"Let me introduce myself..." by Pieter11

This VT member, Pieter11, was born on the 2nd of April 1982 in a small village called Ossendrecht, in the Southwest of the Netherlands, close to the Belgian border. Soon he moved to an even smaller village called Calfven: a village with only 700 inhabitants in the same region, very close to Antwerp in Belgium.

Well, that was the history, what else... In 2003 I joined VT, mainly because of the information and of course of the great private world-map. Much later I started building my own pages and today I have quite a complete overview of my last trips already, with my favourite city Paris as the biggest of all.

I used to work in construction as a project manager, but I quit that job before I went to Ghana in the last months of 2006. There I worked as a volunteer for a few months, teaching primary school children some basic computer skills.

After I came back from Africa, I had to start searching for a new job again. And since April 2007 I work at my new employer: Sony Playstation in Tilburg, the Netherlands. From there I take care of the transportation of Playstations to all over the world: from the United Kingdom to Saudi Arabia and from India to New Zealand.

Since I started working at my new job at Sony, I moved to a very small but nice new house in Tilburg. From the first time I do not live in a small village anymore, but in one of the biggest cities of the country.

I still have to get to know the city, and maybe one day I will build a page on Tilburg too. For the moment it basically is a good place to live: close to work and very often with nice activities around, like the yearly Festival Mundial that is every year’s June: a weekend full of music from all over the world, and the World Championships Football for player under 20 years old that was held here in 2005.

I’m a big fan of sports: both actively and passively. I play football myself in a very small club in a village called Huijbergen. As a left defender I try to bother my opponents as much as possible.

And besides playing it myself, I also love to watch football. My favourite team is RBC from Roosendaal. In the Netherlands I also like PSV Eindhoven and outside my country I also have a lot of favourites: FC Barcelona in Spain, AEK Athens in Greece, Olympique Marseille in France and Arsenal in England. And of course I support my own Holland too: the orange team! And except for football I also like to watch cycling, athletics, tennis and a lot more actually…

Another passion of mine is music. I’ve got a wide interest of styles, but reggae music definitely is my number one. Of course Bob Marley is my biggest idol of all: I’ve got all his albums, but I also enjoy artists like Sizzla, UB40, Gentleman, Steel Pulse and Israel Vibration. Every summer I try to visit some festival to see these artists perform.

Except for reggae I also like some hip-hop music with the legendary Fugees as my biggest favourites, and other music from all over the world like Olodum from Brazil, Cuban music and African artists like Youssou N’Dour and Papa Wemba.

Ever since I was a little boy, the African continent has fascinated me. In every day life this normally is the forgotten continent, but for me it is absolutely my favourite one. I like to read about it: learn about the history, the culture and about the developments Africa is going through, and I love all the other aspects of the continent:

I love the African music, the African lifestyle, which I experienced from close by during my stay in Ghana in 2006, and of course I love the African continent for the way it looks: a non-spoiled, non-cultivated landscape where the people live with the nature instead of living next to it.

My real travelling adventures only started from the age of 18 on. Before that, I visited the countries all Dutch people visit: France, Belgium, Italy, Spain… But from the moment on that I could organise it myself, I started expanding my borders. In the first period this were trips to some further destinations in Europe: Austria, Hungary, Sweden, Greece, Czech Republic, and in 2005 the big moment was there: my first trip outside of Europe.

Ever since things are going fast. Within a year I visited some Asian countries, the Middle East and quite a lot of African countries, including my long stay in Ghana. And the end of this is not there yet: the travel-virus has infected me and I’m afraid there is no cure for that…

And than the header “My Future Trips”. This one is the one that bothers me the most. Just a good look at my favourite picture of all times, the world map, gives me so much inspiration that I’m afraid I have to reach the age of 276 years to be able to do all the travelling that I would like to do. And I think that will be difficult to reach…

So for the time being I just try to do as much travelling as possible. I’m lucky I live in a continent where there is a lot to see and where it is very easy and cheap to travel around: even with all the European countries I will be able to spend the next ten years. And than there are so many other fascinating countries on all the other continents. Travelling definitely is hard work…