Holland house in Bogota! No football, just business

Our maximum suspension car in Colombia

Hola, goedenacht, friday night here in Bogota after another interesting and challenging week. The teaching was the same, other contents but same intensity. The weekend was also the same, being in Tenza again and then returning on monday morning, another holiday here in Colombia. This time we went with our own car that we got from Pablo. Have to admit that when I drove the first couple of meters that I was not that sure somehow feeling some disconnection between the steeringwheel and the wheels but after this weekends trip I realize that actually a Citroen (or Peugot) with such more slightly "loose connections" is probably the best car to have here in Colombia. Leaving Bogota you have still a kind of high-way for the first 40km (with once in a while a bike rider on the road or a cow just 2 meter from the road going 100 km an hour) but then getting close to Tenza  the last 10km took us about 45 minutes. Simply in the first gear going about all the holes, rocks and parts of the roads that have been partly flooded away!

That's what you you get taking a picture from the mirror! 
But how many have seen me with a tie! And  always 
nice to see Marcela once in a while being all dressed-up.

But we made it and had another fun weekend in Tenza. Then returning to Bogota the settings changed completely; on Tuesday night we had to go to a chique reception at the Dutch Embassy. Marcela was invited for a meeting where many NL and Colombian people gathered for an official opening ceremony by the NL minister of foreign affairs of the Holland House here in Bogota.


This had apparently nothing to do with some of the developments on the Dutch football team (haven't heard any joke about this at the meeting) but was purely meant to establish a virtual meeting place for Dutch and Colombian partners interested to establish collaborations on all kind of issues. As it was stated explicitly, having a large Dutch delegation there to discus with Colombian partners collaborations on biofuels, waste water management, climate change and water issues has not that much to do anymore with "ontwikkelingshulp". Colombia seems to be booming (like Brasil) and so there is a big potential to make quite some money on the export of all kind of expertise available in NL, such as how to reconstruct the infrastructure to better cope with the many recent floodings they have seen here in Colombia. By the way, my personal observation is that I wonder to what extent some of these developments here in South America can be really seen as long-term sustainable booming business or that they might simply copy some of the more short-term dead-end developments that we are now struggling with in Europe (and US and...)

Have to say that I think it was also for Marcela and me a very good meeting that might be helpful in further establishing some of the projects we want to get running here!

Hasta la proxima ves! ciao, Laurens