‘My parents were both born in the 1930s in Surabaya, former Dutch East Indies. However, they only met in a guest house in Haarlem in 1960. Both had come to the Netherlands by boat as ‘newcomers’ with their families. My mother set foot in Amsterdam in February 1958, where she braved her very first snow in Ballerin’s.
My mother, aunt and grandmother lived in the same guesthouse as my father’s brother and his family. My father, who worked on the Great Vaart, stayed there when he was in the Netherlands. My mother’s dream to emigrate to America, something she saw many Indian girlfriends at the time, disappeared like snow in the sun when she met him.
A time of intensive overseas correspondence followed. Folder -thin blue sheets filled from exotic ports, from Calcutta and Basra to Montevideo and Buenos Aires, but also a postcard with greetings from Marseille. In turn, my mother, with the help of the navigation schedules of the Nautical Service, ensured that a letter was waiting for him in every port where my father installed. This often started for months in succession, until his few weeks of leave in the Netherlands started again.
They married in 1962, and when my oldest brother was born in 1964, my father decided to look for a job ‘ashore’. While the family grew – I was the youngest of four – the Wishlust never disappeared. Every summer we left for four to six weeks with a packed car for Spain or France, but always with a detour: via the Black Forest, the Swiss mountains or northern Italy. My parents – here in the photo in 1978 in Playa de Aro, in Spain – knew better than anyone that the destination counts, but the journey there. ”