A reunion in Maastricht
Adapting our group picture with AI...good fun
I didn't feel well at all mid-January. I had eaten something wrong and felt rather miserable but I didn't want to cancel our appointment to go to Maastricht.
That appointment had been made already months before in a doodle we didn't even participate. That was a little odd and at first I hadn't been very motivated to go.
The appointment was made by some ex-colleagues friends that we had worked with in the Hague 25 years ago. In the first decade after our return to Belgium we had stayed quite well in touch, thanks to our other Belgian friends living in The Hague for another couple of years and all of us not having children etc. We even skied together a few times before 2012, attended each other's marriages, ... But as it happens, live took over and the contacts got more sparse and we didn't see our Dutch friends anymore in the last couple of years. Until a girl created a whatsapp group with a doodle to reconnect.
So the date got set without us in a moment Jan and I both were dealing with some hospital visits at the end of 2025. But I noted it in our agenda anyhow and I learned from the whatsapp conversations how much she was looking forward to it and what a rough time she had gone through. It seemed so important to her to reconnect. She now lives temporarily in Maastricht which makes meeting from our sides an easier drive than The Hague.
And so I swallowed some medication and we drove to our friends to pick them up and all drive together to Maastricht. We met in her temporarily apartment where she served us and the other Dutch friends with some Limburg hospitality vlaaien. And in the mean time we learned the stories of her nasty divorce and all it's consequences that were way worse than I had imagined (homelessness, not getting to see her children in months, ...). She had been so deep and was just trying to resurface now with a lot of optimism and patience that in the long run it would work out. Holy cow, she's right, but wow, what a courage. Courage to not join in the nastiness but to stay correct and patient. And I was so happy that we were there, hugging her and bringing her old-time colleague's tribe back together.
We all went for a nice dinner in a very cosy Dutch old neighbourhood café and had a really good time. I was drop dead tired the next day but very happy that I had not put off the reunion with an excuse.
So the date got set without us in a moment Jan and I both were dealing with some hospital visits at the end of 2025. But I noted it in our agenda anyhow and I learned from the whatsapp conversations how much she was looking forward to it and what a rough time she had gone through. It seemed so important to her to reconnect. She now lives temporarily in Maastricht which makes meeting from our sides an easier drive than The Hague.
And so I swallowed some medication and we drove to our friends to pick them up and all drive together to Maastricht. We met in her temporarily apartment where she served us and the other Dutch friends with some Limburg hospitality vlaaien. And in the mean time we learned the stories of her nasty divorce and all it's consequences that were way worse than I had imagined (homelessness, not getting to see her children in months, ...). She had been so deep and was just trying to resurface now with a lot of optimism and patience that in the long run it would work out. Holy cow, she's right, but wow, what a courage. Courage to not join in the nastiness but to stay correct and patient. And I was so happy that we were there, hugging her and bringing her old-time colleague's tribe back together.
We all went for a nice dinner in a very cosy Dutch old neighbourhood café and had a really good time. I was drop dead tired the next day but very happy that I had not put off the reunion with an excuse.
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