about Liesbeth    about megalies.com    important matters

about Liesbeth

My passion for geography came to the surface at an early age. As a child I memorized all 50 states of the USA. Eventually I came to study geography. It seems only logical to tell some things about myself in geographical order.

Eindhoven, Netherlands is where my life started. I remember it well, it was June the 18th, about 4.30 pm, I had just come into this world and thought: hey, it's nice and warm. Actually, heatwaves in June are very uncommon in the Netherlands, but in 1970 we had one. I would almost feel guilty, making my mum sweat like that, but thankfully my parents thought I was very sweet. My two brothers also thought I was pretty funny. Especially as I got a bit older and teasing me was very rewarding. I had the advantage that usually one of them chose my side.

When I had just turned 7, we moved further north, to Apeldoorn. Which is a great town for a kid, surrounded by woods, pretty quiet but with some pretty exciting things. I mean: there was the Queens Day fair, swimming in the outdoor swimming pool and my best friend lived two houses from me. As a teenager I wasn't as impressed, and Apeldoorn turned out to be pretty boring. Luckily, I was not a hugely rebellious teenager. It was enough to occasionally go to Arnhem, Utrecht or even Amsterdam, to buy some black or blue nailpolish. Which in turn was enough to stand out in Apeldoorn.

Now Utrecht, that was a different piece of cake. When I moved there at 18 to go to university, it was a revelation. Concerts, films in more than one cinema, and a great many interesting people. And such a beautiful, old city centre. I fell in love with the city then and my feelings haven't changed to this day.

In my fourth year at university I lived in Denmark for half a year. I was a student at Roskilde University and I studied the regional development of Elsinore, the home of Hamlet's Kronborg Castle. I was fortunate enough to live with two very sweet Danes at an apartment in Copenhagen. Admittedly I was pretty shocked to find myself working on my final thesis all of a sudden - I had no idea what I was doing, really - but I had a pretty okay time anyway.

When I got back to Utrecht, it took me another two years to get my degree. After studying for nearly six years, some six weeks before my deadline I seriously considered quitting. I'm really proud that I did in fact finish it, more than I am proud of the actual degree. It did affect my love for geography. Which I suppose was the price I payed for slow progress; if I had applied myself earlier on, I could have switched to a less theoretical specialization and been happier for it...

Looking back I have learned so much then that I still use now. You know, perseverance; organisational and cooking skills at a student association; the basic principles of text design; the power of music when things get rough.

Having finished, I had no clue as to what I wanted to do with my life. The only thing I knew it should not be related to geography, but I had liked my stay abroad and the idea of more of that appealed. After half a year of temp jobbing, I went to France and Portugal for 6 months of volunteer work.

Just imagine: I had never been in the mountains before, and all of a sudden I found myself in a beautiful remote valley in the French Alps. What a shock, living in a community with a group of about 10 to 40 people, after living a pretty independent life for six years. It took me over three months before my French was good enough to say I couldn't take it anymore - the constant struggle for vegetarian food, the lack of comprehensible communication on one side, the overkill of communal life on the other. I left, thinking I would travel through the south of France for six weeks, before joining some others for a three week volunteership at a children's home near Porto in Portugal. However, after two weeks of solitary travel I missed the collective so much that I returned! When it comes to learning a lot about myself in a relatively short period of time, I'd have to say that these six months have been exceptional.

After another half year of temp work, I spent two months in Wales, Ireland and England. Partly as a tourist, partly as a 'traveler', partly as a volunteer at Othona Community.
On my return from Portugal I had found that I had gotten no closer to knowing what I wanted to do with my life - although I had learned a thing or two about what I could potentially do. But I came back from England knowing that I had travelled enough. That I could travel all my life, but that what I wanted I could just as well find in the Netherlands. Or nowhere at all.

Back in Utrecht I started looking for a steady job, and since I quite liked all the secretarial temp work I started doing that for a holiday organisation for people with learning difficulties. After four years, the activities of the foundation were put on halt, which meant a great loss for our clients and volunteers.

Is there any geographical challenge left in this story? I'm so hooked on Utrecht that things are getting a bit repetitive. My love for the city became very useful in my work: I started working as management assistant for the Tourist Office in Utrecht, and I still work there now.

Well, with the introduction of the worldwide web, location has become less relevant, right? Not quite so when through the Internet you meet a really very nice person, who then turns out to live a ninety-minute trainride away in Roosendaal, a city in the south of the Netherlands. Luckily it turned out that in Utrecht Stefan could find that teaching job he had been looking for in vain in the south. Thus he moved in within six months after we met, and it worked out so well that we eventually got married in May 2003.

So now we live in a street named after the island of Terschelling and we go on holiday to places with hills or mountains. I surf the net, talk to people from other parts of the world, and travel in my mind...