Online exhibition of paintings

        from his book Route 7

               a highway beyond the horizon

De Nederlandse versie is ook te leen bij de bibliotheek of te koop en zelfs als E book, bij www.Boekenbestellen.nl

The English translation is under construction and soon to be published as an E book.

This autobiography has several 'stages or tokens' of remembrance like once the people of Israel raised twelve stones as a monument when they passed through the Jordan River. It is a blessing to recall what God has done in our lives

                                      Stage 1  Indonesia 1952

Baboe Attemie brought me into the room with the rattan chairs. The maid cleared her throat loudly, saying, 'Saya Puan, here I am Ma'am!' Mother, startled, looked up with furrowed brows from behind her pedal sewing machine and saw the servant wide-eyed. With the index finger in front of her mouth, she pointed with the other to the bottom of the curtain, where two man’s brown feet protruded. Mother saw it and without any hesitation, she grabbed a pair of scissors from one of the unfolded blades and yanked the curtain aside. The burglar was shocked and fled. Mother pulled me towards herself and lifted me up. Sobbing with fright, I asked, why the Javanese man was hiding there’. Trembling, she shook her head and sighed, 'It is okay Mauki, he will never come back again!’ I didn't understand, our garden boys were often hidden among the pisang or banana trees.

A few months later, Tuan or Mr Tompot was threatened by his chauffeur in the driveway to the garage. At gunpoint, father was forced to hand over the keys to his jeep.

On March 9, 1952, I was born in Djakarta. The name on my birth announcement was Michiel and just as the name Batavia changed since the independence in Djakarta or Jakarta, I was later called Maurits Rolff. It seemed that the director of the timber trade in Holland, my father worked for, was called Maurits.

In Kebajoran, Block O II, we lived in a spacious bungalow and the colonial life was 'tempo doeloe' or good. In addition to the many holidays in Bandung, Mother organized numerous tea parties and feasts till early morning. Ballantine whisky arrived by wooden crates, for Jon, my brother and I stored our dinky toys in them.

Since Sukarno, the President of the new Republic, wanted to liberate Indonesia from foreigners, intimidation and burglaries were increasing.

After father's long urging, mother Tompot and her children embarked on the Willem Ruys at the end of 1958. I was six years old, Jonneke was eight and sister Jolanthe four. Black and white photographs show father waving at us, standing in his white shirt and shorts on the quay of Tandjong Priok. Mother used her white handkerchief also to dab her tear-filled eyes. Would they see each other again? Jonneke was waving with his white plaster cast arm. I can still hear that crack when he broke his wrist falling off the swing a few weeks prior to leaving Djakarta. At the sight of mother's tears, I asked why Daddy was not going with us to Holland. ‘He still has business to settle before he comes by airoplane, as soon as possible.’

After the big ropes were thrown loose, the ship was towed by a tug boat and the horn blared so loudly that my body trembled. Later, in colour films, with the rattling sound, we saw images of sun-drenched Singapore, flying fish on the ocean, Port Saïd and the Suez Canal. As tropical children, we always walked on bare and passing Gibraltar, we had to wear shoes that pinched our feet. The woollen clothes, with the smell of camphor, itching terribly.

                                        Stage  2  Holland

In the middle of the winter, the Tompot family arrived in Holland. Steam clouds escaped from my mouth and an icy white powder made my hands tingle. The house at Midden Geestweg No. 7 in Bergen, North Holland, had now been rented for six months. The smell of coal from the smoking chimneys and the chirp of seagulls, still remind me today of that period. 

At the white-painted van Reenen School, a tall Dutch teacher, Ms Schermerhorn, deeply impressed me. Everything in Holland was thorough and by appointment. I wanted to become a veterinarian as I liked to play on the farm of my friend Maarten. Days later, my clothes would still smell sour from cows and hay.

At the end of the Midden Geestweg, we could enter the large forest. Gnomes were supposed to sit on red and white toadstools but as an imaginative boy I stayed within the limits of decency.

In the evening, all children from the neighbourhood would gather on the street to play. Even the lovely daughters of art painter Karel Colnot who lived next door in that mysterious house hidden between the huge trees, joined us. On Wednesday afternoons, we experienced the magic of watching television at a neighbour's house. To the end, as the image disappeared from the screen into a white dot that slowly died away, it remained magically spectacular.

After returning from Indonesia, Father was allowed to choose from various surrounding countries to set up a new timber trade for the Utrecht company. For the next seven years we would stay in Vilvoorde in Flanders, Belgium.

        The sea  doesn't learn you to swim                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           sold  

                                             Stage 3  Belgium

In Vilvoorde, there was no forest or beach. We lived in the narrow Frans Geldersstraat at No. 27 above the office of Treetex Acoustics. Behind our house,  a large coal factory spewed out its smelly steam every ten minutes. Our new playground extended from the dark basement to the high-walled restricted space of the courtyard. Here, children never played on the streets and I became homesick, missing the beauty of Bergen. It made my belly to ache.

Father was busy setting up a new business with only one typist/secretary and four representatives arriving every Saturday morning. Together with Dad, they smoked until his office was a blue haze.

I still remember how father took me to the new school wearing his brown raincoat. In a room with barely any daylight there were about thirty Flemish-speaking children. After he left, I felt displaced and cried, but at the same time I was ashamed. The teacher asked what was wrong and I made up a story that my sandal was pinching. He knelt down and unfastened my footwear, but the tears kept flowing. This gentleman in the first class and the one in the sixth, were the only normal teachers, at least in my opinion. The other masters had strange characteristics, like the 'Bolle' from the fourth grade. He had been in the army for a long time and he only let us march in the gym, left, right, left, right. He punished by making you kneel on a square cookie tin at the front of the class. Balancing on your kneecaps was the least painful, otherwise the sharp edges of the box would cut into your shins. I managed to bribe the Bolle with boxes of cigars, 'smuggled' out of father's client gift drawer. Mr. Donville, the fifth grade teacher, had a hunchback and we called him 'Don Quixote'. Almost every day, at the back of the classroom, he gave me a lukewarm slice of his mandarin and yet he would hit my fingers with a steel ruler if I misbehaved.

My brother Jon and I were the only Protestant children to receive special religious education. To this end, a certain Mr. De Lange travelled weekly by tram 58 from Brussels to teach us separately from each other. Simeon, the red-haired Jewish boy, was taught by a rabbi and for the rest of the class, a priest would come in the black cassock with the white collar. Bible stories fascinated me very much and as a private pupil, I was always allowed to ask questions. 'Sir, how did all the animals fit into Noah's Ark?

'Well, Mauki, only one pair of butterflies, one pair of ducks or dogs were allowed. Not all species and I think that the Lord sent little giraffes, elephants, and hippos to the ark.'

I kept mice in the basement and asked how Noah, his three sons and their wives could feed all the animals and clean the pens. Mr. De Lange suggested a simple year of hibernation.

After the exciting adventures of David, his son Solomon was featured. 'Sir, how could the wise King Solomon become unwise?'

'Wisdom is a person, Mauki. If you stray from Him, you also lose wisdom. Do you understand?' Yes, I did, because once on Vlieland, while swimming in the sea, I  wandered away from my father, who was able to pull me out of the strong current just in time. Many Bible stories were difficult to believe, such as Abraham's sacrifice. How could God ask a father to do such a thing?

'You have  to  wait until the Easter holidays to hear the answer. Now, let 's look at my stamp collection, I have an almost complete collection of stamps from Israel and also a number of African countries with wild animals.' Carefully, using tweezers, treasures emerged from behind transparent paper sheets.

Every Sunday, Mother drove us to the Protestant Church in Brussels, where she hoped to meet other Dutch expats. I found the Sunday school classroom cold and dull. Father always stayed at home and peeled potatoes while the radio spewed out football results that sounded like formulas to me - NAC, ADO, Ajax or Heracles.

Sunday afternoons were the highlight of the week, when the family would walk in the surrounding nature reserves such as Hofstade, Grimbergen or Tervuren. Father taught us how to birdwatch. Later he would even buy a holiday bungalow near a bird sanctuary. Yet the seagulls there screeched less exuberantly than in Bergen or on Vlieland, where we spent the summer holidays in a bungalow, called 'Jolly Day'.

During the journey to the Wadden Islands, which felt like a world trip, we spent the night in the windy village of Huisduinen, where most fences were crooked. We slept on rubber air mattresses and the next morning we drove over the endless Afsluitdijk to distant Friesland. In Harlingen we felt as being abroad surrounded by the Frisian and German languages. Then the rocking boat, surrounded by a cloud of seagulls, carried us to 'the edge of the world.'

When father's timber trade flourished, a villa with a spacious courtyard was rented on the Elewijtse Steenweg in Eppegem. Further along the cobblestone road, towards the Rubens Castle, a piece of land was later purchased for a model house to show the various types of wood used in his business. After moving to Eppegem, we, the tough Dutch boys had to cycle to school in Vilvoorde through all sorts of weather.

In the first year of the secondary school, Latin and later Greek was taught. I liked learning because as the best student in the class you came into an exciting competition with official award ceremonies and on such occasions the laureates wore a smart jacket, white shirt and a tie.

In Eppegem I felt almost as happy as in Bergen. My potatoes, radishes, carrots and strawberries were thriving in a part of the huge garden. I had rabbits grazing in a homemade, movable, spacious run, which kept the lawn tidy. The village butcher gave me money for the mature animals, that made me nauseous because of their big frightened eyes when I handed them over. My sadness disappeared while romping in the meadows around the Rubens Castle. I secretly smoked my first wooden pipe at the end of the Steenweg. Christiane lived there and she already looked more than grown-up at the age of sixteen. She was even ready for a new set of teeth like her brother or parents had gotten at an early age. I have often told Ed, her brother, not to give his rabbits cow parsley and as hardly eating it, they would lose weight and die.

One day after school, we arrived at Christiane's house and the outside door stood wide open. Inside, all the cupboards were opened and the contents were scattered all over the floor. Fearing burglars, I wanted to flee, as they might still be upstairs, but Christiane bravely picked up the phone and called the police and her parents. Since that time, I  always warn people to be carefull with their properties.

Curiosity about the female sex was growing, all the more so because boys and girls were separated in Belgian schools. That summer I was building huts in the dunes on Vlieland with a bright blonde German girl, named Heidi.

During the laying of the foundation for the model home, unexspectedly baby Ruud was born. Life smiled on us. The beautiful Pentecost weekend of 1966 was spent with the family of Koos, father's eldest brother from Huisduinen. I proudly showed my young crow 'Sesam' to everyone and said that I had taken the bird from an 'abandoned' nest with another young one for my friend Jos Bolsens. Father doubted the truth and asked me, 'How do you know that the nest was 'abandoned', Mauk?'

'We didn't see the parents anywhere.'

Father shook his head with a grim grin and with the arrival of the black birds, ominous clouds gathered above the horizon of the Tompot and Bolsens families.

The Pentecost weekend was sunny and lent itself to lawn games and badminton. We made cousin Rob laugh again while peeling the mountain of peanuts on the kitchen table. Rob screeched so infectiously that everyone kept laughing. With this cousin I would later spend many holidays in Switzerland when everything had changed.

The night after the family left, father felt pressure on his chest. The doctor from Zemst arrived and diagonist the flu. He advised a week of rest but father asked, 'Is it not my heart doctor?' After all, the grandperents had recently died of heart failure. Father led a sedentary existence, smoking two packets of Lexington without filter, a day. 

After a week's rest, father left for the office on Monday morning and the first thing he planned to do, was sign the life insurance papers for the new house. That simple signature would determine the future of mother and her four children.

In the course of that bright spring day, a black car arrived in front of the white fence of the driveway. A man in a black suit got out and stepped on the gravel path. Little Rudy stood in front of the window with his toes in the nylon net of the playpen. Suddenly, my mother grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the front. She trembled as the man spoke and soon she started to weep. Something very bad must have happened and I wanted to flee, run up the stairs, but mother held me until the vicar came inside.

Later it turned out that father had died of a heart attack and we children never saw him again, nor attended the funeral in Huisduinen. I kept hoping that Dad was in Sweden on business, but the green Opel Rekord never drove into the yard again. The father of my friend Jos also died during the same year and Sesam, the crow, got lost during the holiday on Vlieland.

Three months later, our neighbor Uncle Hein also developed chest pressure at night and the village doctor made the same diagnosis. After he left, neighbor Maria knocked on our door in a panic. Mother immediately called an ambulance and Uncle Hein barely survived. He was still given time to sign the life insurance papers. Three years later he died and 'Aunt' Maria was able to continue living in her beautiful bungalow.

Buttermilk canal

At the weekends there were performances by soul bands in surrounding villages and with my red five gear Garelli, I easily passed my friends on their black Puchs or Tomos, all equipped with high handlebars and round rear lights. Later I tinkered with antique motorcycles such as the Hercules, Panther and the Indian Scout as the absolute top.  I fell in love with the matt red vehicle that emerged from under the straw like scrap metal in a garage shed. I covered the bare saddle with new weather in the handwork class at school and for a front light I drove to Amsterdam or for a rear light I made it to Rotterdam. I became a member of a unique international club of Indian Scout owners and I cherished my bike as a treasure.  How foolish can a man be to fall in love with a piece of rusty metal? My hard-working mother got annoyed with me and literally kicked me down the stairs, screaming, "Get out of my house and don't come back unless you have a proper job!'

As an eighteen-year-old, I was on the street and where was I supposed to go?  The library provided me with a dry and warm place where I could browse the newspapers for advertisements. That same day, I managed to get a job as an apprentice photographer in Rotterdam. Triumphantly, I came home and told mother about my future workplace.

The long days in the dark room with the chemical odors started to oppress me, especially when the owner started to visit me in the evenings, coming too close to me. During the coffee breaks in the photo studio, I went through the newspaper ads again and found a travel agency which was looking for catering staff in a mansion in Austria. That same afternoon I was invited to meet the director and I showed up apologizing for my faded denim suit. To my great surprise I got the job within fifteen minutes.

                                      Stage 5 Austria

On April 30, 1970, I boarded in Rotterdam an almost empty coach with the Brand couple Brand and a twenty-year-old chambermaid, named Anja. The driver took us to the lovely manner Luisenheim, perfectly situated along the lake of Millstatt. The Brands' had a Rotterdam accent and Anja a Zeelandic-Flemish accent. Mr Brand was scrawny and constantly walking his little dog to smoke cigars and his voluminous wife had the strange habit to lift her heavy bosom all the time with both hands.

To the right of the impressive stairs towards the garden I found a room full of garden furniture. Except for one chair and a table, I put everything outside on the terrace and set up my domicile inside. Every morning when I woke up, the lake sparkled and birds gave an impressive concert. I sniffed the fresh air and in the kitchen I was welcomed by the smell of the fresh Kaiserbrötchen, delivered by the Austrian baker, who spoke a strange kind of German. Some villagers were still dressed in lederhosen or ladies in dirdnl with enchanting cleavages. Once, a woman came to apply for a job as a waitress in this dress while her cleavage was shining with sweat and black hairs were poking between her breasts. Obviously she didn't get the job. Nevertheless, the ultimate feeling of happiness I experienced in Bergen or Vlieland bubbled up again. I found my destiny.

To drive the winter cold out of the large rooms, I chopped wood for the large tiled stoves and helped Anja with making beds in the many rooms. The newly arrived tour guide was also called Anja and she asked me for assistance in exploring the many taverns around Millstätter See. Although she was ten years older, we soon dreamed of renting the lovely empty castle at the bottom of the lake for the next tourist season.

While the first hotel guests arrived, I operated as a bellboy and then put on a white jacket to be the waiter at dinner and bartender in the evenings. The next morning I helped serve breakfast and I worked as a gardener. Thanks to father's Rolleiflex camera I had a professional appearance, photographing the hotel guests during the afternoons or evenings. During my free time I rested on a desolate jetty in the sun on the other side of the lake. A blonde, Austrian girl appeared there as well and she, Gaby had the most beautiful blue eyes, surrounded by dark eyelashes and eyebrows. She didn't know how ferociously attractive she was in her self-crocheted bikini. As a future teacher, she did holiday work as a waitress in the imposing Schlossvilla mansion.

On my free evenings, Anja and I invited hotel guests for a tour along the Kneipen or wooden bars which were very cozy. The lights of the grand and mundane taverns along the lake twinkled on the terraces. The view was fabulous like in a fairy land and so was my life, but as  in fairy tales, witches appear to stop all the happiness.

My mother settled down for the summer holidays at a campsite in Döbriach at the end of the Millatat lake and under her wings a large family followed.  I didn't know about the secret contact she had with the management of the travel agency I worked for, to terminate my employment. To be safe, brother Jon had to find a summer job in my vicinity so that I would return at the end of the season. He indeed saw an opportunity to become a driver on a VW van in the same hotel where Gaby served as a waitress. He knew German far better than I did and a strong competitor had arrived. She would have to make a choice between two brothers. 

At the campsite, drinking coffee, mother suddenly told me that I had to return home in three weeks time. Totally surprised, I asked who decided that.

'It's better that you go back to school.'

 'I have a contract that has to be fulfilled.'

'It's already been arranged with the agency in Rotterdam and with Mr Brand.!'

Rotterdam and the Brands'?  What, behind my back?'

'Trust me, it is better to have a degree.'

I felt so cheated that I wanted to swear very loudly, but I behaved. I got up and left the campsite cursing. Something had and I heard mother say in the distance: 'Oh, he will get over it.'

I was devastated, because not only my plan to travel with the staff to Kitzbühel for the winter season fell apart, but also the contact with Gaby and the future summer season with Anja.  I enjoyed the tourist industry and how ironic that I would later end up in this similar sector after long detours.

Back in Luizenheim, I looked for my passport to escape, but later I discovered that mother had given it to Mr. Brands for safekeeping. The bus driver would hand it over to me upon arrival in the Netherlands.

Gaby was the only one who comforted me. 'In a few years you'll be free to see me in Austria!'

I said goodbye to both Anja's but not to the couple who were part of mother's plot.

                             Stage 6 The Netherlands

In a coach full of departing hotel guests, I drove back to the Netherlands where I soon had to sit in the school desks once again. I was terribly bored among the young kids and I felt myself sinking into a swamp of inward rage. Mother took the introverted, depressed pupil to the doctor who couldn't get anything out of me in the fifteen minutes of consultation and he gave me valium. I behaved like Hamlet and the step to more drugs was small. An old schoolmate, John Streefkerk was dealing drugs. As persona non grata he was also kicked out of the same grammar school and now lived as a hippie squatter in Breda. During the weekends, I rode my motorcycle up to him and got very stoned.

In high school I met Ton and Theo, handsome guys of my age with the same interest in literature. We operated as hosts in two cinemas in Gouda, constantly changing shifts to watch all the films for free, like Woodstock or Easy Rider and often I was able to sing along with the soundtrack of the album Steppenwolf.  

'Born to be wild,  get your motor runnin

head out on the highway looking for adventure!'

I got along well with both friends, but there was no friendship between the two of them. For example, I strolled with and our dogs for hours through the polders around Gouda or we sailed in his boat on the Reeuwijkse Lakes. Later, we hitchhiked to France during summer holidays where we dreamed of having our own farm with a campsite. Theo would indeed buy a farm later, without me.

With Ton, who would later become a journalist, I discussed topics from the newspaper, played a lot of chess and hitchhiked also on the Route Soleil. Once, our lives were threatened by a death ride with a driver who had already lost his lower limbs in a previous car accident. He showed with his dangerous driving in his modified car that he had learned nothing from it. At high speed, he raced continuously passing along the infamous French three-lane roads. I constantly shouted, ' Slowly sir, slowly please!'

Anton also screamed in vain and finally I punched the possessed man and yelled at him to stop immediately, 'Arrêtez! Arrêtez au nom de Dieu!'

He slowed down and we got out of the car, trembling.

Years later, on a beautiful day of Pentecost, I hitchhiked to a conference in Vierhouten. The driver who picked me up boasted about his excellent driving style from the start and we flew irresponsibly over the roads of the Veluwe. I demanded that he slow down. 'What do you mean?' He pushed the gas pedal even deeper and w hat I feared, happened right after. The car flew out of the curve and floated in the direction of a concrete electricity building. I squeezed my eyes shut for the big crash, but the car, thank God, ended up in a ditch just before the building and bounced back onto the road.  I crawled out of the smoking vehicle and the driver shouted over the roof, 'Wasn't that excellent skill?'

I stood there speechless and in shock. He laughed loudly and left with grinding tires. I returned home by public transport, never to hitchhike again.

In the meantime, mother was not pleased at all with my antisocial behavior and arranged a room at 'aunt Alice', an acquaintance from Indonesia who also helped with the State Lottery. Her apartment was on the sixth floor in the most depressing neighborhood of Gouda. Even though I enjoyed her Indian food and she took care of me well, I was constantly skipping school lessons. During the final exams I was stoned by the dope and failed the exams, although I had obtained my car, truck and motorcycle license that same year. In fact, I took revenge on my mother like Hamlet, because she robbed me of my Austrian fairy tale. Now I wanted to leave the Netherlands for ever as soon as possible.

In order to be able to earn a lot of money in a short time, I thought I would reach a high rung on the social ladder as a window cleaner. Eight hours up and down stairs turned out to be a physically demanding job for a twenty-year-old student. It wasn't until the end of each weekend that I came back to my senses. For three months, the boss, by the name of De Slegte, 'the Bad one', oppressed me. He cursed if I dropped a sponge and from day one he claimed that I would never be a good window cleaner. Indeed, I would get more knowledge of the 'Gouda Windows'. Fortunately, I worked those two months with a crazy mate from a gypsy camp in Zwammerdam.

Where was the grass greenest? The kibbutz in Israel seemed to me to be the best social society in the world.

I would buy a cheap, 350 cc, two-stroke Jawa motorcycle, which I could dump in case of failure, but my mother suggested that I should purchase a better bike for safety reasons. Since she would pay, I choose a refurbished, 250 cc one cylinder BMW chopper, built in 1952, the year I was born. The money she gave me felt like some kind of bribery for my robbed happiness, but I remembered that I had narrowly escaped death on Theo's bike. It happened after a weekend at John's place in Breda, when I drove back home with the borrowed bike, heavily stoned. I was just about to overtake a truck with a trailer at 120 km per hour when the rear tire blew. Thanks to the weight of fellow passenger John, the dancing bike stayed on the road and we were able to get straight ahead of the truck and reach the hard shoulder. Even after repairing the tire at a garage, I was still shaking with fright and asked John,  even though he didn't have a driver's license,  to take over the handlebar in the quiet polders near Moordrecht. While I handed him the vehicle, he was standing on the soft verge. The weight of the hissing Matchless dragged him head first into the ditch.

Very slowly John rose from the duckweed like Hare Krishna and his round glasses looked like green Olympic circles along with the two bike tires. I helped him clamber to the side and his face surrounded by long hair was like a green crown, showing one big question mark. This sight made me laugh so uncontrollably, finally relaxing my nerves. John couldn't laugh at all, standing there dripping and smelling like a cesspit. After a kickstart, unexpectedly the engine rattled like an old lion and John, teeth chattering, opted for the seat on the back again. 

At the end of the summer I was ready for my world trip. Ton suddenly wanted to join me to experience the great adventure, although he would have to refuse military service. I had been rejected since a school doctor had told me what to hear and not to hear. 

                                         7 Anduze 

The big day of our departure arrived and in addition to a waterproof army sleeping bag, Ton had also bought a military helmet. His giant backpack fit exactly on the gas tank and we were waved goodbye like a bunch of village idiots. Sneering from the little guard of honor, my sister asked, "How far is the journey, gentlemen?"

Indeed, just across the border near Antwerp, we already had the first bad luck. There were loud bangs due to afterburning.  A Flemish mechanic adjusted the faltering ignition by a quarter turn with his screwdriver, for free.

After Belgium, the sky in France was heavily overcast, but just above us there remained a constant blue corridor as if Providence was kind to us. Riding a motorcycle in the rain could be disastrous and I regarded it as a miracle. Ton didn't.

In Paris, a group of old and young people were singing religious songs on the steps of the Sacre Coeur and Ton asked me, 'Why do these people behave so foolishly? What's the matter with them, do they belong to a sect?' I had no idea, although it made a deep impression on me. Why were ordinary young people like me, praising God in public?

In a dimly lit park in a suburb of Paris, we rolled out our army sleeping bags and emptied a bottle of red wine for a good night's sleep.  Where it seemed so quiet in the park in the evening, we were watched by many citizens who hurried to work in the morning, while we made tea on a small butane gas stove and spreading cheese on a fresh baguette. From then on, we would chose quiet spots in the countryside, where we soaked stale bread in the tea.

We continued our Route du Soleil to Anduze in Southern France, where we stayed in the 'chateau' of our popular religious teacher of the Christian Lyceum. During the mornings, we were weeding in his vineyard until the heat became unbearable. In the afternoons we would swim in the river that meandered through the apricot and peach orchards. In the evening we philosophized until late at night with many liters of wine that I got every other day on my motorcycle at the Cooperative. I filled up the 10-liter jerry can with the fermented grape juice as if it were petrol.

Our pastor talked a lot about Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Che Guevara and all kinds of famous heroes but in the village we heard about the Man from Nazareth. Anduze was known as one of the few Protestant strongholds in the South of France and that week, young people arrived to do an evangelistic campaign on the market square. A bunch of boys and girls were singing in public, prepared to look like fools, like those people on the steps of the Basilica. We asked what inspired them to sacrifice their holiday and still looking extremely happy without drinking any wine. What was their secret? They said smiling, 'Jesus est vivant!'

                                                         8 Italy

We traveled to Porquerolles since Vlieland, every island attracts me like a mighty magnet. On the beach we met a young couple who offered us freshly caught fish which they fried on a crackling wood fire.  That saved us another meal and at the end of the pleasant evening by the smouldering fire with wine from cardboard cups, this couple told us enthusiastically about Jesus, le Seigneur.  That night on the beach, I stared at a clear starry sky and pondered about Jesus who apparently knew how to inspire so many young people.

Next morning we triumphantly toured along the beautiful French Riviera. We often overnighted in the gardens of abandoned villas with magnificent views of the Bay of Monaco, where expensive and illuminated yachts floated.  Behind our ramparts of complacency, Ton wondered who was the richest in the country and asked, 'Isn't the whole wide world belonging to us!'

Riding on a country road in the warm plains of the Po where the sun was already setting, a sharp tap sounded and the engine stalled. Soon I discovered that there was no more compression in the cylinder and sweating, we had to push the motorcycle in the hope of finding a garage.

Behold, suddenly a Fiat pulled up next to us and through an open door window, a man asked, ' Cosa c'e?'  Pointing to the engine block, I replied,  'La mia macchina e rotta'.

This man in blue overalls got out, kneels down by the bike and made the same diagnosis. Without words he took a long rope from his trunk in the front of the car and attached one end to his rear bumper and the other to my steering column. He beckoned Ton to sit next to him in the car and dragged me on the motorbike for a few kilometers on the road. Then we bumped along a dirt road to a large walled farmhouse, where Angelo introduced us to his parents, parents-in-law, grandparents, brothers, nephews, nieces, sisters-in-law and other relatives. He showed us a place to stay on the first floor of an empty house within the farmhouse. It smelled of the dark pigs that walked in and out below.

For dinner we ate macaroni and plenty of Chianti with the whole family in the big warm kitchen. Then Angelo who was about thirty, took us to his garage. The motorcycle was hoisted up with chains and after the cylinder head was disassembled, Angelo showed one of the broken overhead valves that had been knocked through the piston. These parts plus head gasket had to be ordered in Milan. Did we want to wait for that? 'Si, si, prego.' In the mean time we had to enjoy ourselves for a few days on the farm where the exceptional beautiful sisters of our mechanic, were working. Perhaps iAngelo hoped that we were potential marriage candidates. Unfortunatly these beauties only spoke an Italian dialect.  My years of invested knowledge of classical Latin faltered on all sides, although a few years earlier, I had communicated with a beautiful native girl during a holiday job on Lake Garda in Italy.

The engine was neatly repaired, the leaking fuel tank and exhaust pipe welded and as a farewell our 'angel' showed us in the little Fiat the red light district of Milan. Men dressed as women turned out to be the top attraction, which didn't really interest us.

After an extensive breakfast, we got a hearty packed lunch from le sorelle and headed for Venice. It was noticeable that Ton started to spend our household money generously, while a big hole had just been made in our budget. Mr Henzen liked to sit and drink on a terrace in Venice and buy expensive newspapers while we were barely halfway. The next evening, lying in a beautiful mountain meadow, Tom suddenly became 'homesick'. His 'planned holiday' was over and later it turned out that his military service time had arrived. My boyfriend who had promised to go on a trip around the world had song. I felt betrayed and was angry but didn't want to show it. To attack him and touch him the most, was by reacting nonchalantly as if our friendship had never existed. 'Okay, I'll drop you off tomorrow morning at the highway and then you can hitchhike home.'  I turned over as if I wanted to sleep. Next morning I dumped Ton at the highway and drove on without looking back. Instead of being sad or depressed, unexpectedly, a feeling of freedom tingled on me.  Free at last! With the yellow helmet buckled to the sissibar, I whizzed in delight along the winding roads along the rocky coastline. My hair fluttered in the warm wind and I loudly sang the song of Steppenwolf from the movie Easy Rider,

'I can climb so high I never wanna die

Born to be wild

Head out on the highway

Lookin' for adventure'

                                                     9 Athens

In former Yugoslavia, the landscape became more rugged. Gypsy children begged for money and they pelted me with stones since I refused to stop. Due to hypothermia and exhaustion, I skidded twice on the almost impassable mountain roads. One time I balanced on the crankcase on a boulder at the edge of a gaping ravine. The euphoria of the newly won freedom faded into the looming fog.

For the night, I took cover behind a fence in a small forest as it began to drizzle. Shivering from the cold, I heard in addition to the steady dripping, a sudden rustling and snorting, interspersed with the creaking of branches. The ground trembled and expected an attack of a great beast.

At the crack of dawn I had finally dozed off, until a huge cow's head loomed above me. With a near heart-attack I appreciated this beastly gesture as a funny greeting from Providence.

Descending into Greece was like sliding into a hot bath. At the poste restante in Athens I found in addition to letters from the family, one from Ton. Apparently, he wanted to make amendments by meeting my brother, a KLM steward, who flew to Athens. Indeed, a meeting took place in front of the Parthenon on the Acropolis. Dressed in jeans covered with oil stains, I followed the steward through the chic foyer of the Hilton Hotel. In his suite. on behalf of his brother, he gave me 25 guilders and I learned that Ton's luggage had already been stolen that morning on the highway where I dumped him. In addition, Ton the holidaymaker had arrived just too late for his military service and he had to wait a long time until the next intake. After a luxurious bath, I put back on my smelly jeans that I had 'washed' and bleached in the sun on a deserted campsite, along the coast outside Athens. The trousers were stiff as leather, which many motorcyclists prefer.

In this idyllic yet lonely place, I spent the nights in the company of a large black dog covered in ticks around her eyes. I gave her some food in exchange for feeling safe during the dark hours.

Every day a beautiful blonde arrived as she was dropped off at this place by two gentlemen in an expensive limousine. The car remained parked at a distance and the full-figured girl looked like the daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate. Unfortunately, she only spoke Greek and I still wander what she saw in me, a filthy robber. I sniffed her expensive perfume during the rides on the motorcycle and the gentle touch of her breasts against by back aroused me. It hoped to get rid of the black limousine through the narrow streets of the villages along the coast but I always brought her back to the shore on time, where she was once again collected. 

An old Greek fisherman with white hair and dark eyes also visited this spot daily. As a former immigrant from America, he spoke English very well and I asked him if he knew the book of Ernest Hemingway, 'The old man and the sea'. It was required reading for my school list. Yes and he also loved tuna fishing. He shared his lunch of fresh bread with goat-cheese, olives and tomatoes. For hours I enjoyed the conversation with this wise old man, who mentioned at the end, 'Before I forget to tell you, in downtown Athens you can donate your blood and get well paid for it.' 

My first blood donation, in a not very clean environment, gave me free refreshments and money to buy a ticket for the ferry from Piraeus to Haifa on September 21, 1972.

During the crossing to the Promised Land, the light was bright as if something sacred was about to happen. On the large deck of this boat, there was always a fresh breeze and watching the seagulls from my sleeping bag, I was a homeless drifter with no money, but happy. I challenged a Thai girl to play chess on my little folding board and as I kept checkmating her, she always had to treat with some tasty food. I tried to trace her motives as to why she was paying me so much attention while she was too pretty and decent for me.

'Why do you play chess with me?'

Smiling, she pointed to the king's piece on the chessboard, 'The Master Chessplayer is the King of the universe and He wants you to be His friend.'

'Sorry, my dear, this comes a bit out of the blue, please explain.'

'The King of Kings is also the Man of Sorrows, who gave His life for you ...' Furthermore, the content escaped me  completely  because I was obsessed with her pure beauty. Nothing marred her,  I could not discover a single flaw in her appearance. In addition to a perfect figure, her long shiny hair framed her intelligent face with the large eyes. When she spoke, always smiling, she showed perfect teeth. Her hushed voice had a sexy oriental accent and this delightful creature smelled of spikenard but as she came, she flitted away like a butterfly. 

At the end of that day, I was standing at the railing as the ship approached the port of Rhodes. Coincidentally, I saw her disembark. On the quay, there in the crowd, she turned around and waved at me with a white scarf. How did she know I was watching her? Three more times she turned around and waved exuberantly. I was deeply moved and wondered if she was some kind of an angel or alien?

That night I gazed at the brilliant starry dome and pondered her words. Why would the Creator of the vast universe want to be my friend? Why me, an insignificant ant boy in a human heap?

After leaving Cyprus, a woman's voice could be heard among the travelers, speaking English with a Dutch accent. The young woman had a rotund figure, short light brown hair and an androgenic face, looked at me with sparkling eyes. Her name was Hannie who studied medicine in Groningen and she was looking for a kibbutz. Before disembarking in Haifa, I made a deal with her, willing to take her to a suitable kibbutz if she would pay for the gasoline and food. I entered the Holy Land with only ten guilders. 

The Israeli customs officers asked if I had enough money to leave the country. I pointed to my motorcycle but the port officials shook their heads disdainfully, considering the vehicle too dilapidated. They wanted to see money. Like a blind passenger, I searched in my pockets in vain. The men grew impatient as I was holding up the stream of travelers. AS they wanted to set me aside for the return trip, Hannie stepped forward with a flapping bundle of traveler's checks.

                                             10 Israel

On September 24, we set foot in the Holy Land and her backpack fit exactly on the gas tank again. We headed south along the coast with  Mediterranean  smells washing over us like warm waves of the sea. For a place to sleep we chose the beach at Hadera, where two turtle doves cooed in a palm tree. The spot seemed very romantic until a coconut dropped down next to my head. We shifted our sleeping bags further down towards the beach and during sunset, I began to feel like King Solomon. Hannie's mischievous eyes sparkled like diamonds before the rushing surf that rhythmically cored with the concert of the cicadas in the dunes. The moon should have stood still, as the sun once did for Joshua.

In the morning we left for Tel Aviv where Hannie knew an immigrant Dutch couple who bred chinchillas. We stayed there for two nights on the scullery floor and heard about the harsh life of the average Jewish immigrant. The couple recommended Ginossar as the best kibbutz, beautifully situated along the Sea of ​​Galilee. Kibbutzim were popular among globetrotters and the volunteers were happy to come and help build the country. Everywhere you could taste the positive atmosphere of a pioneer state in the making. We drove through the holy land, which smelled of cedars, eucalyptus, pine trees and the citrus groves full of oranges, lemons or grapefruit.

In Ginossar they asked me and my fellow passenger about our marital status, which could not be substantiated. I had to share a room with a young Japanese guy called Akihiko. The next morning he brought me to work in the banana jungle where sturdy kibbutzniks with large machetes chopped off heavy bunches of bananas and we had to slog on your back through the mud to a trailer which was pulled by a tractor.

Sea of Galilea                                                  sold

At the end of September it was still very hot on these plantations, about 150 meters below sea level. While toiling with my Asian roommate, I remembered the movie 'The Bridge on the River Kwai' in which Dutchmen from Indonesia were beaten up by the Japanese soldiers. I also felt exploited  and wondered what sort of social system I had in mind. In contrast to the hard work, we were only given room and board, laundered work clothes and some pocket money for toothpaste or cigarettes. Every two months the volunteers were invited to see the manufacture of wine at the nearby monastery. I hardly saw Hannie anymore because she worked on a fishing boat at night.

After my request I transfered to the air-conditioned kitchen, where I had to wash pots and pans for eight hours a day. My fingertips were raw, thanks to the leaky rubber gloves. After a few weeks I traded with a mate in the cotton fields where you were supposed to tremple the white cotton balls in an iron container. At least you converse with a buddy and exchange information about the hotspots in the world, waiting for the next load of cotton from the combiner.

After the cotton harvest, I became an assistant to Mordecai, who nickmaned me Moshe. This pleasant, autistic guy with an angular head welded pipes together for the irrigation around the kibbutz. Although he had warned me extensively not to look  too long into the welding fire, I lay in bed for three days with hellish burning eyes. My ever happy roommate took extremely good care of me and compared me to a certain 'Saul who became Paul'. Akihiko never sat around the campfire with the other volunteers in the evening, but consistently studied a large black book with weird Japanese characters, which turned out to be the Bible. At his farewell I was deeply moved, this attentive young man, even after the hard work in the jungle, was always willing to care and clean up the room while humming.

During my days off, I wanted to prove myself by walking around the Sea of Galilee. I couldn't walk on the water yet, but I certainly believed that anyone could become like Christ with consitant meditation. The walk is feasible within a few days, if you are provided with sufficient drinks and food which I forgot about. Starting on the west side in the sun, I was already very thirsty after a few kilometres.

Everywhere in the Holy Land there are 'holy site shields' on which an explanatory text mentions the Biblical event. Here I read on a shield that Jesus had fed five thousand people with two fish and five loafs of bread.  I didn't want to drink the water in Lake because it foamed from chemicals. With miles to go, I shouted to the Providence of the miraculous feeding to provide me with someting to drink. 

Behold, a stone's throw away, a litre bottle of grapefruit juice, with the label almost loose, laid in the rippling waves of the lake. 'What a coincidence!' 

Barely a hundred meters away, two naked men were bathing, politely turning their backs towards me. So it wasn't a coincidence, they put the bottle to cool it.

I walked on cheerfully and wondered about this mystery. Was the Providence providing  or just the two men? What is or who is the Providence? Is it an Intelligence?

When I returned to Ginossar, Hannie had taken the place of the Japanese roommate without consultating me. She was exspecting me to be elated shining by her surprisethis surprise but I wasn't really happy because we didn't have a real relationship. To the volunteers we now looked like a couple. I had Karin from Sweden in mind, who lived opposite in the 'ghetto' and she began to ignore me ofcourse, like in a true soap opera.

In the meantime I was promoted to be the official garbageman and I owed this job to Tom from Toronto. This overactive young man taught me to swear in English and I was now allowed to drive the tractor 'Cougar' every day to empty all the containers. Early in the morning I first collected the milk cans  at the 'dairy' to deliver them it in a trailer to the kitchen. Then I had to lift up all the containers of the kibbutz with a hydraulic system to empty them on the dump, close to the lake. I could take all the time for myself to spot stray pelicans, ospreys, kingfishers, bee-eaters and a few hoopoes. Israel is a pre-eminent overflight route above the pivot point between Europe, Asia and Africa, a veritable Eldorado for ornithologists.

Normally it took eight hours to empty all the bins, but I noticed that most of them were only half full or empty. Since the temperature was dropping in November, the bins smelled less and I tried to empty them every other day from now on, which saved me four hours of driving. More or less proudly, I hid Cougar among the eucalyptus trees near the ghetto and took a chair on the large terrace of the restaurant by the lake. Karin, the  waitress of the Ginossar guest house provided me with a free beer. Now I felt far from being exploited. I read my book, 'The World perishes by industriousness,' by Max Dendermonde and I toasted to Karin and the good life, 'Lechaim, cheers!'

I had spotted the Swedish beauty from the beginning and our rapprochement grew steadily until she discovered my acute concubinage with Hannie. I apologized profusely that the initiative did not come from my side, but not only Karin distrusted me, also the kibbutzniks had questions about my long stay in work clothes on the terrace, where only paying hotel guests were sitting. Cougar was tracked down in the bush, after which a social sanction followed. I had to spend the remaining four hours in the dusty poultry shed where thousands of ugly, clucking chickens were waiting to be vaccinated.

The motif in my favorite book, that most in life is vanity, kept bubbling up in my mind, 'Why couldn't I just be satisfied with my job? Why always rub against the grain of life? I could easily have grown old here. Better a handful of rest than both fists full of torment of the spirit, Max Dendermonde quoted from the Ecclesiastes.' I couldn't find peace and my torment came from the turmoil of searching for the most existential question in life, what is the meaning of it all? Is everything vanity and meaningless? 

Noboby could give me a satisfying answer in my search for truth.              

I had ticked off Christianity and recently also Islam because driving through the Holy Land, I could recognize the Palestinian Muslim villages from miles away by the car wrecks or ruins along the road. The Muslim quarter in Jerusalem also differed considerably in cleanliness from the Jewish, Christian or Armenian sections. You know the tree by their fruits.

Will I find the truth in India, the so-called land of wisdom, but how can I leave Israel with no money? The degraded motor bike would not bring in enough finance.

A volunteer told me that in the nearby Bethshean, one could earn thirty lira or Israeli pounds a day in the shooting of a movie entitled, Jesus Christ Superstar. Maybe I was allowed to act and travel with the film crew. I rode my iron donkey to the filmset and was accepted for the shoots. Right then they were filming the scene of Jesus before Herod. Again and again the crew had to chant, 'Crucify, crucify, crucify!'

I could have earned thirty pounds a day, but some of my religious education at school reminded me of the thirty pieces of silver that Judas received for his betrayal. I respected hippie Jesus too much to shout, 'Crucify Him, crucify Him.'

Was it the experience with the grapefruit bottle by the lake that forced me to make a radical U-turn? Years later, I would see this musical whose music is amazing, but unfortunately Jesus is portrayed as a dreamy loser. Was He not in total control of his life? In 2011, I was on the Market square in Gouda, where the first musical 'The Passion' was performed. In response to Pilate's question as to who should be released, the audience had to shout three times, 'Barabbas'. A feeling of déjà vu rose within me.

                                                         7

Among the volunteers, there was a rumor that you could earn tax-free money in Eilat at the Red Sea, but how do I get to southern Israel without petrol?

I bought a few bottles of wine at the monastery to treat my ghetto fellows at the campfire. Meanwhile I shared my problem with the group and behold, Ulrich, a Swiss hippie with long, straight, blond hair, spontaneously offered to escort me with his scooter during the trip through the desert. He even wanted to support me for a few days in Eilat and if necessary, we would drive back together.

Mid December, I had to say farewell to Karin and Hannie but I promised to return within a week if I didn't find a job, otherwise I would write. Karin was, just like Gaby, my ideal woman with her natural streaks in her blond hair. Carol King's song, 'You've got a friend, winter, spring, summer or fall', still reminds me of her. I would visit her in Sweden and I wrote many letters which she never answered, probably intercepted by her parents.

After a spectacular trip through the Negev desert, the nights were bitterly cold on the beach of Eilat. We lived on coffee, falafel or shwarma, oranges and wine. Every morning at six o'clock I was present on the terrace of 'Charley’s Point'. Contractors in their pick-ups came to choose labourars like in old biblical times.

On the third day I was picked out of the group by a foreman from the 'Ashdrome' company, together with a Danish boy, called Christian. We were taken to a large construction site, where a small shed with three bunk beds would be our future residence. I would live there for six weeks with three Palestinians, a Americain student and the ruddy Dane Christian. During the first days, we had to cut holes in reinforced concrete which caused muscle pain and blisters. Then we had to clear concrete formwork. Thanks to an advance from the foreman, I survived the first week on falafels or shwarma and what the Palestinians gave me from their cooking on a butane gas set. In the evening we all lay exhausted, like animals in a stable. I knew I could leave again after a few weeks or months, but the Palestinians would stay as it was their way of living.

Suddenly, a woman appeared in the doorway and I was shocked, because this ghost was my mother. Once I recovered, I faked joy and it surprised me how quickly I automatically settled into the role of the well-behaved son. Mrs. Tompot had chosen Israel for her Christmas holiday and during the days in Ginossar's Guesthouse, she had inquired about Maurits Tompot. A beautiful Swedish girl had told her that Moshe had traveled to Eilat on his motor bike. After a visiting Bethlehem and Jerusalem for the Christmas season, mother had booked a week in a B & B in Eilat. On the street she had asked people about a young Dutchman on a motorbike and during my daily trips to the food stool, I had attracted attention with the loose exhaust pipe, which backfired due to the dysregulated ignition.

During the holidays I was able to take a few days off and finally take a shower and wash clothes in my mother's room. She booked bus trips to Solomon's mines in the desert and the deep-sea aquarium along the Red Sea. On the bus, she constantly tried to keep the conversation going, while I dozed off in the sun behind the window. She kept asking questions about faith until I exclaimed, 'Woman, stop it! I have nothing to do with your relidgion! If I've ruined your Christmas holidays, so be it, I didn't ask for you to come, did I?' That was probably like a dagger in her heart, but her moist eyes when she departed, hardly made an impression on me, on the contrary, I was glad that she left .

The foreman took Chistian and me to a pile of rebar. The mess had been tipped off a truck and the iron bars and rods with arches were waiting to be sorted. The manager asked, 'How long do you need to sort this?'

'A few weeks for sure!'

The boss laughed loudly. 'No gentlemen, a few days should be enough.'

'Okay, we'll fix it in one week, agreed!'

So a deal was made for a full week's work and we tried to get the job done sooner. We were then paid the agreed amount and could start the next job. This so-called kabbalah noet system made us a team of draft horses that made me develop into a bodybuilder.

Our efforts pleased the supervisor so much that he asked us to work as paid workers in a nearby kibbutz Yotvata. That was the jackpot; In addition to the salary, housing, clean sanitary facilities and free food was included!

The first weeks we behaved like gluttons of the ample food supplied that had been substandard for two months.

In the desert we were given the honorable task of digging pits for picket posts. Under the comfortable winter sun, after the abundant midday meals, we could not resist the temptation to take long siestas in the self-dug pits. After a first warning, the foreman found us asleep a second time and the third time we were discharged on the spot and honnestly we were fed up with this work. I had earned more than two hundred dollars and was able to leave Israel, but where could I exchange my Israeli pounds ? No bank in the country or abroad would exchange the Israeli money.  

I had heard of a monastery in Galilee and I knew that Christian would also travel north and I asked him, 'Hey man, can I drive you to Tel Aviv? Would you like to ride back around the Sinai desert with me?' He nodded while shrugging.

Up to Sharm el Sheikh we steamed briskly until a sign appeared with a text in Arabic, Hebrew and English, ‘No trespassing - militairy area'. We decided not to understand the text and continued to hum with a full tank of petrol, but after 350 kilometers, halfway along the road to El Arish, the roar died down to an ear-numbing silence in the undulating sea of sand. Christian broke the silence with a loud curse. He grabbed his backpack, took one of the two cans of Cola and drifted down the endless road.

Strangely enough, I didn't care that he left and I experienced unexspected peace. It is that special  feeling of being alone in a remoted place like you are first in the morning on the beach or skating on a frozen lake. In this pristine plain, I felt a holy awe in this great emptiness.

Spontaneously, I began to speak in English to the God of Israel who helped me at the Sea of Galilea. He led His people through this wilderness and provided them with water and food?

 Triple peace

After my little prayer, I saw a cloud of dust as big as one man's fist. A Jeep with four Israeli soldiers was toiling through the loose and in my direction.  They might have spotted me a while ago. As they jumped out of the vehicle, the commander started to yell at me that I was in a forbidden area. I pointed shrugging at my tank, saying, ' Sorry sir, no understand, no petrol!'

He nodded to one of his men who grabbed a jerry can from behind the vehicle and poured liters of gasoline into my tank.

 'And now, get the hell out of here!'

Fortunatly the BMW started and a few kilometers further on, I picked up Christian.

He didn't care at all how I had done this, but I felt like Moses who had just seen a burning bush.  I started to sing Carole King's song aloud,

You just call out my name

And you know wherever I am

I'll come running to see you again

Winter, spring, summer or fall

All you have to do is call

And I'll be there

You've got a friend'. 

A bizarre trip past ghost towns and destroyed army tricks followed. In completely deserted villages along the Red Sea, curtains still fluttered in the house windows. Sail boats were on the shore and barbers' chairs stood as if they had been abandoned yesterday.

Exactly with the last drop of fuel, we reached El Arish and as if in the old Levant, we wandered around in the covered market, full of stalls with colorful goods on display. Fragrant herbs were piled up like small pyramids next to piles of nuts, fabric, clothes, household items, and even gold or what looked like it. Being the only tourists, we were offered coffee and tea everywhere.

Arriving in the center of Tel Aviv, artists invited us to stay at their exhibition, due to my roaring chopper at the entrance. It resulted in a place to sleep with an older artist. He turned out to be gay and thought we had to have a sexual experience with a homosexual. We didn't think it appropriate and remained awake that night.

                                                     Netofa

The next morning Christian and I parted ways. I traveled on to Galilee and found the village of Deir Hanna. From there a very steep rocky road lead to the monastery. The simple settlement Netofa consisted of row of barracks, but with a unique view in Israel. To the west, the blue Mediterranean Sea was shining and to the east, the azure Sea of ​​Galilee shimmered.

Two elderly, bearded monks, the American Tom and the Dutchman Jacob Willebrands coached a group of globetrotters and recently, a young Jewish South African had entered as a novice. Neville spoke a funny Afrikaans and resembled the Jesus from the children's Bibles with the blue eyes and long, blond curly hair. Tom and Jacob were delighted with his arrival. Neville attracted many young people and the monastery flourished again as the rose of Sharon.

As crew members, we worked in the mornings in the fields, in the chapel cave or on the rocky road. In the afternoon, everyone was free, except for the young Canadian Mary who meditated early in the morning and was running the household. After the evening meal, one of the monks opened the Holy Scripture to read which caused conversations, usually turning into political discussions with a Palestinian, almost anti-Israeli attitude.

One afternoon I took the donkey for a ride over the hills and to take a rest, I lay in the grass enjoying the splendid panorama.  The donkey grazed quietly near me and larks sang as a sweet delight. In my silence, I thought to unsaddle the animal of its burden for a while. Once freed, the animal pricked up its big ears and jumped around me in larger circles. Finally it trotted out of sight.

Sweating from dragging the saddle, I reached the monastery and Thomas asked scornfully,  'Who is the donkey? You mister Jackass?' 

Neville, the Jack of all trade, was tipped off by villagers a few days later that they had spotted the donkey and lured it with food.

One time I was allowed to drive Jacob in the Land Rover to Jerusalem where he was attending a conference. The monk now was dressed as a priest in a black cassock and soon dissolved in a procession of religious people. I classified this as a theater play of Pharisees and hypocrites. My plan to visit India was decided there on the spot with a cold beer on a terrace from where I could observe the Via Dolorasa. Religion is injuring humanity, didn't the Jew Karl Marx say that religion is like opium to the people?  I had not found my spiritual satisfaction in the monastery and if India didn't bring what I was looking for, Australia or New Zealand became my ultimate destination. Was there any sense or truth in this sublunary world? Living in a commune somewhere down under, would be the best option. I was dreaming of beekeeping and starting a weed plantation.

During one of my last days in Netofa, Neville had a farewell surprise in store. The novice had obtained LSD pills which Jacob and Thomas were not allowed to know about. The pills had to be taken on an empty stomach, but I thought it was too suspicious that everyone would 'fast' that evening. I ate with Tom, Jacob and Mary and later, I joined the group in the sleeping quarters. Not knowing that you couldn't take such a pill after a meal, I ended up on a 'bad trip' or nightmare. The young playing kittens became ravening tigers which made me flee outside, but there, stiff bushes with claws wanted to pull me into the underworld.

In the setting sun, Neville slowly became the devil himself and his shady cronies floating around me to lure me to hell, which was the proud setting sun behind them. After the food was digested, the bad-trip became a good-trip and I ascended to heavenly realms. Neville appeared to change into Christ with His disciples and everything turned into a kind of paradise. Deep down I realized that it was all fake, a dream world. Days, weeks, months and even years later, it flashed in my mind's eye like momentary shooting stars. This powerful chemical seemed to damage my brain.

At the beginning of March, the temperature seemed pleasant enough to travel further. With Tom, I was able to exchange my Israeli money for a $220 check from Barclays Bank New York. I had to assume that this little piece of paper could be cashed anywhere in the world. This is what faith can do, trusting a piece of paper.

I gave my motorbike to Nevil, which he could use for small errands in addition to the donkey. As thanks, he took me with the Land Rover to Haifa, where I embarked on March 5, 1973.  According to my old passport, I arrived in Cyprus on March 6 and left again on March 9, the day of my 21st birthday. On the boat, sailing from Famagusta to Turkey, I treated myself to duty-free whisky.

In Mersin, fake student cards were on offer with which you could buy a train ticket for only twelve dollars that would take you all the way to the Iranian border in three days. Corrupt officials always tried to ask for extra money, but I consulted with other travelers. I shared the train compartment with a German couple who had smoking as a hobby. They constantly changed brands at a certain time of the day and talked extensively about the quality, the cost, the taste, the smell and the type of filter. During the whole train journey, Turkish stared at us, as if we were aliens.

In Iran, most hippies with strong patchouli-like smells, transferred from trains to buses. In Afghanistan, there was also the smell of weed and ridiculous, cheap chunks of hashish flew through the bus as if it was gingerbread. On this hippie trail, joints or hash pipes were constantly passing by, keeping me chronically stoned.

I saw the consequences of hard drugs in Kabul, where junkies were dying in the gutter and no one cared about them. My luggage was never safe and I always used my bag as a pillow.

In the border area to Pakistan, hemp grew luxuriously along the road like cow parsley at home. If I rubbed some of the buds in my hands and mixed the scrapings between the tobacco of my cigarette, I was 'high' for hours. Sometimes I longed to just be 'clean' again.

At the youth hostel in Lahore I was approached by two very friendly guys who tried to persuade me to take a free shot of heroin.  'You need to experience this once in your lifetime.'

They rolled up my sleeve and tied a band around my arm to insert the hypodermic needle into the swollen vein.

Behold, the image of the junkies in Kabul appeared on my mind and I fended off the syringe. ' No, no, please stop it!'

After my refusal, their kindness disappeared very quickly and they rushed to the next victim for their drug trafficking.

In the cities of Pakistan, I became paranoid from the huge crowds and the endless calls to prayer from the countless speakers of the minarets. 

A momentum was the meeting with a sturdy handsome Dutchman who  had come all the way from Australia on his Triumph motorcycle. With this hero I exchanged my leather motorcycle jacket for a good meal and a lot of travel advice about Australia, surely the place to be. If India didn't offer what I was looking for, Down Under would be become my ultimate destination.

India was a spiritual breath of fresh air, unless you ended up in the hell of Old Delhi. There, in the scorching heat, deformed and handicapped people moved through the mud on handcrafted carts among the skinny, so-called sacred cows. I was bouncing into a culture shock. Was this superimposed misery the bitter fruit of Hinduism with its caste system? I seriously doubted whether I would find what I was looking for here.

Before I left New Delhi, I picked up the coveted visas for Nepal at the embassy. Like Goa Beach, Katmandu was a kind of terminus on the hippie trail.

From then on, I traveled on foot or hitchhiked with every available means of transportation. Sometimes I spent the night on hard stone sidewalks with my little bag as a pillow and a sheet as protection against insects.

In rural Punjab, I spent a whole night talking to a young guru dressed only in a loincloth. He lived in a shabby hut and we talked about truth, wisdom and the meaning of life. He asked me for example, ' Why do you assume that life has a purpose?'

'I hate meaninglessness.'

 'Okay, suppose there's a goal, it must have been set by someone, right?' He asks.

 'Do you mean an Intelligence, a God or something?'

'Yes, we call them Brahma, Shiva and Vishnu. You call it the Trinity. We have a lot in common, don't we?'

'Indeed, but suppose that deity has set a goal, can I also miss that destiny or fail in life?'

'That's right, so we first need to know who the deity is and what his goal or deal is.'

We philosophized like this until the new day dawned with a unique sunrise and a lot of rooster crowing.  The guru turned out to be a sincere searching soul himself and yet he was venerated as a saint and fed by the village community. They brought him breakfast, which we enjoyed together. After saying goodbye with a hug as good friends, I continued my journey between the wheat fields. The locals knelt down before me with folded hands, as if before the guru. Was his holiness radiating from me? I greeted them kneeling in the same way, but gloom swept over me because I sincerely hoped that this man would have told me the truth. I could also pretend to be a guru, I mused. 

I strolled along or hitched a ride with cyclists, ox carts, cars or local buses.  Some Indians were happy to take me so they could practice their school English by asking the same questions all the time, 'Do you speak English? Are you married? Do you have children?'

One particular hitchhike turned out to be catastrophic.

                                                             2

Along the road in Uttar Pradesh I rubbed some of the tops of weed plants in the tobacco of my hand rolled cigarette. While hitchhiking, a light blue truck with lots of bells and whistles stopped in front of my raised hand. The young driver and co-driver beckoned me into the cab, where I offered them my joint. Both men inhaled deeply and at the next toll stop I asked if I was allowed to sit on top of the cab in the box, there was no noise and heat, but a lovely breeze.

To my horror, the driver ignored the toll booth in the next village. He crashed through the barrier with a loud bang and thundered at full speed. I was shocked, did the driver get stoned because of my joint?

At an intersection, there were people leisurely talking but because of the high speed of the truck, these people could barely flee. A stationary motorcyclist saw no chance of escape and was run over. From the box I looked back and saw the man lying half under his motorcycle. At the next toll booth, the road was blocked by trucks, forcing the driver to stop. He and his co-driver were ordered to get out and taken at gunpoint. With their hands behind their heads, they had to sit on the ground.  Carefully I emerged from the box and hesitantly approached the pair to sit next to them, but the driver accepted me with a nod to keep walking. I will never forget his sad, dark look. This Indian took the blame, when in fact I had caused this accident.  'Was the motorcyclist dead or would he become an invalid? Was the man married, did he have children? How much jail time would the driver serve?'  With these thoughts I trudged along, carrying a heavy backpack of regret. What were the consequences of this act on my karma? I would never use drugs again since this darkest page in my life.

When I arrived in Amritsar, I noticed that volunteers were cleaning the famous temple and most of them looked at me strangely when I joined the long line of pilgrims for the free food distribution. The last few weeks I only ate chapatis and hot curry and at night my mouth watered when I thought of sandwiches with peanut butter or sprinkles. Dreams of white sandwiches and minced meatballs filled my mind.

In the holy and very hot city of Rishikesh, I knocked on the door of several ashrams, which served as monasteries, hoping for some hospitality, but in the eyes of the pious gurus, only dollar signs were flickering. They asked a fee of $25 to be admitted to 'their enlightenment.'

The only coolness I found was along the banks of the Ganges river that flows from the Himalayas. My money had now dwindled to a handful of rupees because banks wouldn't change my check unless I was willing to wait at least eight weeks to cash it. For a few rupees, I found shelter on a site surrounded by high fencing, with only loose sand and no shade. There was a donkey walking around with a dark stripe in her fur on her back. The only water came from a tap in a toilet cubicle which was to wash your buttocks. There was another crazy hippie, who was watching the sun all day to get high. He was completely insane and so was I, drinking the tap water, which resulted in severe diarrhea.

Weakened, I wandered in the intense heat to the Ganges to cool off. On the way I became paranoid when sacred monkey's attacked me while defending their babies. I fended them off with my little bag which they bit or clung to.

After a few days, I felt so lame that I thought I was going to die. I didn't see any bright light anymore, except the stars at night. Then I wondered if the Creator of God of Israel could help me here as well. I didn't expect any help from the hippies. Although their slogan was 'peace and no war', everyone lived for themselves, just like me.

Most Indians were too poor to care for others and moreover, they believed that dying is being born again. The result is that human life is worth nothing. I felt myself weakening by the hour and prayed as I did in Israel,  'Lord, can You, as the Creator of the universe, hear me here in faraway India as well?'

The next day at the Ganges, I knelt along the shore and stammered four words, 'God, please help me!'  Stumbling back, I crossed paths with a German hippie, who looked at me disdainfully as if I had leprosy. He said,  'Hey man, you look very ill!'

I nodded and pointed to my stomach,  'Yes I feel so bad, it's horrible.'

'Do you have dysentery?'  I shrugged. A little tube box with black pills emerged from his shoulder bag and he said,  'Here, take two of those with water from my bottle. From now on, you only drink chai tea, okay? I've just come from Mussoorie where I've met some good people. They will surely have a place for you to recover. They are Christians like the Salvation Army, but nevertheless cool people. They're guaranteed to help you.'  This sounded like music to my ears, the goodwill of the Salvation Army was well known to me.  '

Please ask for Stan in the Bible shop in Mussoorie, okay?' t he young man said with his long blond hair and a short dark brown beard. He took a box of oil tubes from his bag and wrote on the back, 'For Stan, sincerely yours, Michael.  Please give this to Mr Stan Hawthorne, the missionary man, understand? For the time being, I won't be painting in this scorching heat and it saves me having to carry it.' 

Thanks to the pills, I was able to hitchhike to Mussoorie the next day without nausea and everything went extremely well. Slowly the road led up to cool, green hills as if in heavenly spheres. Ferns grew on tree trunks and cheeky monkeys jumped on the roof of the bus.

Mussoorie was an old colonial resort, where the British used to spend their hot summers. The buildings were orderly with many trees in an attractive setting.

Upon opening the door of the Bible shop, a bell rang and a full-figured, beautiful woman appeared. She welcomed me warmly as if she was expecting me. Her aura of love made me recoil like a pariah. I couldn't bear this overwhelming affection. Was it because of my months of emotional isolation? Again she surprised me, this time with the question,  'Would you like a cup of tea with a piece of cake? I received it in the mail this morning from my mother in Australia. Here, smell it, now with vanilla and lemon, delicious isn't it!'  I smelled it from a distance sitting on a tea chest at the entrance. The grand dame reached out and touched my hand to shake it. She introduced herself as Mary Hawthorne, wife of Stan and she apologized that her husband wasn't home yet,  'He will arrive any moment!'

She poured the chai, with lots of milk and sugar. The warm hospitality made me shudder, but I succumbed, drooling over the cake. During tea-time I showed the oil painting tubes for Stan as the so-called reason for my arrival. I also mentioned that I was looking for the philosophical meaning of life. Mary confided in a whisper that she had friends further up the mountain, where I might be able to stay.

In order not to sound too eager, I told her that I would stay at a hotel in the village and will come back the next morning if her husband would be present.  'I will surely make him wait for you, Morris.'

To underline my good intentions, I bought a discounted King James Bible with my last rupees as a thank you. I had already spotted a simple hostel beforehand, a room with eight beds, equipped with wooden frames and braided rope as a mattress.

The next morning, a beaming Stan was waiting for me in the Bible shop. The tall, ruddy man received me very warmly, although he was difficult to understand because of his Irish or Scottish accent. I thought it would be wise to mention that I had nowhere to cash my US check and Stan said that he would help me with his bank account. First he asks kindly, but firmly,  'Do you know Jesus as your personal Savior?' I admitted, without any idea what he meant by this. 'Well, I heard of Jesus Christ Superstar recently', I said. 'Okay, we'll talk about it later. Are you ready to see our brother Peter and sister Dorothy now? Let's go!'

We hiked up the ridge to Hamilton House, where Peter and Dorothy were waiting on the porch. The view from there was majestic. To the right, the planes stretched as far as ere the eye could see, and to the left, the snow-capped Himalayan peaks.

Dorothy looked a lot like Mary, also blonde, but much smarter. Both ladies turned out to be Australian and Peter was of British-Indian descent. He looked like a small, sporty Frank Zappa. I arrived very emaciated, Indian dressed in green-yellow, striped, kind of pajamas with a ponytail and only a small bag.

After getting acquainted with the usual chai, the couple showed me a room where I could stay. Back on the terrace, Stan asked, 'Do you  like Hamilton House?'

Of course, I'd love it.

Stan said goodbye, after he had expressed the hope to meet and greet again at the church coming Sunday.  'My beloved wife Mary will sing a solo in the service and we hope that you will soon come to know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior.'

That same day, Peter gave me a book entitled, 'Gods Smuggler' by Anne van der Bijl. This Dutch missionary smuggled Bibles to the countries behind the Iron Curtain. From now on, I would spend hours reading in a rocking chair on the porch in front of the immense, espace, heavenly painting which changed by the second. Despite the onset of the monsoon with curtains of rain, I experienced an unprecedented tranquillity and felt that I had come home.

I n the Methodist church, where a large family of happy clappy people met on Sundays, I did not feel at home at all, despite the songs that Mary sang in devotion with her little harp, 'Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me, all the days of my life.'

On the contrary Dorothy cooked deliciously and especially her desserts were excellent, home-baked pastry with hot custard. Another guest, a young Canadian Jesuit priest, joined the dinners and it was funny that he kept criticizing what Peter preached at the table. This priest apparently did not take the Scriptures literally and after the meal, when the Bible was opened to read a chapter, it led to heated discussions.

After the first meal, the chapter dealt with the prodigal son and I felt that their gaze was directed at me, while  felt more like a drifter who washed up here due to circumstances. Was it my fault that the banks here work so slowly and tap water makes you sick?'

Then the hitchhiking accident flashed through my mind. I was more than a prodigal son, a possible murderer was sitting at their table.

                                                                                 4

On the second evening, Peter read the fascinating story of the Good Samaritan. I had ridden on that same desolate road in the wilderness from Jericho to Jerusalem with the crackle of a loose exhaust pipe, echoing off the bare hills and I could very well imagine how, black-clad, orthodox people  in this godforsaken environment, just walked by, while a Palestinian took care of the victim. I identified Peter with the Good Samaritan, but he emphatically pointed to Jesus as the Merciful One, who wants to carry us on His donkey.  'Do you know that donkeys have a narrow strip of darker hair that runs down their back and across the shoulders? This naturally makes the shape of a cross, do you think this is a coincidence?'

I shrugged, even though I had only seen one stripe.

A few days later I received another book, 'The Late Great Planet Earth' by Hal Lyndsey. The cover of this bestseller featured how ancient Bible prophecies were being fulfilled. Although there were many American bestsellers, my curiosity was piqued. Lindsey wrote that the greatest sign of God could be seen in the Jewish people, as for example how they are returning to the Promised Land. With my own eyes, I have seen the pioneer state in the making, the only democracy in the Middle East since the declaration of independence in 1948.

The 33-year-old rabbi from Nazareth had walked around Palestine for three years and before His farewell to His disciples, He foretold His return with the coming of the Jewish nation. Was the Jewish nation a demonstrable proof of God's existence?

I noticed that there were a lot of Tibetans in Mussoorie and I asked Peter if they were coming to visit the Dalai Lama, who lived in the next village, Dehradun. ' No, they are all exiles, like the Dalai Lama himself. Don't you know that China has annexed Tibet?'

Agreeing to Peter, that was also a serious sign, a prophecy from the book of Revelation.  'The Chinese government wants to restore the ancient Silk Road, across the Himalayas towards the West. It has been prophesied that one day there will be an army of 200 million soldiers who will march out of the land of the rising sun. There is only one country that can produce such a huge army. Other nations will also gather in Israel, resulting in the catastrophic clash at Armageddon.'

I was shocked as a whole new perspective opened up for me. I vaguely knew the Club of Rome, once founded by European scientists who expressed their concerns about the future of the world. Barry McGuire's song 'Eve of Destruction' was familiar to me, but this was breaking news, the whole end scenario had been predicted thousands of years ago.

I challenged Peter with the question,  'Isn't Bible prophecy superfluous to predict how things will turn out? If another madman or antichrits like Hitler comes, history is just repeating. The only difference is the present nuclear arsenal.'

'Exactly, 2000 years ago, nobody knew about atomic bombs and their power as described in the apocalypse. God knows how it ends, He wants to warn and comfort us as Jonah was instructed to do.' 

'What do you mean by comforting?'

'Well God warned and spared Nineveh. Humanity will destroy itself, but Jesus will soon intervene to prevent mankind from exterminating itself completely.'

All this information made me dizzy.

In seven weeks, I studied hundreds of prophecies and the possibility that the Bible was correct, grew by the day. Some prophecies were easy to fulfill, such as the one in Zechariah, 'Behold, your King is coming to you, meek and seated on a donkey. Indeed quite simply, Jesus asked his disciples to borrow a donkey in a nearby village, on which He would enter Jerusalem. A self-fulfilling prophecy , right?

Peter answered,  'Exactly, but tell me, what king comes on a donkey colt? Usually, the monarch sits on a large white horse with an imposing retinue that radiates power. What people in the world have such an honest history book as the Old Testament? Practically all the heroes go wrong, yes, even the richest and wisest King Solomon.'

That gave me a lot to think about. The entry into Jerusalem on a donkey was quite easy to arrange, but to determine the place of your birth in Bethlehem in advance is more difficult. Micah had prophesied, 'You, Bethlehem Ephratah, too small to be among the thousands of Judah, out of you will come the ruler in Israel; His origin is from ancient times, from the days of eternity.'

At Jesus' death on the cross, hundreds of prophecies were fulfilled and all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, from the smallest dove to the largest bull, point to His ultimate sacrifice. His life had been predicted in detail and abundantly foreshadowed by myriad figures such as Moses, Samson, Jonah, Joseph and all those other types.

The Bible turned out to be a monument like the pyramid of Giza and for centuries it stood the test of time. Pieter challenged me with the statement, 'When Jesus says He is the Truth, then He is the Truth or the greatest liar, do you agree? Check it out yourself, it's a fifty-fifty chance.'

I had already passed the 50% mark and was growing towards a eureka moment as if I were standing on the pyramid myself and looking over centuries of history. The rejected cornerstone was the Stone of Emissions, the Rock of Annyance, the Rock of all Ages, which I was looking for. I had found the Way, the Truth and the Life!

Or did He finally find me?

Enthusiastically, I started sending letters home that I had found in India, what I was looking for, in India. The last postcard I had sent from Kabul, was with an Afghan smoking a 'chilm', a type of pipe for hashish. After months of deadly silence, the family was very happy that I was still alive, although my letters full of Bible verses made them suspect that I had become entangled in a cult. 

One phrase from the Gospel kept repeating in my head like a mantra, 'Seek first My Kingdom and My righteousness, and I will give you everything.

Following Peter's open prayer time at the table, I also tried to 'talk' to God during my walks in the hills around Mussoorie.

'Do you mean everything, Lord?'

For me, everything included the finishing of my trip around the world.

                                                                       5

I slowly began to understand that Christianity is not a religion with rules, but a relationship with Him who wants the best for you. The Bible is about Jesus, the Word of God and just as human beings use communicate by words, so does God. He is not a vague Providence, but a Person with a name, Jesus or Yeshua, which means Yahweh is the Savior. He had His word written down during centuries by several 'secretaries' and wittily, He is the only ancient writer that still lives. You can talk and walk with Him, ask questions, give thanks, and build up a relationship. Like Adam in the Garden, I walked through the thickly wooded hills and tried to listen to that Voice, meditating on the mantra, 'Seek My Kingdom first and everything shall be added to you.'

I heard something else whizz through the leaves, a voice whispering like thew leaves. 'Don't forget the unused stamp in your passport, my friend!'

Soon the visas for Nepal started to smoke like a burn pit. 'Hey loser, you still have to finish your trip around the world and don't come home like a cormorant with drooping wings.' 

This thought coiled around me like a snake and kept whispering in my ear, 'Stop with that so called kingdom, get out of here, show guts and use that visa for Nepal. Hit the road again for Australia. That kingdom will come later!"

The Soft Voice said, ' Seek first My Kingdom, and I will give you everything.'

The forked tongue hissed, 'You found your eureka, fine, be happy and get moving ahead. Get out on the highway, lookin for adventure. You are born to be wild, remember?'

On a walk in the hills, I met an attractive woman in her thirties with raven black hair and a long black dress. She was sitting in front of a stone cottage and her accent immediately betrayed that she was Dutch. This was the first voice since months. She stayed and waited in that cottage of her Indian boyfriend who didn't show up.

I enthusiastically told her about my eureka since I came to Hamilton House and a few days later she came to see me, 'Will I see you again soon, Maurice? I'll wait for you with chai."

Peter saw the lady and warned me, 'Morris, you better not visit that lady. She might seduce you, satan is smarter than you think.'

Indeed, that temptation lurked like a cobra. I didn't just want to visit her, but I was equally longing to move to her cottage. I had already taken into account the possible beatings of her Indian boyfriend. Could the devil have disguised himself in a black dressed l ady , as Peter suggested?

 The voice hissed again,

That temptation lurked like a cobra. I didn't just want to visit her, but I was just going to move to her apartment. I had already taken into account the possible blows of her Indian boyfriend. Could the devil have disguised himself in black, as Peter suggested? 

The voice whispered, 'Why don't you ask this woman to travel to Australia with you? She must have some money or connections and again, that kingdom will come later, it can surely wait'.

Hypocritically, I challenged the Lord if He could point out the right woman in front of me, as I had just read the story of Rebecca and Isaac. Behold, the next day there was a five-page letter from Esther from Gouda. What a coincidence! She wrote that she had been waiting for me for almost a year. I was flabbergasted and happy, but weren't the encounters at the Reeuwijkse Plassen jumps from a summer calf love? She was barely sixteen, but like me, the black sheep at home. Literally, she was the only one of the three daughters who was not blonde, but even light-skinned. We had hours of in-depth conversations in a little sailing boat on the lakes. She was also searching and enthusiastically, I began to write her letters, full of Bible verses. 

Walking along the mountain paths with ferns and moss-covered trees, I wrestled further with life's most important question while the woman in black lured me like a mighty magnet.

'Lord, for most of my life, I've always gotten the short end of the stick. I want to come out on top now and on a long-term basis. I want to give you a chance to prove that your Word is true.' I had nothing to lose, only to gain, I thought.

'Take the Dutch lady to Nepal,' the voice of the black viper shrilled.

'If the Almighty promises me to give me everything, including an arrival in Australia and absolutely everything, then I'm super stupid to ignore that offer, wouldn't it?'

'Do you believe these promises, it's bullshit, man!'

'Yes, I'll go for the all-inclusive deal.'

At the age of 21, I made the most important decision of my life: I was going to risk it with God. Was it a risk? He had already helped me till here, saved my life in Rishikess, so why not trusting Him for the rest of my life?

'Okay, Lord, let's make the deal.'

Like Abram who had been called from Iraq your, who had been promised a beautiful country, I made a kind of covenant.

'Lord, I will turn around and make amendments at home and I will seek Your kingdom. In return, You promise to give me everything, which includes my arrival in Australia.'

Back at Hamilton House, there was a letter from my mother with an Air India ticket for July 21 ^st , a one way flight to Amsterdam. Flabbergasted and moved, I stammered,

'You are actually kind of witty, Lord, the covenant is indeed mutual, you arranged and provided beforehand.

Saying goodbye to Peter and Dorothy gave mixed feelings. I was very grateful for my seven week stay and the eureka experience, but I really couldn't accept the 'black-and-white gospel of Peter'. Millions of souls would go to hell without Jesus, but how can you quietly drink your cup of tea on the porch and obediently walk to church every Sunday, believing that all those poor wretches in the planes are lost? To Peter, I may have already looked apostate from the true gospel. As a thank you, I donated to Peter and Dot, 'my good Samaritans', the money that had been transferred to Stan's bank account via the check.

From Dehradun I took the train to New Delhi and flew to the Netherlands on 21 July. Back then you still got real cutlery on the plane and I hereby confess that I 'proletarian borrowed' a spoon from Air India as a souvenir.

Eureka

                                                                     Stage VI

Dressed in 'Indian pajamas', I arrived at Schiphol Airport and looked around in amazement at the enormous wealth. My happy relatives, dressed in the latest fashion, fetched me up with a car without dents. We whizzed along the black asphalt highway with white stripes and fat, black and white cows grazing in green meadows. At home, the backyard was in full bloom with fragrant roses. In the living we sat down on thick leather sofas set on deep-pile carpet.

Stumbling between English and Dutch, I talked very enthusiastically about my eureka. Mother had expected a cult member and sought a counselor. In the phone book she had simply searched under 'Christian' and at the 'Christian Secondary School', which I once attended, someone from the administration was a Christian. Mr Vellekoop and his wife were present when I arrived home. Later, this couple invited me once a week to chat with freshly ground coffee and homemade buttered gingercake. Invariably, Mr Vellekoop ended with prayer, after which the room glowed in a warm holy haze. I took a liking to Alice who, despite her advanced age, was still witty, artistic and deliciously unruly. In addition to sculptures and paintings, she fabricated a stained-glass mosaic in her front door. On Sundays, these saints took me to a Baptist church in Alphen, where I had to get used to these straight, happy clappy people.

After a few weeks, an evangelistic weekend would take place and since this hippie from India had 'seen the light', I was expected to give a testimony on the street. The leadership was in the hands of a sympathetic young evangelist couple from New Zealand which I labeled as a glimpse of God and part of the deal. Friday evening was spent preparing for the coming Saturday and sitting in a large circle around the couple I asked my most pressing question, 'How can a God of love send His creatures to damnation?'

The evangelist couple was silent for a moment.

'This is an important question which Morris is asking now. He spoke of a God of love, will He send people to hell?'

Silence again.

'Is God really love? Is everyone convinced of that?'

Everyone nodded, except me.

'God proves it every day by rising the sun since time began. Mind you it is a stars, a star giving just enough light and warmth on earth to make everything grow. The Creator Himself is greater than the sun and His love and grace are always more abundant than we can ever realize. I now think of Jesus' words after they crucified Him, Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Who would do that?

Do we agree?'

He specifically looked at me.

I replied and he asked, 'Can love exist without justice? No, a loving father is also righteous.'

I remembered my father as being very loving, but he could also become quite angry when I misbehaved.

'If God is love, light and warmth, He can never and will never force people to choose His light and love, otherwise it is not real love, correct? The choice to enjoy His love and warmth is ours, here and now.  He wants everyone to go to heaven and before you're worried about the whole world, be concerned about yourself first. When you get on a plane, the flight attendant will always ask you to take care of yourself first with the oxygen mask. After that, you can assist others. We first have to know Him personally and then enlighten others. Are you satisfied with this answer?'

A voice whispered, 'So you have to accept that black-and-white gospel of Peter. That sounds cheap, it is all or nothing, just like in the desert, when you are offered water or like a drowning person at sea who is thrown a lifebuoy. Take it or leave it?'

Then the woman answered, 'No Morris, remember that God is pure love and He will always say, take it! He will never say, leave it. That quote comes more from the enemy.'

Back in Gouda, it seemed as if a heavy wood clamp was being tightened around my head. I wrestled with the paradoxical questions surrounding God's goodness and justice. The text, 'He who has the Son has life, he who does not have the Son does not have life,' was grinding in my head and hung like a millstone around my neck. 'No one comes to the Father except through the Son' weighed like lead.

'Is there really only one way?'

The chess game with the Grandmaster ended without a draw. At dawn I descended the stairs to the living room, completely exhausted. I knelt by the fireplace and 'pushed over my king's piece', I was checkmated. How would I ever understand the Grandmaster, the Almighty, the All-Knowing? I surrendered.

As if they were welding in heaven, a sacred star, soft and pure, dropped on my head and enwaved in holy light. I couldn't sleep for three nights.

My ego had been crushed. Henceforth I would be limping in the eyes of the world, but in Him I had been given eternal life! Welcome to the club of the blessed saints!

The next days, I was reading the ancient Bible books as if it were personal letters addressed to me. I wanted to shout it from the rooftops and accepted everyone: 'There is a living God who loves you too!'  People stared at me strangely or politely called me crazy. Sister Jolanthe and Esther were the first to accept the foolish gospel and chose the Way. Mother said that she did not have to choose, because she had been baptized as a child and had made her profession there. Two years later, she realized that she could not inherit the Kingdom without being reborn.

Yvonne in Norway

                                                       3

Now, I wanted to know everything about the Bible and Mr Vellekoop pointed out the existence of an Evangelical Bible School in Doorn.

I still remember the beautiful ride in the late summer of 1973. The Utrechtse Heuvelrug with its sloping avenues full of autumn colors was like a heavenly road to the beautiful Schoonoord Estate. An enthusiastic Board of Directors welcomed me warmly and immediately admitted me to the study group.

With about seventy students were living in the mansion and Joost, a down-to-earth roommate, helped me through the process of settling in. As a newborn ( baby ) believer, I was given Biblical meat to digest. The walks with other students around the estate during the breaks were also enlightening.

Every evening after coffee, a student had to take care of a day closure and at my first turn I was tense. Addressing such a large and advanced crowd with my first speech was no easy feat. I read the story of the miraculous feeding at the Sea of ​​Galilee. The emphasis was not on my experience in Israel or the miracle itself, but on what followed. Jesus gave the surprising command to collect all the remains. 'Normally' you leave the scraps for the birds, but His disciples filled no less than twelve baskets with leftovers. In my little sermon, I mentioned that here at Bible school, bags of stale bread and pans full of potatoes were fed to the ducks daily. In India, I had seen hunger and felt it firsthand. Food waste should be out of the question. Why not frying potatoes, and how delicious is French toast?

The next morning after breakfast, students brought baskets full of bread scraps to the table where I was sitting, and said scornfully, 'Brother Tompot, you advised us to collect the leftovers, didn't you?'

The message had come through loud and clear, but when they arrived the next morning again with baskets, I became sad because I had high regard for these students and for the Word they were ridiculing.

Whether there is a causal connection with the next event in the dining hall, I don't know. It happened just before lunch, which had just been prepared for 70 students and some staff members. We had to wait for the bell before everyone was allowed to enter the dining room.

A few minutes before the ringing, half the stucco ceiling came crashing down with a thunderous roar. Frightened, we came to look and saw through the clouds of dust that huge pieces of debris had fallen right through tables and chairs. Apart from the many wounded, students would certainly have been killed. Thank God that there was no one in the dining room at that time.

A new lunch was energetically prepared in the sitting room and later the ceiling was repaired with softboard and no one talked about it anymore. This event made an overwhelming impression on me and I asked an older student during a walk in the woods, 'Jacob, why did God allow this?'

Ah, that's the classic 'why' question. Why is there so much misery in this world? Why are children sick or dying? Why are earthquakes and tornadoes killing innocent people? Why did my husband become depressed and commit suicide? The well-known questions blame God for everything. Can the Almighty prevent all the misery? Sure He can!'

Sarcastically I added, 'No wonder so many people drop out of the faith because of the misery in the world or the close circle of family or friends.'

'Maurits, let's try to ask how it could have been prevented. Was it overdue maintenance? Was the fault with us?

 If you think about it carefully, ninety percent of all misery in the world is on our account. A different mindset is to ask why we have been saved from this great calamity and not holding a thanksgiving service?

'Did you know that God accuses us by Jesus, where He asks,

'I was naked, but you didn't clothe Me. I was hungry and thirsty, but you didn't feed me or give me something to drink. I was in prison, but you didn't visit Me.

I thought I was smarter than Jacob,

'But couldn't He have prevented all misery?'

'You mean in the beginning with Adam and Eve? Sure. The first bite of the forbidden fruit could have been prevented if He had created Adam and Eve as robots or glorified monkeys.'

'Okay, but why didn't He make better robots to resist temptation?'

'Would you want the most well-behaved or smartest robot as a child? Do you ever play chess against yourself, Maurits? You have to do that at some point, it's not exciting but quite boring!'

I didn't know how to answer that.

'It's one or the other, robot or free will, there is simply no such thing as an in-between. Man or animal and realize for a moment how unique a human being is with the free well. Unfortunately, free beings or humans can turn against their Creator and since the fall of man, this has been happening on a large scale'

I played devil's advocate once more and played my last trump card.

'Yes, but Jacob, we'll soon be good robots in heaven, won't we?'

'Are we? You will certainly be the best saint!'

Jacob laughed heartily at his own joke and then continued, 'Why Maurice? Soon we arrive at a fantastic, timeless holiday paradise, called heaven. Would you suddenly lose your free will there? Would you turn your back on God there? Hold on, you have a point, Maurits. Once upon a time, there was a rebellion in heaven by an archangel, Lucifer. This 'Light-bearer' was banished from heaven with a group of fallen angels and they landed on this planet. The earth became desolate and empty, it says in the second line of Scripture. A re-creation or restart took place in six days.'

I rolled from one revelation to the next at this 'school of prophets'. One-third of the Bible   was prophetic and the book of Revelation is the capstone of all previous prophecies. Without knowledge of the earlier prophets, the Apocalypse is an incomprehensible book, unfortunately, for many theologians. The Bible is the eternal bestseller, composed by one Author, incomparably inspiring like no other book in the world.

                                                         3

In the Gospels I read, 'He who comes to faith is baptized'. This was impossible in Gouda and the only church in the immediate vicinity was the Baptist church in Alphen, where I had already attended services on Sundays with the Vellekoop couple. Biblical baptism is like Jesus gave the example by allowing Himself to be completely submerged in water by John the Baptist as a symbol of His death and resurrection.

After my baptism in the Baptist church, Esther and I found a spiritual home in a small evangelical church in Spieringstraat in Gouda.

The group of churchgoers had aged, but with the start of children's clubs, the congregation slowly blossomed again like a mustard seed. After a while, I was even allowed to preach on Sundays.

Close by was the public school where young Ruud was attending school and I was allowed to teach Bible lessons to the fifth and sixth grade. In the meantime, Esther commenced studies in Doorn, where I graduated after three years. This gave my mother great joy, now I had the status of a second-degree religious instruction teacher. Soon I got a job as a religion teacher in Overschie and later in Boskoop, the looser or prodigal son had finally landed on his feet.

I could rent an apartment temporarily on Turfsingel. It was a sunny place along the water and I was very happy. After a few months, the tenant suddenly showed up from abroad earlier than expected due to a car accident.

Surprisingly, a member of the church we were attending, showed me an apartment above the church building that had been empty for years. It was neatly whitewashed, wallpapered and carpeted in preparation for the arrival of the director of the old men's home. The purpose of the huge building had changed and I was allowed to live in the beautiful apartment as an 'anti-squat guard' on the south side. On the north side of the 'Vroesenhuis', lived a couple I had never met or seen. For only a hundred guilders a month, including gas, water and electricity, I rented three spacious rooms in that sixteenth-century building in the city center of Gouda. It was on one condition, the accommodation could be terminated within three months.

I enjoyed this romantic spot overlooking an overgrown courtyard with a giant fir tree, where a few magpies nested. What a happy prospect that after Esther had completed Bible school, we would settle here until our long awaited calling for Israel was activated.

In June 1974, Esther's parents invited me for an unforgettable holiday in Norway. We were engaged, everything looked fine and we were as happy as ever. I felt like I was in paradise but even non believers know about the 'snake'.

                                                                         End of Route 7

Esther in Norway

     PART TWO ROUTE 77

At the end of August 1974, the long and weary days of a novice Bible master began.

In the evenings I prepared two lessons for the primary school in Overschie and four for a secondary school in Boskoop. In the first lesson in the primary schools, I tried to lay a good foundation and challenged the children, 'Listen, I want to test whether you are better than Adam and Eve. For this test, I have two cans of candy here. You can eat from the green but not the red can. Soon I will leave 'the garden' or classroom, just like the Lord God did, to see if you can pass the test. Everything clear?'

Before I left, I shook the green can again, which contained candies as different colored hearts. I also shook the red can where little stones were hidden in a double bottom, but then it also contained a spring, covered in red plastic, that would pop out like a snake, when opened. I put both cans on the teachers table and asked if they were ready. The tension rose considerably when I left the classroom. Within a few minutes it was like an explosion. A hellish racket broke out in which kids were screaming and blaming each other, just as Adam and Eve once did.

In one well-behaved class, it remained quiet and when I re-entered, I praised them into heaven. 'Great! You are the first class in all of Gouda, who passed the test. Congratulations! Next week I'll take the cans with me again and see if you are still obedient.' Next Monday, the can was open in no time, by a girl. Her name must have been Eve.

Hank, a former Bible school student, phoned me to see if there was any room for him in my house. He also came from the hippie world in The Hague and couldn't find his way yet. I answered that I was very busy, but he could help me do the housework.'

In the beginning, Hank did the shopping, cooked well and I used the extra time to prepare my lessons. I needed quietness in the evenings to work.

During the beautiful late summer days, Hank took his guitar and he visited the little park next door. He played like a troubadour-evangelist and when he sang with his beautiful hoarse voice, 'He was lifted up and His train filled the temple', everyone got goosebumps. In addition to applause, he also received friends who dragged him to cafes to perform. The household was dwindling and in the evenings my roommate came home later and later or not at all. Even though I thought he was old and wise enough, I actually neglected him. I also had no time for Esther anymore while she grew into a beautiful woman. Severe weather was coming.

One late evening I came home from a teacher's meeting. When I entered I heard loud music and the apartment a party with a lot of chilling young people was going on. Hank walked wrapped in a large white sheet and smoked a thick cigar. It was probably all fun and well-intentioned, but I was shocked and reacted totally overwrought. Furious as during a temple cleansing, I chased everyone, including Hank, out of the house. I shouted, 'Go party somewhere else!'

Angry and disappointed, I sat in the quiet apartment, broken and defeated.

As one of the few teachers at the Christian high school, I still believed in creationism or in short, the re-creation of the earth in six days. I still believe that today, because time is not an issue for the Creator. The real miracle is that He created 'ages' in Eternity. The entire creation could have been completed in a six-millionth of a split second.

My students told their parents and other teachers about Mr. Tompot's 'old time religion or ancient image of God'. I became somewhat isolated from the other 'modern' teachers who saw the creation model as outdated. Only the rector was one of the last of the Mohicans and when I told him about my trouble at home, he fortunately was willing to take over my bible lessons.

 Gipsy in Romania, sold                                           sold

 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem...

Stage 10  

The Bible Centre in Jerusalem needed a courier to distrubute

Old and New Testament Bibles to all the kibbutzim in Israel,

which would take three months.

Yvonne arrived in Jerusalem and I believed everything

between us was fine now since we were reunited again, but

she wanted me to wait for one year.

When the mission was accomplished, I found an empty bible

shop in Tel Aviv and I was very interrested in acquiring the

premisses to combine the shop with an art gallery.

Permission for this, I had to go to London.

Finally the British Society who owned the place, required a born Jew and although I was reborn, my circumcision of the heart was not sufficient for the Society.

 Stage 11 - Painting

Back in the Netherlands I started to organise exhibitions and

at a certain moment, I could fly to the United States for only one guilder if I was on stand by. I felt free to satisfy my travel fever making a trip through America and Canada .

In a camper on Vancouver Island I painted 'Communion'. 

    Communion, sold                                                                                                                                                             

Stage12 

When I returned home, Yvonne went to the USA and I

decided not to wait any longer.

At an evangelical theater I met Marianne, a beautifull former

hippy. She advised me to apply for the position of verger at

her church, the Saint John's in Gouda.

After we married, I also taught part-time bible lessons in

public schools again and Marianne took over the work in

the tourist shop of the Saint John's.

Finally I was appointed as the custiodian and guide in one of

the most beautiful monuments in the Netherlands. 

I discovered the enormous influence of Desiderius Erasmus

on the Gouda Windows and wrote the book 'The Secret of

Erasmus'. Later followed 'Costly Discoveries', Route

777 and 'Shakespeare is Here', which will soon be published

in English.

The 'Secret of Erasmus' is translated in German and English

The Gouda Windows are like a bible in glass and the secret of

this collection are the original cartoons or drawings. 

You can also compare the Old Testament like the

cartoons of the New Testament. What you read in 'black and

white' in the Old Testament, you can admire in the New

Testament 'in color'.

For example, like the prophet Jonah was three days and

three nights in the belly of the fish, so would the Son of

Man be three days and three nights in the belly of the earth.

( Was Jesus buried on a Thursday instead of Friday?)

Stage 13 

The title of the Painting 'Ni-Shalem' forms the crown on Jesus' head, meaning,  'It is accomplished or Shalom, Peace ' !

Sold                                                 

Solar E clips

Erasmus understood that the gospel is foolishness to them

who don't believe and he wrote the bestseller ,  'Praise of

the Folly'.  The Erasmus window in the Saint John's  should

contain s mileys or be placed in  Cinema Gouda :-)

On Silly Saturday we celebrate Erasmus' birthday and I

made a new logo for Gouda with the quote of Erasmus,

'Homo Bulla', (man is like a bubble) 

Say  or  ©  Gouda Cheese (copyright or right to copy?)

During lectures in South Africa, we spotted wild life

and during lectures in Australia, we saw the painting of

Hendrick Van Vliet, hanging in the National Gallery

in  Melbourne. Due to Jos van der Biezen,  there is a

remake  in the Gouda Church now.

I had to be in a hospital bed looking upwards, to realize

that God had finally brought me to Australia.

He kept His Word and I had forgotten...shame on me!

Daughter Joelle showing the painting of Van Vliet Jos van der Biezen made a copy

Is Maurits Tompot now a  pensioner or an easy rider in Total

Surrender ?

Aleph-Taf

During lectures in America, we learned about The True Statue

of Liberty 

and since I have learned how to swim in the ocean of His

Love, He still performs miracles every day.

Is it a miracle that I present this to you right now or is it

coincidence?

Next time I would like to present to you the secret of

the Pyramid of

Gizeh.

Video in Dutch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSZs8mpeGxs&t=12s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GlZ72b_dOSo&feature=emb_share&fbclid=IwAR2T134lnKjmPNiYPauTKtDB69PAGa8OSezI_kG4-Bl5qoyInBbWedhQPjY

Please share the good news and thanks for your interest.

Shalom!