Meeting Bloggers

Last Friday night my girlfriend and I were sitting in a restaurant in Rotterdam overlooking one of the city’s harbors. This was no ordinary harbor we were enjoying our meal looking at. It was the harbor where VallyP, writer of Luxor lives. Anyone who has visited her blog will be familiar with her stories about life living on the waters of Holland. Both my girlfriend and myself are very familiar with her stories so we decided it would be fun to walk around the harbor to see if we could spot her boat.

We ended up spotting more than her boat because as we wondered around we actually bumped into both VallyP and Koos walking in the other direction. However, I was not completely sure it was them at first since I have only seen them in photos. As we passed each other by I must have done a lot of staring as my internal monologue went something like, “Is that them? Naaa.. Wait. Is it?. Naaa… No wait. It is you know. I think it is them. Is it?”

Of course by the time my brain had come to the conclusion that it most likely was VallyP and Koos they had passed us by so I quickly jogged after them, probably making them wonder why the strange guy who had just been staring after them was now coming at them at speed (since other than my cartoons they had no idea what I looked like).

“Excuse me. This might sound like a strange question but are you VallyP?” I asked.

When someone I don’t know starts asking me questions on the street I always expect them to follow it up with a request for change or the offer of a cheaply priced but rusty bike.

“Yes.” She replied.

“Hello. I’m Stuart” I replied.

Meeting VallyP and Koos was great. They instantly invited us along with them to check out the famous Vereeniging where we also met Mo (VallyP’s daughter). Then we had a cup of tea on the equally famous Luxor and spent a very long enjoyable time chatting about all kinds of stuff. At the end of the night we caught the train home, very happy about our lucky run-in and the plan to meet up again later.

(… and I promise you your own cartoons VallyP and Koos when I have more time. You probably have more of insight into the speed I work at now :p).