Day 8 - Tony Re-lives his days in The Hague!

Tony took me on a tour this morning of the huge Haagse Bos (The Hague Forest - which is just across the road from our hotel in the centre of The Hague) this morning and retraced his steps of the route he took from his home to his work everyday for the two years he lived here.  And last night while we were in the old part of The Hague he recalled his time back in the '80's.

This is his story:

"I lived in The Hague for 2 years from 1982 to 1984.  I was working for Shell as a Programmer in London before this and they offered me a contract job for 3 months which ended up lasting for 2 year.   I was being paid from England and the money was very good as a contractor.  It was happy days!  

I rented a lovely attic apartment in Theresiastraat (Theresia Street) above my good mate Rob who was also working for Shell but at Rotterdam.   I lived on one side of the Haagse Bos and my work place was on the other side and the walk to work was the best part of the day.  It took 20 minutes to get from one side of the lovely woods to the other.

I lived in the attic flat at the top

The back view of the apartments where I parked my car.

I'm pretty sure I lived at Number 68 but that was 30 years ago!

The beautiful Haagse Bos

I'm retracing my walk to work

I loved the project I was working on - designing and writing computer programs in Pascal for a barge scheduling system.  I loved the job and working in Holland so much I would have worked for free!  My 2 Dutch colleagues spoke English while I was in the office and at lunch time while I was sitting with a table full of Dutch they would all speak English because I was there.  How considerate of them!

Shell gave me a Dutch language course in the first week I arrived on a cassette but I never made it past Chapter 1 as nearly everyone spoke English and there was too many things to do and discover in The Hague rather than study.

Years later when I learnt German and came back to The Hague for a visit I could understand a lot of the Dutch language as words are either similar to German or English. 

The only bad experience I can remember is when my newly purchased bike was stolen.  I had only had it for a week and rode it up to the beach resort of Scheveningen about 15 minutes away on a Saturday afternoon and chained it to a lamp post while I went to the beach for a swim. When I came back to go home it was gone!  I couldn't believe it because it was broad daylight with thousands of people and bikes around.  They would have had to use bolt cutters to take it. 

Night life was vibrant in The Hague back in the eighties and it is still the same now. 

My major concern during my stay back then was that I didn't have a working permit for The Netherlands.  I thought it would be ok as I was only going to be there for 3 months but as time went on it became more of a concern.  I was an illegal citizen - a secret I was trying to hide from everyone!  Towards the end of my contract Shell wanted to move our project to the refinery in Rotterdam temporarily.  The HR department at the refinery needed to see my  passport for getting an ID card but they noticed I didn't have a work permit and were having an animated discussio in Dutch with my colleagues.  I played dumb saying I didn't think it was necessary because I had a work permit for England and was being paid by Shell UK.  Anyway to cut a long story short, I decided to finish up sooner rather than later and start my next adventure which took me to Germany for five years. 

I've enjoyed showing Ann a lot of my old haunts - from what I can remember. 



Tomorrow we are in Detmold seeing the sights with our good friends Helga and Ulrich!