Amsterdam (14-10-2003); End of the Worldtrip

Updated: 20 October 2003

We are back in Holland! We managed to get the bikes crated and have them shipped back home. After a lovely time with Wayne & Kerry it was time for us to fly home. Wayne brought us to the airport and surprised us with a goodbye in style... with champagne! With a brief delay we arrived at Schiphol where Dingeman picked us up. It took us a couple day to get over the jetlag but we're managing. The coming weeks we have thousands things to do before we go to France where we're going to settle down... Probably not for long as we're afraid our feet get itchy someday and we going to travel again. We had a great time traveling and wish to thank everyone we met on the road for the hospitality we were given!

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Back in Holland!

Updated: 30 November 2003

Although we are back in Holland for six weeks now we are still waiting for our motorbikes to arrive. In contrary to what we were told the bikes are arriving in Hamburg instead of Rotterdam and the vessel is delayed as well. Hopefully we get the bikes next week so we can take them with us to France where we going to settle down. The last weeks in Holland we extremely hectic as we had to arrange everything in such a way that we got everything ready at the end of november to take with us. Except for the bikes we managed in this. So we take a few relaxing days in the meantime and maybe we can visit some people of write some emails as we weren't able to for a long time. Oh, and work on the travelreport of Australia as well!

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Cooking in the freezing cold

Updated: 25 December 2003

We finally are at our house where we're going to live the next period. All our belonging were stored everywhere in Holland and we managed to collect them all together and have them transported to France. (Yes, that's the place where we're going to live!) We even managed to get the bikes sent over. So now we're in a house with a lot of stuff and have to make it a little bit cosy. There's still a lot of things to do to transfer this house from holiday-use into permanent-use. Top priority are the heaters at the moment as Jeannette has to cook our Christmas diner in the kitchen where it's only 4 °C... INSIDE!!! But hey, we were on a worldtrip so we know what suffering is!!!

We enjoyed our worldtrip very much and have no regrets we ever started this trip... as we otherwise never had met each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Amsterdam (11-09-2002) till Amsterdam (18-10-2002)

The flight back home was without any delays although it was 11 September when we arrived at Schiphol. Ed and Martins father were picking us up from the airport and that meant a lot to us as they had to be at the airport at 7 am.. After a real Dutch cup of coffee we headed to Amersfoort where we stayed at Ed & Ellen's house for a couple of days as Marie Louise wasn't supposed to know that we had arrived. In fact almost no one knew we were back in Holland and that made it easier for us to do the things we had to do. Our five weeks back home were about going to be some hectic ones. On the 13 September we rode to Marie Louise's place and we surprised her by being the first to congratulate her for her birthday and we had a nice day although she had to go to school in between.

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Europe; 11-09-2002 / 18-10-2002

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Marie Louise

The apartment I was living in together with Marie Louise had to become hers only so I had decided to remove all my stuff from the house and get rid of a lot of it and put the rest in storage. Therefore Martin and I were busy for a while. Marie Louise had already stacked most of my stuff she didn't like in a bedroom. We started to sort out the whole apartment room by room and we ended up with stacks of moving boxes everywhere. A part of it was moved to my house in France where we drove to for a couple of days with a fully loaded car where there was only a little space left for Belle, my dog I was really pleased to see back. We stayed in France for 3 days only so we were barely able to unpack the car and its boxes and certainly not to relax.

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Belle among the boxes

Slowly the news got around that we were back so we had to see some people which we didn't mind as long as it fitted in our plans because we were far from ready yet. One of the highlights was a visit at Erik, our third Musketeer whom we hadn't seen since he had left us behind in Hanoi last February. No need to mention that it was great to see him back... and lucky as his Ukrainian girlfriend had decided to move in with him in Holland in December.

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The three Musketeers back together

We also had to do the ordinary things as getting new vaccinations, see the dentist and buy new stuff to replace old or broken ones. But furthermore we had to help Marie Louise to install her fully in the apartment and this meant moving in more stuff with Dingemans car and we were glad Menno helped us.

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Our working holiday

No wonder we had a exhausting 5 weeks but fortunately they were sooner gone as expected. But before we flew back to Indonesia my son Dingeman surprised us to introduce Selma, his new girlfriend, to us.

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Dingeman & Selma

So we celebrated this with a nice diner in a steakhouse.

Saying goodbye was difficult, as expected, but for us it was time to move on and things had changed dramatically as during our stay in Holland the Bali-bombs exploded and people warned us not to go back to Indonesia. But we had to as our motorbikes were still waiting for our return to Bandung. The original plans of spending another two months in Indonesia was changed into travel to Denpasar (Bali) and leave the country for New Zealand as soon as possible. We were a little bit worried as we knew that Jason and Gion were in Denpasar during the explosions but we later received an email that they had been often in the explosion-area but they had left the afternoon before the explosion and so they were very lucky.

Amsterdam (27-08-2001) till Amsterdam (03-10-2001)

The idea to return to Holland was a result of Jeannette's decision to join me for the rest of my trip. She thought that I was well experienced to help her with the preparations of her departure. Also I had said before I left that my trip from Holland to Australia would take about 14 months roughly as this was the time another Dutch biker had used for the same trip. But I was already 15 months travelling and 'only' reached Thailand.

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Europe; 27-08-2001 / 03-10-2002

Good to see the family back again and because my mother had her birthday on August 31st we (Jeannette and I) decided to surprise her with my presence. The problem was that I arrived in Holland the 27th already. But Jeannette had an easy solution to hide me as she booked a 4 days trip to Rome departing a couple of hours after I arrived at Schiphol. Needless to say that we had a wonderful time in Rome, especially for me, as I'd never been there before. But to be honest we both had a great time.

On August 30th we returned back in Holland again and now I was able to leave the airport and be finally feeling 'back home'. The next day we surprised my parents completely and made their day as they had never ever expected me being there. The disadvantage of being' the talk of the day' had to be accepted by me, which I gladly did and the nice thing was that everyone visiting my mother was totally surprised as well. I felt sorry for my mother that I, unwillingly, was the 'hot item'. But my mother said she couldn't be bothered and I believed her.

Ed & Ellen, some of our friends, had arranged a barbecue for Jeannette's departure. But no one knew I would be there as well so they all were surprised to see me there as well. Furthermore my father was asked to show some slides of my trip so far there, so it was the first time I saw my own pictures of the trip as well and we all had a great time.

I had 5 weeks back home and these weeks were fully planned. First of all I needed to get my own spare parts, which was easy enough. Then I had to help Jeannette with her preparation of our trip. We had to equip her bike for an overland trip and of course equip her as well. She already bought most of her stuff so this wasn't too difficult. Our idea was to crate her bike now and leave it in Holland. Together we travel on my bike from Thailand to Australia and when we know we will arrive in Australia we get the shipping of the bike started 2 months in advance and arrive at the same time there.

In theory this idea was easy but the practical part was much more complicated. First of all, so far I was travelling with 2 luggage rolls on the back and now one of them had to leave to provide Jeannette a place on the back. So I had to reduce my luggage and in addition to this, I had to stow all Jeannette's luggage as well. So this implied a lot of hectic moments. In Thailand I already had gone through my luggage very critically but except for my winter clothes, tent and mattress, there was not much more to reduce. So I brought both the rolls back to Holland. My winter stuff and clothes we had to put in the crate with her bike and now she had to make a selection what to take now and what to put in the crate. And all the things we would carry with us on one bike had to fit in one roll. So I left it up to her how to sort this out. Things can be so easy!

But it wasn't only stress as we spent also one week in France together with my parents and had an absolutely great time there.

In the last week before our departure we did the crating of the 2 bikes. 2 Bikes? Yes, as Erik, a very good friend of us had decided to join us from Australia on as well. So we had to crate both bikes. With the help of Ed, a very good friend of us, we managed to crate both bikes in 1.5 days and we could store the crates with family of mine, so the bikes were in safe hands.

So, finally we were ready to leave. The only thing we had to do was saying goodbye to family and friends. This wasn't easy especially not for Jeannette as it was HER departure; I had had these difficult moments 1.5 years before already. It started already over a week before departure and only ended when went through immigration at the airport. This was a special moment for the both of us. For Jeannette, while it was the end of her regular life and from now on every day would be different to the day before. For me, while now a completely new trip started. This was OUR trip instead of MY trip, and I was really looking forward to this. But mainly I was relieved to start my own life again as I had the feeling being lived for the last 5 weeks as hundreds of things had to be done and everybody wanted to see us one more last time.

Enschede (The Netherlands, 14-05-2000) till Jenkovce (Slowakia, 25-05-2000)

Finally I left home on Sunday 14 may 2000, just one day after the fireworks explosion in our town (20 people died). Fortunately not in our area, but it had definitely an impact on my departure .

Via Germany, Czech republic and Slovakia, I'm in the Ukraine at the moment and planned to arrive in Odessa today when I discovered this Internet access.

I really love the Ukraine, the weather is great so there's really nothing to complain about. After a couple of days rest, I'm heading on to the Crimea and into Russia.

I'm really sorry, I haven't informed you all, about my departure but we had to keep the telephone lines free for use by the officials in the rescue after the explosion.