Two times a year, in April and October, we leave our catamaran and go to the Netherlands to visit family and friends. I also have assignments for training, workshops or speaking at a seminars. This time we went to the Netherlands in the beginning of October for 12 days, in which I had 6 days of trainings.
I am sterdam
When we arrived at Schiphol airport, I saw the sign of ‘I Amsterdam’ which I always had liked as a slogan! The other thing I noticed that it was freezing cold! When we drove with our rental car to Meerkerk where we slept during the 12 days, it was 6 degrees! Coming from Greece where the temperature is still 24-26 degrees it was a big difference! We actually had to look for our jackets at the boat, because we hadn’t worn them for the past half year….
Noordhoff Zorg L&D Congress
About half a year ago, Dutch Publishing Company Noordhoff asked me to be a speaker a their conference for 300 L&D professionals at the 1. October. I would do a workshop on how to become a Strategic L&D professionals and I was to be the closing keynote speaker where I would look back with the audience on this seminar by talking about securing their learnings and making the transfer to the workplace. In my keynote I would use brainprinciples to build 3 exercises with which I would look back to the seminar.
First the workshop where about 60 L&D professionals learned more about why it is hard to take a strategic position as a learning department in an organization and what the characteristics of a good learning professional is. The audience worked on a Personal Branding Canvas in the workshop.
At the end of the seminar, I was invited to the main stage, to talk about how to secure all the learnings of this conference with about 7 interesting workshops. How can you remember all the lessons learned and apply them back at work. I demonstrated 3 exercises with the audience where I explained how the brain remembers information and with these exercises I hoped they also saw good examples of how their trainers can work on securing learnings from a training or workshop.
One of the exercises was the 30 seconds quiz, where 2 teams battled on stage (with a time clock in the background) to guess as many words from this seminar as they could! This was one the exercises people told later that they liked during this congress!
Meeting friends and visiting a musical
During the weekend we visited friends and family, most of the time combined with lunch, dinner or coffee. Sometimes in their homes or sometimes in a restaurant or cafe. It was nice to see them again!
And a special occasion was that Kevin, who joined us on a sailing holiday in Montenegro this summer, invited us in October to see the musical where he was one of the musical players! The musical was Jesus Christ Superstar and the performance was held in the Nieuwe Luxor Theater in Rotterdam. A place we always enjoy! So we drove to Rotterdam and let Kevin know via WhatApp at what seats we were sitting.
It was great to see him perform live and talk to him afterwards in the lobby, celebrating the show with a glass of wine! We knew he had a great voice, we already enjoyed watching him sing at the catamaran last summer!
Training and workshops
On Monday, a week of trainings started. With our white electric rental car, a Kia Niro, we drove all over the Netherlands, where Gilles would drop me off at organizations where I would give trainings. I was in Utrecht, Ruurlo, Amersfoort, Rotterdam, Breda to give training at locations. And I enjoyed doing that a lot! The topics was always about how to enhance learning, for example for educators within GGD, Managers of a Youth Care Organisation, coaches working for the municipality of Rotterdam, trainers of a Technical company. I am thankful that these organisation invite me to give workshops and trainings.
Dutch Food
During the evenings we enjoyed typical Dutch food like kale with sausage. Or on the road, we sometimes had the opportunity to stop in a lunchroom and enjoy croquettes. That is also part of the fun of visiting the Netherlands!
Beach in Noordwijk
A special moment was, making appointments with L&D Managers which I had done online assigments for from 2020 to 2024 and still worked as an online training during the year. For instance, the L&D manager of the municipality of Lisse. I had never met here in the Netherlands, but we always have very nice conversations online or via e-mail. So I thought, it was time to meet her in real live. And after a cold and rainy start in the Neterlands, in our second week the sun started shining. So she proposed to meet at the beach restaurant for lunch in Noordwijk. It was a warm meeting where our nice cooperation just continued! We had a great conversation, about travelling, working and living our lives. We also made new appointments for online work in 2025, so besides being a pleasant meeting, it was also useful.
Visiting Luxembourg
Our friends from Luxembourg, who have joined us the last 3 summers on our catamaran for a sailing holiday, invited us for a weekend in Luxembourg. Their daughter Anna was 1 of the 4 singers in the performance ‘Broadway sings’ in Philharmony in the city of Luxembourg. It was a special event, where the audience of 800 people listened in the concert hall for 1,5 hours to famous musical songs like ‘Phantom of the Opera’, ‘Chicago’ and ‘West Side Story’. It was a great evening, where our friends invited about 20 people from their inner circle of family and friends.
We were so proud of Anna! We have know her for 6 years now, when she started as a student at Tilburg at the Fontys Academy of the Arts. She is now a professional musical player for 2 years, having a role in Les Misérables in Germany. She studied together with Kevin, so it was a pleasure to see them both live!
The family also give us a tour of the city of Luxembourg, which is a surprisely nice city to visit!
Below on the left you see the Cathedral of Luxembourg. This gothic cathedral, officially the Cathedral of Our Lady, is an important religious building in the city and is known for its impressive architecture and serene atmosphere. Inside you will find beautiful stained glass windows and works of art. The pope had just visited the cathedral, which is a big event of course. In addition to the red/white/blue flag of luxembourg you can also see the white/gold flag of the vatican fluttering.
Above in the right picture, you see The Museum of the Three Golden Acorns (Musée des Trois Glands). This museum is dedicated to the history of Luxembourg City, with a focus on archaeological and historical finds. The museum is located in the Kirchberg district, near the remains of Fort Thüngen. The name of the museum comes from the three golden acorns that adorned the towers of this fort (Musée Dräi Eechelen).
But the most impressive part of the city we found were The Casemates. The Casemates are a network of underground tunnels and fortifications originally built in the 17th century to defend the city. They were declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and give you a unique insight into the military history of the city. We enjoyed walking through the city and the views over the city from different viewpoints.
The family invited us for breakfast and there we met the family that we had heard about on the catamaran for 6 years now. For example their son Felix and the grandparents who are 88 and 97 years of age! It was a very hospitable welcome in Luxembourg and we really enjoyed all the conviviality.
Filled with warm memories of a great time in the Netherlands, we drove the electric car back to Schiphol, of course charging it one more time before returning and then took the plane back to Greece. And it felt very good to be ‘back home’ again on the ship in the nice temperature and watching the blue waters and mountains surrounding us. It is time to explore Greece now!
