We. . . . ., are Bonnie, Stina and Julian. We have a relatively strong sense of personal integrity, which might make it somewhat difficult to write more detailed about ourselves but with our sense of humor, we dare to give it a try!
Without any doubt, Bonnie has the strongest integrity. She just wants to hang out with us, our children and our three grandchildren. She knows that she stands in rank above the grandchildren, so far. She is affectionate sociable towards us but antisocial and very suspicious towards strangers and especially towards strange dogs. No unknown may come up to her or touch her, but then she is a true breed, sheep herding dog, a real Frisian Schapendoes, extremely intelligent and stubborn. In the motorhome, her task is "Lookout & Watchkeeper".
Stina’s roots are partly found in Fiskebäckskil on Skaftö. She is animal- and motor interested and has a bus driving license since 1970. Besides as a bus driver she worked as a nurse, secretary and other jobs, but in the last two decades, she returned driving a bus. She is happy driving our camper and she probably runs most miles. Stina's role in the motorhome is "First Mate".
Julian's roots are to find in the oldest part of Amsterdam, at the estuary of the Amstel River. There were built thousands of East Indiaman at the same place in the 17th centuary. The interest in, knowledge of and love for the sea, yachts and sailing, are flowing in his veins like the water of the Amstel River (not the beer!). After secondary highschool in Amsterdam, he’d rather do something more handy and became a ships carpenter, yacht builder and sailor; inheritance from his father. On one of his many voyages, in the early seventies, he happened to dock at Gothenburg and anchored. He couldn't heave the anchor for a while, the mermaid of Östersidan (fishing village) had laid out her fishing nets. He was building yachts for six years at a well known ship yard on the island Orust, just to survive because he wanted to do something else, again. Studied at leisure, later full time and became mathematics-, physics- and technology teacher. Besides that he was sailing a lot, from dinghies to a three masted schooner, but professionally, he has worked mostly with sailtraining and education. Driving the camper he finds a boring necessity, he prefers sitting in the passenger seat playing with all important technical toys, if he is not drinking Amstel or watching DVD films, surfing the internet or doing all together at the same time. His task is "Commander", a role he admittedly shoulders at sea, but is somewhat self imposed and often questioned, in the camper, sometimes on the edge of mutiny.
We value nature and animals highly, so it was obvious for two city dwellers to live in the countryside where we wanted to have a lot of animals around us and where we could live and raise our children, with nature as a habitat. The archipelago around Orust was also optimal for a sailor. We have owned boats, yachts and ships from 3 meter to 24 meter, but for the moment we only have “Amstel” left, our HR Mistress 32. To get ashore and walk the dog, Bonnies inflatable Honda dinghy is always on tow, though we even use it to resupply while Amstel continues its voyage. But Bonnie wasn’t really happy onboard Amstel, except when we moored. She has a great place in our lives and will therefore also take a lot of space on this website. We wonder sometimes if we, unwittingly, bought the motorhome for the dog's best? She thrives in the camper "like a fish in the water". In the evening she jumps up in the bed, goes down after an hour and jumps up again when it starts to get light in the morning. In between, she takes care of her guard role, we assume . A special dog paw step has been built for her to reach up to the high camper bed. Because Bonnie loves running on beaches, there’s a lot of sand in our bed, when we are travelling. That, we have experienced over the past years on the beaches in Holland, Portugal and Italy. But after all the dogs in our lives, we are so accustomed to it.
24 September 2012, JvH
