A group of friends from Beilen said goodbye to the ‘Legendary Thomas’ today. Their van went up in flames last week, but the memories remain.
“He was very valuable to us and that is why we say goodbye today, with friends and family,” says Ian Vrijs during the ‘funeral’. In his hand he holds a framed photo of the van, which was painted with the Drenthe flag. “We hope to commemorate the van a bit.”
Vrijs was out with the van when he made a pit stop for a drink at a gas station along the A28 near Assen. “I walked outside with a cup of coffee and then smoke came out of the engine.” The turbo was broken.
As a precaution, the petrol pumps were switched off and the fire brigade was called, but help came too late for the van. “That didn’t help anymore, unfortunately he had died,” Vrijs looks back.
He calls it ‘a very painful moment’. “He was really a kind of twelfth man for us. He was always there, we could always rely on him when he was not at the garage, so that’s a shame.”
“It was worth a lot to us,” says Bastian Cid, one of the co-owners of the van. “We have done a lot with it, such as traveling through the Balkans. We have experienced many garage visits there.” The friends also regularly drove the van to FC Emmen matches. “He survived a lot, until now.”
After one sip, on the terrace in Groningen, the men came up with the plan to organize a funeral. They had owned the van for more than a year, before that it had been driving in Beilen for almost twenty years. That is why about thirty residents came to the ‘farewell’.
“Many people still have a memory of the van, including us, and we can celebrate that together,” says Vrijs. “With coffee, tea and beer.” Cid agrees. “I also wrote a poem myself. And a friend of mine, Leeroy, wrote a speech. It is very sad.”
Apart from the tailgate, a Volkswagen logo and the car keys, little is left of the van. Today we say goodbye to that, says Cid. “We put them in a box and they will be preserved for a long time.”
