I spend much of my youth in Leeuwarden, a relatively small city (80.000 at that time) in the north of The Netherlands. It’s the capital of the province of Friesland with their own language, historie and culture. Although I don’t speak Frisian, I do understand it since it is closely related to dutch (common ancestry). I think Friesland is to Holland what Wales is to England. Frisian people are rational and don’t show a lot of emotion, especially not to people they don’t know. For the rest, they are just like normal people. It is a nice city with plenty of things to do and lakes for sailing, wind surfing and swimming are nearby. It’s a 90 minute drive to Amsterdam, which is not bad at all, but for dutch standards it is an enormous distance.

The first house my parents bought in Leeuwarden was in de Goudenregenstraat (I think it was number 19). A nice house with a garden and close to the primary school. From about 8 to 11 I spend a lot of time outside, playing with other kids, playing football and just wander about to wherever they were working on the road. I liked to stay at home and read as well. My parents renovated the house quite a bit and I still remember it because I could help. The butcher at the corner that always gave a slice of sausage to the kids, the local supermarket, the bakery where the queue was enormous on saturday morning when I had to get the bread. When my parents divorced, me, my sister and my mom left and my father stayed there until he sold the house a couple of years later.

The second house was in the Tjerk Hiddesstraat, a small but nice house with a little garden. I didn’t have a lot of friends from the neighbourhood though. My primary school was not close anymore and I quickly went to secondary school where the kids came from various places in and outside of Leeuwarden. No special good or bad memories, but it was directly after the divorce which is always difficult I guess. I read an awful lot of books in that time. I was reading childrens books from Guus Kuijer (Krassen in het tafelblad), JAn Terlouw (Oosterschelde windkracht 10, Pjotr, Briefgeheim, Koning van Katoren etc) Agatha Christie (10 little niggers), Thea Beckman (kruistocht in spijkerbroek), and a really nice book about terrorist that hijack a bus, and the relationship that built up between the young female school bus driver and one of the young hijackers). We sold the house in the Tjerk Hiddesstraat when my mom met a new friend and they decided to buy a new house together.

The next was a house aan de Emmakade. Really nice house with balcony, garden, lots of rooms and located at a canal. So in the winter we went ice skating, in the summer fishing and sailing. Good memories. Had a friend in the boy next door and we entered many social life events as adolescents together.  It was also the time when I became more and more independent and had a whole life away from my parents house. School parties, dance lessons, going out, playing billiards, holidays with friends, buying your own clothes, playing street football etc.