Talking Hands Half year meeting

Our very eventful

Weekend in the Netherlands.

Thursday, 29th of February

Game night with Ine and Comfort

We have two surprises today: firstly, all five trains on our Deutsche Bahn connection are on time. Secondly, the little town of Amersfoort turns out to be much nicer than expected.

Therefore, we are totally blissful as we sit in a café in the beautiful old town on an afternoon we had thought as lost.

We are allowed to stay in the guest room of Ine and Comfort, who have just moved into a new home together.
As a small token of gratitude we decide to cook an Indian-inspired dinner for them.
While we’re cooking, Ine comes home and we realise that we think very similarly when it comes to how much onion and garlic should be in a recipe. (‘If the recipe says two, we’d rather use five to be on the safe side, or ok, give me another one’).
Comfort arrives just as dinner is ready, and so we start our evening together with dinner – mega.
Afterwards, we give Ine and Comfort our not entirely disinterested gift, an escape room game.
The two of them gave us a joint games evening as a wedding present activity.
So we spend the rest of the evening working on the puzzle and trying to escape from the haunted hut in which we are apparently stuck.
The only drawback is that the game is in German, which Comfort doesn’t speak and which you need for the game more than we would have thought.
But otherwise we have a lot of fun and a great evening!

Friday, 1st of March

In the afternoon, we take the train to Delft, where we meet my former ATO colleagues for drinks.
As always, it’s super nice, we chat and laugh and suddenly Matthäus and I realise: Oops, the last bus to Katwijk is leaving soon.
So we set off a bit head over heels and luckily catch the bus.
So at around 1 o’clock we walk through the holiday village in which Kathi and Kevin have rented a house. The deserted holiday village has a strange and gloomy flair.
We are relieved when we find the house and Kathi opens the door for us – she and Kevin were already asleep and hadn’t expected us to still arrive tonight! Oh no!
But then they both wake up and we chat and drink Aperol Spritz really late into the night – a super nice evening/night!

Saturday, 2.März

When we wake up, the sun is already shining brightly and we decide to have breakfast on the terrace. 🙂
Kathi and Kevin serve up a real feast and it’s just mega!!!
To make the day perfect, Theresa spontaneously writes that they are available for brunch on the beach, and so we move from one breakfast to the next, Hobbit-style – I like.

Theresa and Steff kindly come to Katwijk, where we make ourselves comfortable outside at one of the beach bars, drink coffee, eat tarte flambée and chat again – really nice. 🙂
Afterwards Kathi, Kevin, Matthäus and I jump into the North Sea – it’s a bit cold but totally worth it!

We continue on to Delft, where we are invited to Elena and Ilias’ place for a games evening/afternoon.
We play ‘Blood on the clocktower’ together as a larger group, a more sophisticated werewolf game that turns out to be mega exciting and also very interesting socially.
Soon we are all very invested into the game and can’t get enough, which results in us saying to Ilias, who is the game master, “One more round!” every time we finish a round.
So much so that Matthäus and I end up setting off even more head over heels than yesterday and actually run to the station.
We just manage to catch the last train to Amersfoort, where we once again arrive at a crazy hour – but Ine and Comfort have wisely given us their key.

Sunday, 3rd of March

Today is our Talking Hands half-yearly meeting, which, unlike our other meetings, we hold live – this time at Ine and Comfort’s home.
Comfort has also recently become a member of the board. 🙂
Talking Hands, for those who don’t know, is a foundation that supports deaf and hard of hearing people in Uganda. Our main focus is to provide schooling for deaf children and we are working with our partner organisation ‘New Hope’ in Uganda, who are in the process of constructing buildings for a new (and much needed) such school. (You can find more information here, and of course you can follow us on the social media platform of your choice).
The six of us sit around Ines and Comfort’s round table and discuss our plans for the next six months and what’s going on at the foundation.
By the way, we are currently in a somewhat precarious financial situation and have therefore started a sponsoring programme with which you can directly support our students in Uganda financially (more information here in German and here in Dutch and English)
For lunch, we pop into a nearby restaurant, where we also meet Xanthe, a former member of the Board of Directors, who gives us extremely valuable input.
We continue into the afternoon, sitting out in the sun in Ines and Comfort’s garden – mega.

We have to finish our meeting at 5 p.m. on the dot, but we’re all pretty exhausted anyway, because Matthew and I have to catch another train – this time to Rijswijk, where we’re spending our last night in the Netherlands with Vivian and Farzam.
Farzam has prepared a Persian dinner for us!!! I’ve been looking forward to the super tasty rice that Farzam is so good at cooking all day and today he did a particularly masterful job with a wonderful crust.

We also have Doogh – njam and are delighted to be able to spend the evening with Vivian and Farzam – it’s great as always, we chat, laugh and it’s wonderful.

Monday, 4th of March

Today we have to wake up at 5 a.m., to take the train to Douarnenez, where we’ll spend our first night before the big E5 adventure.

All the trains are on time, we are only slightly concerned that we have to take the metro through Paris from one station to another.

Rightly so, it turns out, as we first have to queue for about half an hour at the ticket machine.

Everything goes well, we catch the train and look out of the window and see how all the rivers are carrying a lot of water – well…
On the way to the bus to Douarnenez, we actually see other long-distance hikers, but they get on a different bus.
By the way, the hotel in Douarnenez is super nice in a chateau.

We have a great conservatory and after a short hail shower we get a rainbow to start with.