We have lived in the French countryside for 15 years. Vilaine and Chatillon and Bazois in Burgundy are villages where we lived before. So as of December 2021, we will be in Chateau Mondou in Villeneuve sur Lot.
We are not the only Dutch people living in the French countryside. People have their reasons for moving to France. Rokus takes pleasure in capturing these I-Departure-Stories in a Podcast. Love and other life themes are also discussed, of course.
The Kantelcast, the podcast
The Alchemy of Loss, a Young Widow's Transformation. The story of Abigail Carter, a 9/11 widow (English)
The Sleur, the Smell of Roses, the Moonshine, the Missing and the Redemption
On Daan Berg, building your own home and separation anxiety
You need to be the authentic you (English)
Columns
I love writing. Sitting down at my laptop late at night, in the twilight of a desk lamp, writing a column in the attic of Chateau Mondou.
Five hundred words. Because that's what I did every month for 18 years for the Straatjournaal in Haarlem, the homeless newspaper. Every now and then, I threw in a column about France or vacations, as Martin Bril used to do.
I wrote De Postbank after a vacation in our house in Burgundy, for clients in mental health care. It was a week that I organized with my friend Harry Gras. Those people hadn't been on vacation for decades.
The Summer of '69. I was too young for Woodstock, but thanks to my brother, who is four years older than me, I still got to experience some of it. Even now, I would give anything to have lived for a year during that time. In any case, it inspired me, from my sickbed, to write the following column about it. From our vacation home in Vilaine, Burgundy.