They asked for roofs over their heads and those of their children. We handed them in to Jeroen Smit on Sunday evening What’s holding us back?, who says that “a better environment starts at the construction site.” They muttered that the sustainability nonsense left them cold. But the architect showed that a wooden residential tower on the outskirts of Amsterdam was really possible. And that one newly built house does not yield 34 tons of CO2 (20 return trips from Schiphol to New York, or 100 car trips from Utrecht to Bordeaux), only half. They lamented that such beautiful buildings would only be affordable for rich people, city people. The camera took us to Mierlo where sixteen wooden social housing units were built with solar panels on the roof, a heat pump in the basement and an apple tree for every new resident.
They demanded that the borders be closed, all Muslims removed and the mosques closed. We gave them the same Sunday The evening of human rights. They said that we did not understand anything about their neighborhood, about resisting government policy together and with each other. But Hedy d’Ancona told presenter Sahil Amar Aïssa about that big demonstration of November 21, 1981, 400,000 people on their feet against the bomb and for peace in the world. And how much she enjoyed walking along that day “and seeing all the people around you who think the same way.” The poster that cartoonist Opland made for the demonstration of a dressed lady kicking away a nuclear bomb served as a “flag, symbol and collective sign”.
They grumbled that the hardworking Dutchman now also wanted to fly to a faraway country for some well-deserved rest. We gave them 3 on a trip and Nienke de la Rive Box who sailed energy-neutral from Den Helder to Ipswich, and continued on foot on the Norfolk coastal path. They said they felt lonely and orphaned and sought warmth and comfort from the livestock in their homes. We had them by the makers of Pointer warn that veterinary practices are commercializing and calculate that care for their pets would become unaffordable if no one intervened.
Nostalgic harsh winter
They said they loved their country and the tricolor, but they left anyway. In Things have changed we saw Goitske and Eke hoisting the Polish flag in the front yard of their two wooden houses. They called themselves Frisian Poles. We met the couple in March this year, when they had just lived in Lapsze Wyzne for a year. They said that for a moment they had lived their dream. Then the war started in Ukraine, 267 kilometers from their home. Gone was the plan to live off the proceeds from their holiday home, rich Russians or prosperous Ukrainians would certainly no longer come. We came back to them on Sunday evening to see how they were doing. They said they were doing great. During the summer season they broke even with guests from the Netherlands, now they hoped to attract enough Dutch people to experience a nostalgically harsh winter with them. It’s a shame that their Polish neighbor had also decided to build an extra house, right in front of their kitchen window.
They always only thought about the Netherlands, but not anymore. In Thinking of Switzerland André van Duin and Janny van der Heijden traveled by train from Andermatt to Chur, where they heard Dutch bells ringing and then had drinks with Dutch people in the hotel bar of a Dutch manager. Bitterballen, cubes of cheese with red-white-blue flags. The Dutch Swiss said they missed the Netherlands very much. Especially Sinterklaas, puns, André van Duin.
We gave them exactly what they had been longing for all along.
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