Visit in your room was strictly forbidden, before ten in the evening you had to be home and alcohol was out of the question. The rules in the sister flat on the Zuid-Willemsvaart in Den Bosch were strict. The flat goes down and makes way for 140 new -build homes. When saying goodbye to the sister flat, former residents were able to recall memories on Sunday.
The Groot Ziekengasthuis (GZG) was expanded in the fifties and sixties. A part of this was an eight -storey flat for the sisters who worked in the hospital. In 1962 the building was opened as the Bloemenkamp house, popularly called the sister flat.
It is now sixty years later and the flat is empty. It will be demolished soon. Imke van Dillen from Buro Bouwrituals and housing corporation BrabantWonen have therefore organized a farewell. “We have had something of 650 registrations from former residents with all old memories. It is a final greeting to the sister flat,” says Imke.
Gerda was one of the very first inhabitants of the flat. She came to live there in 1961. “I worked in the hospital and I did an internal education there. At first I lived in the hospital, but then this flat came. That was a progress,” she says.
The young girls all got their own room. From the third year they moved to a larger room on the first floor. They did food together in the lounge downstairs. “It was very nice. We did nice things. Dragging mats over the floor and then someone sat down. A little childish, but you had nothing else.”
Although Gerda looks back positively on her time in the sister flat, she also remembers that there was a tight regime. “They were very strict. Boys? No, they really were not allowed in the room. I didn’t do that either, because I was neatly raised,” Gerda laughs. “I came home too late because the train was delayed. Then I wasn’t allowed to leave the next day. That’s how it went at that time.”
“I wrote letters home every week.”
Gerda earned 75 guilders a month in her time and she had to hand over 50 to her mother. “Then you had 25 guilders left and I was able to go home from the train and we kept in touch through letters. I wrote letters every week.”
When Gerda and her daughter Corinne are on the first floor, Gerda looks around again. “What is it a mess here, isn’t it? Then it was neat,” she says. Graffiti and here and there are stones on the floor on some walls. “Oh, look. You can’t get through here, but there was my room. It was quite large with a table, chairs, wardrobe and a bed.”
Once the training completed, she continued to work in the hospital and live in the flat. “After three years I got married and went to live in the city,” Gerda looks back. “At a certain point I started doing the teacher training and went to education.”
Daughter Corinne also lived in the sister flat, from 1985. Then, according to her mother, it was only ‘a loose gang’. “Yes, we also had disco here. Although we were still not allowed to visit the room, but there were guys on the second floor and they sometimes came to us. I don’t know if it was allowed, but we did it, Corinne laughs That was ‘unthinkable in the time of her mother’.
Gerda and Corinne also walk through the tunnel one last time. The tunnel was not there yet when Gerda lived in the flat, but in the time of Corinne. “If you came home too late you had to go in via the first aid. Then you went through this dark tunnel under the hospital. That was exciting!”
