge. I did not have enough space for these items in my small student
room in The Hague. In Amsterdam however, I would have a larger room. The
furniture and other things were at my father’s place in Welberg, about 80 kilometres
south of The Hague and some furniture was stored in Tilburg, another 80 kilometres further.
So the men drove me to the south first and later to
the north to Amsterdam to collect and deliver all my belongings. It took 2 days to manage the job.
In Amsterdam it
was a perilous undertaking to manoeuvre the van in the narrow canal streets,
where my new house was situated. But we kept smiling and ended the operation
successful. It was during this trip that I realised that I had fallen in love
with Jan.
My fathers house in Welberg
The house were I moved to in Amsterdam (With the white and brown door)
Narrow canal street
Jan had to move too. He had to leave his apartment,
because his landlady had discovered that I had stayed overnight in his room and
it was not allowed to have female friends for the night. So he rented my former
room.
After the moves Jan lived in The Hague and I lived in
Amsterdam and we had a lot of dates.
I thought he saw me just as a friend and because I
felt love for him I decided to quit when it was still possible. I believed
the broken heart would be bearable then.
On the 28th of July I took the train to The Hague
and I wanted to tell him that we should end now. Unfortunately, he was not at home and I wrote a letter. When I had finished the letter, he came home. I told him the reason of my visit. Jan did not agree with me and said we should not break up, he liked to stay
together. He loved me too!
And on this 28th of July we became a couple and
we still are. We have kept my unused return train ticket as a souvenir.
We planned a vacation together for august 1977, to see
if it would work out between us, when we had to stay together in a little tent
for two weeks.
Jan bought a Ford Taunus 12 m TS from Rinus, so we could go
by our own car. The picture below is a picture of a similar car, a real
battleship!
There was even a cassette recorder in the car and we were able to listen to
Rod Stewart and all kinds of seventies music.
First we had to go to my father to pick up my tent and
other camping necessities. I was a little bit nervous. In the past, my father
was never friendly to my male friends. The first time we were at my fathers,
with the move, I had not proper introduced Jan. But now I had to tell him
that we were a couple and I hoped that my father at least would be
polite to him. I was amazed. He was so friendly to Jan. And he has always been.
He said he regarded Jan as his 4th child. (I have two brothers).
After this pleasant meeting we could leave for our
holiday, but we did not have actual plans for our destination.
We started our trip in Belgium and stayed one night in
a hotel near Brussels. We had to plan our final destination and decided to go
to South England. We both had good experiences with the UK.
I had been in South England before with my friend
Adrienne for a cycling holiday. She had
a nice bike with 5 gears but I did not. We had a wonderful time and 3 weeks of
sun. It was the famous summer of the heat wave of 1976.
Before I met Jan he was a radio-officer on tug boats and
he was stationed in Penzance several times. He told me that Penzance was
beautiful and that there were palm trees everywhere. It appeared me very
tropical and sunny, so we took the ferry from Zeebrugge to Dover.
The first night in England we forgot the time
difference with the continent and discovered that the evening was one hour
longer than we expected.
We had a nice drive in our Ford Taunus and when we finally arrived in Penzance,
it started raining. I saw the palm trees dripping in the rain.
We decided to stay in a B & B. The bed in the
B&B was very creaky and we had a lot of fun about it.
The next day the sun appeared again and we continued with
two weeks of nice weather.
Palm trees in Penzance (picture from the internet )
B&B (Google street view)
In Penzance we stayed on a camping site with a
dancing, which we frequently visited. I learned
about the specific habits of British girls in the disco. They made a pile of
all their handbags and danced around that pile. We did not do that in the Netherlands
and it was a peculiar sight.
In the two weeks of our stay we made several trips to places
of outstanding beauty. However, I believe that we were more interested in each
other than in the Devon landscape. Nevertheless Jan made some nice pictures
(slides). Unfortunately, those were a little overexposed. But after some photo
shopping, they still give an impression of our wonderful holiday.
Enjoying the landscape
To the Scilly Islands
White cliffs of Dover
