It is a lot harder than expected to write during the summer vacation, even though I have help from the best: my Mother-in-Law arrived from Belgium to help out while Frederik is in Switzerland. This tradition – since 2012 – is what makes summers fun despite missing Frederik. Unfortunately, it did me no good last […]
Germany’s Service Desert. Case 2.
Apologies for my silence last week. I have been home alone again, with Willem that is, as Frederik is off to PSI, Villigen, for his yearly summer of experimenting and Janne spent two weeks with family in Belgium. Blogging with Willem around is like eating chocolate mousse with chop sticks: very inefficient. Back to the desert: […]
Jeroen Robbe. An Activist.
Jeroen is part of the family. Literally. He is the partner of Frederik’s one and only sister, which makes Jeroen my one and only brother-in-law. Both environmental activists, Laura and Jeroen met when they were joining a solidarity action in the Lappersfortbos near Bruges, which was at the time being occupied in order to be saved […]
The God of Small Things. By Arundhati Roy
This book. BIG SIGH. This book. Twisted. Me. Let me try to explain that. I mostly read in bed at night, those last ten to twenty minutes before my eyes and body say: “That’s it for today! Try again tomorrow!” As a result, there is some sort of dynamic at play between the book on […]
Germany’s Service Desert
So, welcome again to my private courtroom, fellow jurors or counselors. In the next couple of WONDERFUL posts, I am going to present you my argument that German service SUCKS. They even have a term for it: Service-Wuste-Deutschland, that is, Service-Desert-Germany. You can be the defense, or the jurors, or both at the same time. […]