I am with a group in London for a podcast, the atmosphere is praised I heard. Functioning with colleagues in groups always goes abroad according to the same pattern. The first evening I extensively celebrate that it has been better than expected, so that you have a hangover on the second day, then the big survival starts. Eating together, the shock trips from nothing to nowhere, the crawling annoyance. I hear myself making bad jokes. I received a blackout during a three-hour ‘Jack the Ripper Tour’. Was I really here with a microphone in the rain? I ate noodles, fish and chips and pasta carbonara, I have been told that this is typical British food. The city of London is not too bad, large but cozy, very different than in my memory. I was there once, on a school trip with HAVO 4. We were billeted with a host family, the bag of chips at breakfast then made a deep impression. I then wanted my parents to live in a working -class neighborhood, we only sometimes got chips on Saturday night. Chips are called crisps here.
The internet is bad everywhere. From the hotel room I looked at fragments of the Turbo emergency app that Vitesse has filed against the KNVB. The football association was forced into the defense, I caught myself that I got hope again.
And then, when we are about to go to Karl Marx’s grave, this column takes an unexpected turn. He is almost finished, but then I hear the verdict. The end must be rewritten. The unimaginable is true: Vitesse must be admitted to professional football immediately. I call Ester Bal, girlfriend and former press officer of Vitesse, she lies crying with her cats on the floor. I call Michel Schaay, captain of the rescuers of Vitesse. He cry, I cry. I drop a glass of orange juice. The new reality is a different miracles, so I call home. Everyone is crying, also my four -year -old daughter. Just that doubt: Did I emphatically raised the club love there?
The group sees me crying from a distance at the Mand Croissants. Is anyone dead? No, risen from the dead. I gave them all a hand, it was a special week, what am I still doing here? I got on a plane crying. I came out laughing. Vitesse had ruined a large part of the summer, as if she wanted to let them know that she is more than a football club, but now I can go there again in a week with my daughter, as I once went there with my father. He had never believed a story with this plot twist.
Marcel van Roosmalen Writes a column on Monday and Thursday.