Akkerman Family

The last couple of days have been wonderful meeting my cousin Hans Peter, his wife Marilyna and their great kids Charlie, Jet and Nick. Hans Peter is the son of my mum’s brother Hans who lives in Hilversum and the hospitality they have shown us has been truly great. We had only met on one occasion as kids many years ago and it has been fantastic to re-establish that family connection.
The day started off with coffee and cake at their home and then Hans Peter, Marilyna together with Jet, treated us to a lovely sailing experience aboard Hans Peter’s boat the Wanderlust. We sailed for a few hours on a large man made lake that the Dutch are famous for making and it was a great time to talk about family connections and get to know each other much better. Marilyna did a fantastic job of playing the host by making us some great sandwiches for our lunch.
We made our way to the small port of Huizan and it was there we stretched our sea legs and had a few drinks in the ports pub. Later Trudi was given the honour of steering the boat back to home harbour and she did a great job, we did not run aground or hit any thing.
That night we met up with the rest of the kids, Nick and Charlie and had a great meal at wonderful restaurant. It was a really enjoyable night and one of the highlights for me was seeing Taylor and Dillon making friends with their second cousins who they just met for the first time that day. Marilyna is warm and friendly with a great sense of fun and humour and together with Jet we met up the next day in Amsterdam with the best intentions of further educating the kids by visiting the Anne Frank Museum but the que was very long and it would have been over a two hour wait so as shallow as it sounds we went shopping.
Later that evening we had dinner with my Uncle Hans in Hilversuem, his wife Beppe organised a wonderful Indonesian rice table banquet with many different dishes. The sate was grilled to perfection by my uncle and many of the dishes I had not tasted for such a long time. It brought back for me many happy memories of my Mum and Oma Jos as they were both great lovers and makers of Indonesian food.
We had a nice evening, reminiscing about old times and making acquaintances again and it is good to see that they both are in such good health. Hans keeps fit by playing Boulee and Beppe has a green thumb, her garden is big with many lovely plants bushes and trees.