Foto Guy Ackermans The washing machine comes crashing down the stairs. LIFT, LIFT! Echoes through the stairwell. YES! I’M TRYING! WATCH OUT! The neighbour opens the door to check if everyone is okay. We promise we are. After he closed the door, the yelling continues, warning my father he must look out before he is crushed to death. That’s no way to go, the obituary would be embarrassing.
Sweating and covered in bruises we finally start the engine of the moving truck three hours later. After so many years in Wageningen, I have accrued quite a few household items. I threw out a garbage bag full of items each day in the week before moving; still, everything that remained required renting the largest possible moving van that can be operated with a normal driving license. When the room is finally empty and swept, and all cabinets are checked, a solemn moment is needed. Goodbye house, goodbye street, goodbye lively student discussions under my bedroom window, six flights without an elevator, stomping upstairs neighbours, church bells every fifteen minutes, horny doves, the evening sun in the kitchen and the Rhine a stone’s throw away.
My new pad is different in almost all respects. It is on the nineteenth floor, with an elevator this time, and a view over the sprawling city with flashing lights and honking cars. The tyres on my new bike are so inflated that the bumpy ride over the tram rails all over the city hurts my head. The doves have made way for gulls, and the Rhine has been replaced by the sea, which I can see from my bedroom window as a blue strip at the end of the city. But, not everything changes. The cherry blossoms in Wageningen and Chinatown, the magnolias bloom, and I get crashed into almost as frequently as in Wageningen. It is just a question of time before these scooters get the better of me.
Not everything changes. The cherry blossoms in Wageningen and Chinatown
It is a fifteen-minute bike ride to my internship at the ministry. I had to buy new clothes; my student attire was unfit. This transition from studying to working is fleeting and magical, nothing permanent. I will probably not even recognise this stage in my life a year from now, and I already miss everything. The moving scars on my washing machine are a permanent reminder of my Wageningen stories, which they tell to The Hague.
This is my last column for Resource. Wrapping up stories is, even when writing columns, always the trickiest part. SO, I will keep it short. See you!
Ilja Bouwknegt (25) is a master’s student in Forest and Nature Conservation. Ilja is interested in the relationship between humans and nature and prefers to try every hobby at least once.
This is Ilja’s last column for Resource. We are reluctant to see her go as a columnist, but we wish her lots of luck and all the best.