Putting the 'home' in 'home sweet home'

Last summer I decided to undertake a huge and hugely unsure project. Three continents and 6 months down the line, the project turned out fine, and much better than expected. A few other things, however, have temporarily escaped judgement. Things such as the question: where will I stay when I land?

Over the years I have outsourced cares about finding a home. When I decide to give up an abode to engage in multi-month travels, it is my environment that voices their concerns. "But what will you do when you come back?" My answer has been a carefree one: I will find a place. And I always have. Within weeks I have sussed out a temp appartment, room or attic, usually conveniently available until the next travel plan rears its head. It has been a good run: I have lived on nearly a dozen addresses in our dear capital.

But cracks are showing in the system. I have been home for a week, and my search has yielded absolutely zip. As Leonard Cohen famously stated: "The ponies run, the girls are young, the odds are there to beat. You win a while, and then it’s done – Your little winning streak." So far, my style has paid off. But maybe my luck has run out. I might have pushed it a bit too much this time around. But where did I go wrong? In hindsight, I could name a few reasons why I should have taken my current task at hand a little more serious.

To start with the general and move to the particular later: the availability of temp houses has dwindled significantly since the law has been passed that makes squatting illegal in the Netherlands. Housing corporation and such don't need to be that vigilant for housebreakers anymore.

Added to that, I never applied for the waiting list for the social housing corporation in Amsterdam. Reasoning that by the time I would be on top of the list (a good 10 years later) I'd be a moneyed renter who wouldnt be allowed in, seems to mark a slip in judgement. And signing up now is impossible: having no job or address in Amsterdam make me unelectable. But luckily there is the private sector. Unfortunately, they have their own set of prerequisites.

Possibly, I should have anticipated that to rent in the private sector, one needs a job. Funnily enough, it is the one thing which I currently don't have. I do have an income from the Dutch collective unemployment insurance, but private boys don't dig that too much. The fact that I could pay 10 months of rent in advance makes no difference to the highly inflexible companies.

And, to finish my predicament: I am not simply looking for a place where I can hang my hat, but a place that will feel like home for my Argentinian girlfriend as well, who will be joining me in a few weeks. The type of anti-squatting options I have accepted in the past, don't necessarily fit the scenario of showing someone the sunny side of our beloved country.

So without the possibility to rent from the social housing, nor from the private sector, the options are limited. Have I engaged in a mission impossible? I remain possitive, since you can't know that the wave is crashing before it has crashed. We will have to see.

There must be people who are looking for temps to look after their homes. Or people who have a room in there house they want to rent out. My scope has widened to include cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Haarlem. Other places will become acceptable as well very soon. As long as I don't have to move back to Eindhoven ;) All hints are welcome!

Photos by Annemieke Denters and The Internet.

From prof to professional: the uprooting of an identity

Once before, I have experienced the existential confusion I'm experiencing now.

I was finishing my master's thesis in the last months of 2010. Having studied from 2005 onwards, I had found comfort in the label student. But not a week after defending my thesis on a dreary January

day, I received the key to my office in the building where I had been taught. Now I was to teach. I had to adjust to the quantum leap; I was still in university, but an invisible line had cut me off from one side and positioned me in another. It was an unknown world, full of oddities. It took me a good two years before I wouldn't flinch when someone asked me my for my job title. When I would say "I'm a lecturer", I expected people to smell a rat. Even though my teaching received critical acclaim, the term 'lecturer' took a while to get into.

But when I did adjust to it, I started wearing my job title as a medal of honour. I found that being a university lecturer earned you respect on travels, and was a cue for others to give your opinion on any subject weight. The qualms I had had before vanished quickly, and I think about a year ago, I had built my identity first and foremost around my academic employer. I was a lecturer, all the other things I had aspired to or succeeded in came after that mention.

And just as I was really relishing the identity that the University of Amsterdam had lent me, the certainty of the job title announced its departure. Until the 1st of September I had the paper proving my claim, after that, I was on my own again. It proves to be both exciting as well as challenging.

Without thinking twice, my friend Kuba Szutkowski and I willfully escalated a documentary project, and without too much thought, our non-profit foundation Volunteer Correct saw the light. The change for me was as sudden as it was in the beginning of 2011: I crossed a boundary. I went from those who describe media, to those who make it.

No big institution to back my claims of expertise, no need to weigh words and nuance everything, no semester cycle to drown in, but my own messing about in the margins, dependence on plans I make with

very little prior experience, and nothing but the schedule I have to carve out of a generally uninterested world.

I have tried to introduce myself with 'film maker' and 'non-profit president' a few times now. It feels like I'm pulling someone's leg when I do. But just as when I commenced lecturing, I am telling the truth. Right now, I might be most uncomfortable with the new labels. But come time, I will probably look back at this time of identity confusion the same way as I look back at the time a lecturer was born.

I discussed my feelings of unease with my new titles with a friend, who chuckled and said: "next time when you meet someone, just say: 'I am a president, what is it you do?'" So, with the authority that my office bestows on me, I wish thee a nice day. God bless you, and god bless the malleability of an identity.

Day 24: The house on Zagrebacka

On the 5th of August Croatia celebrates their Day of Victory and Homeland Thanksgiving and the Day of Croatian Defenders. As Croatia has many freeways, one advantage for the cyclist is the B-route: often referred to as 'the old road', this road runs parallel to the highway, through the centres of villages and is hardly traficked. On the 5th of August I found myself on the old road between Kutina and Nova Kapela, also known as Zagrebacka. The afternoon proved to be a trip into the very heart of the country.

Looking left and right of the main road, the majority of the houses are still specked with shrapnell holes from shells and grenades. Only a few have new plaster, many have never been plastered and show their concrete base and red brick top. Most of the are still useable, but one in every 10 houses met a different fate. A backyard bulges with blackberry bushes, in between the trees and shrubs the remains of a house can be made out. From the amount of similar ruins, it seems that the direct hits were simply not rebuilt. Every now and then, a new house flanks a skeleton. An old woman tends her garden in the shadow of her past.

Not all of the houses that are habitable are actually inhabited. And many of the cars parked on lawns and on the side of the road have foreign plates – relatives from other European countries visiting. On this national holiday, the number of Croatian flags is almost met by the number of 'for sale' notices – behind windows or simply spray painted on the exterior wall. In the bigger towns, like Nova Gradiska, it is hard to find material witness to the war that ended less than 20 years ago. But in the smaller villages, there seems to be no visibly unaffected building and half of them are for sale.

The village of Medari provides an example of how complete the destruction can still be. Skeletons of Habsburg's adminstrational buildings dating from the 1880's. An empty spot where a church must have been. The bitterness of the scene introduces irony in the name of the village, 'med' meaning honey in Croatian. Where have the sweet times gone?

But the landscape breathes an indestructable fertility on this unusually green August day, the gentle rolling hills sloping up on the left, sloping down into a plain on the right. In the distance the mountains that signal the border with Bosnia's Republika Srpska are visible. The sun is low and gently touches two children chasing each down the garden, their parents and visiting family members looking on amused from their veranda, briefly interupting the conversation they were having with a passing neighbour who has decided to pitch his hoe to aid him in his position of leisurely conversation.

And thus I find myself split between concern and admiration for EU's youngest member state. Will some of the diaspora return with money and skills? Will there be jobs for all those young people finishing college? Will structural corruption find its way to the exit?

I like to see the golden lining. I draw my faith from the incredible people I've met. Young, ambitious, innovative, creative and resourceful, I find it hard to believe that they will let themselves be stopped by the ramshackle house they've inherited. They'll work on it. They may leave the house for a while, but will come back to it in time. Maybe they'll get the chance to plaster it again. But even if a few shrapnell holes will remain sight, it will be a house worth living in.

Hell, if I ever get the chance to retire somewhere; this would be the house of my choice.