A nightmare that has become reality. That is how the Tielemans family, which owns restaurant Nieuw Schaijk, calls the devastating fire of Saturday night. The popular restaurant was completely reduced to ashes. “We need a moment to process this and to be able to comprehend it at all,” the family said on the restaurant’s website. Yet, despite all the misery, the family is still combative: “The business will collapse as soon as possible, because I can’t bear to see this. Then we will start rebuilding as soon as possible,” owner Wim Tielemans told Omroep Brabant.
After the corona misery, Nieuw Schaijk, like so many catering businesses, was just getting back on track. Recently, a new spacious parking lot was built, which was almost ready. The devastating fire attracted a lot of attention on Sunday. “A piece of Schaijk has been lost here,” says a woman. Almost everyone in Schaijk knows the Tielemans couple who saw their life’s work go up in flames. In recent years, Wim and his wife Netty took it easy and the business was mainly run by son Johan.
“Very hard-working people with a good company”, you hear the people say who come to see the fire. “Everything you have built up in recent years will go up in flames,” says Johan Tielemans. “We’ll start again, I’m convinced of that,” he says firmly.
A piece of Schaijk
“Terribly sad, such hard-working people, nobody would like that,” says Lies from Schaijk, who regularly ate at Nieuw Schaijk and celebrated several weddings and parties there. “It is really a piece of Schaijk that is lying flat, so to speak. We celebrated our golden wedding here, it is always beautiful. Everything neatly finished and now this.”
“Unbelievable this, they were just rebuilding the business after the corona time and then the fire comes in,” says a man who comes to have a look. “I find it terrible.”
Another man, who is looking at the destroyed restaurant, had just booked a family outing in Nieuw Schaijk: “Unfortunately, that is not going through, too bad, it was a good tent, nice to sit in. Hope it will be rebuilt, then it will come that family outing another time.”
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