Astrid Joosten causes astonishment with an interview in Het Parool in which she pretends that living outside the celebrity enclave of Amsterdam-Zuid is actually impossible. “What is this?!”
67-year-old Astrid Joosten always acts very chic, but in the end she is just a girl from Beverwijk. However, she no longer wants to live reminded of that. Nowadays she finds everything outside the chic Amsterdam-Zuid to a minimum. “I have lived in Amsterdam since 1977 and I will never leave again,” the BnnVara presenter says in conversation with Het Parool.
Carre
Living just outside Amsterdam just isn’t it, says Astrid. “People who live near Amsterdam always emphasize how close the city is. Then I prefer to live in the city myself.”
She continues: “I can easily get to the highway to drive to Hilversum for work. But I can also cycle to Carré, the Stadsschouwburg, the DeLaMar, you name it.”
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is also terrible, Astrid thinks. “My current husband had been living in Rotterdam for fifteen years when I met him, he enjoyed it there. In the beginning we traveled back and forth.”
She continues: “From the moment it became serious, I feared The Question. It never came. Later I asked why he had not asked that question. He said: I knew it was impossible. Now we live together in Amsterdam.”
No Beverwijk
Back to Beverwijk? Astrid doesn’t want to think about it. “Not only is it bigger, more is happening here. Actors, writers, artists, that includes a culture that doesn’t really exist in Beverwijk. You can meet other people in the café.”
More than ten years ago, Astrid exchanged her home in the Dutch celebrity enclave Amsterdam-Zuid. “I got tired of the paparazzi photographers who made their regular rounds in the streets where I did my shopping: Beethovenstraat and Cornelis Schuytstraat.”
Penthouse
Astrid chose a new-build penthouse on Oosterdokseiland, right next to Central Station. “My husband especially loved it. But he died after six weeks,” she says.
She didn’t want to stay there. “I found myself driving to South on Saturday to do some shopping at my regular butcher and baker. The flower stall where I was warmly greeted, the coffee shop where they knew my order.”
Exalted
Mark Koster, media columnist for De Telegraaf, finds it all very snobbish. “A TV quiz presenter who talks about her life in Amsterdam, talks about whether she deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature with Two for Twelve and laments that she temporarily did not live in Adam-Zuid. ‘I thought I had to persevere.’ What is this?” he writes X.
He continues cynically: “I understand that you are happy that your new friend from Rotterdam does not ask The Question since you do not want to move. Why would you live in 010? Gosh. The thought alone. Amsterdam, more precisely Adam-Zuid, out. Another baker? That is also intense.”
