Furlough

For our furlough in Holland this year we got a beautiful place in an empty house in Urk. With thanks to our HomeFrontTeam and our relatives the house has been furnished and made inhabitable. It ‘s lovely to be able to stay in one place for the whole time of our furlough.

But the house is located in an industrial area, amidst of fish companies. Early in the morning around five the business already begins around us. What ‘s interesting is that there are many Polish and Bulgarians working at these companies. We notice that from the many foreign license plates on the cars here. One night lately Prisca came home from walking the doggies, and she said: ‘There are a couple of foreigners trying to break into a car!’ So Gerrit and I went out to check what was going on. It turned out that a couple of Bulgarians tried to open up their own car, where they had left the keys inside and the car had locked. There was also a Turkish man with them, who could speak Dutch very well. I asked if they were members of the roadside assistence, because those people know how to deal with these kind of situations. But they weren’t and the Turkish man said that his experience was that at this time of day you didn’t have to call someone with a request for help to a foreigner in trouble.

The people of the car had their stay in a village nearby, so I offered to bring them home by car, so they could try next day in daylight to find a solution for the problem of the closed car. So late at night I was in the car with a couple of Bulgarians to take them home after a long day of hard work in ‘the fish’. Communication went rather difficult; even with Hungarian you don’t get very far with Bulgarians. But they were happy that eventually they got home and could go to sleep. Before I went back home one of them ran inside to get something as a thanks for the ride: three beers… Now that was jolly kind of this fellow! Just too bad I don’t drink beer.