LAURA
DEKKER AT BÜRGERKULTURZENTRUM WINDECK
By Thomas
Weber
 |
| Photo: Cr. Lagermann, S. Spillmann, Th. Weber |
„Why is
Laura Dekker giving her only public presentation in Europe in Windeck?“ – With
that question to Laura Dekker host Jürgen Orthaus opened the event in the
“Kabelmetal” hall of Bürgerkulturzentrum (Civic Culture Center) Windeck in
Windeck-Schladern on October 6, 2013 shortly after 6 pm. The story of a journey
was to be the program for that night, actually an account of an unusual journey
- the world circumnavigation of Laura Dekker. Beg your pardon? Laura Dekker?
The world famous youngest ever solo circumnavigator makes a presentation in
Windeck? Indeed you got that right! Laura Dekker herself is honoring us with
her presence.
Let’s
recapitulate. In late summer 2009 New Zealand born and Dutch citizen Laura
Dekker but also holds German nationality, announced her plans to sail around
the world. What’s so special about that one might ask … Well, back then
Laura was just shy of
her 14th birthday.
“No way!” the authorities said, „She can’t do that“
was the public opinion not only in the
Netherlands but also in the
rest of the
world. Finally, after eleven exhausting months of hearings in
court, psychological investigations, investigations by experts, first-aid
classes, security trainings
and a solo sailing tour to
Britain, Laura was allowed to put her plans into action.
In early
August Laura set off from Den Osse in the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands,
and sailed to Portugal with her father [the author of this account was present
when Laura threw loose the mooring lines]. By mid- August, a month before her
15th birthday, Laura set off from
Gibraltar aboard her
12-meters sailing boat
“Guppy” and started on her solo-circumnavigation - 518 days later after completing
her trip around the
globe Laura reached
the Caribbean island
of Sint Maarten and as a 16 years and 123 days teen
she became the youngest solo-circumnavigator.
Since then Laura has
settled in New
Zealand, her country of birth.
But why is
Laura giving a presentation here in this region that can’t seriously be labeled
a sailor’s paradise? Laura’s answer is: “Well, Thomas Weber lives here and he
followed me during my trip, and he came up with the idea to hold another
presentation here, too. That’s how it happened
Yes, that’s
how it came to be, approximately.
During
Laura’s circumnavigation I, with another fan in Canada, were doing the English
translations of Laura’s
blog on her
personal website, www.lauradekker.nl. We also started a fanpage
on Facebook “Zeilmeisje [Sailor girl] Laura Dekker” that is still very well
liked by Laura’s fans. We also took care of a few other things during Laura’s
trip. After Laura’scircumnavigation was completed we kept in touch with Laura
and her family.
For late
summer 2013 the
German Delius Klasing
publishing house had planned to bring Laura to Germany for the
promotion of the German version of her book. This included appearances in
various media, newspapers as well as television. In September I contacted the
publishing house and asked about Laura’s appearances in the media so that we
could keep the fans updated. By chance I had written to the spokesman who would
join Laura during her time in Germany. My proposal was received favorably and
we were able to keep Laura’s fans updated with the latest news via Zeilmeisje
on Facebook. Besides official appearances like
on the ‘3nach9’
talk show of
NDR (North German
Broadcasting) or interviews with
important daily newspapers Laura, her father told me, intended to give several
presentations about her trip in German.
Mid-September
– an email from Holland
On
September 12, I received an email from Laura’s father Dick Dekker who told me
that Laura would like to give one or more presentations in Germany preferably
in the region of Cologne and Bonn. Those presentations however, would have to
take place before October 10 since Laura would be leaving Europe to go back to
New Zealand. Dick asked me whether I knew an association or a conference hall
in the region for a presentation. Honestly, I was very much surprised by that
request! Such an event would normally require planning for months and it would
have to be done within weeks. And there was one more small thing : I did not
know any club or association or conference hall that would host an event like
that.
Very much
clueless I called an acquaintance of mine, a sailor who also has contacts with
local sailing clubs. He promised to ask around in the region of Siegen. On the
next day we had to face the truth: Even though there was interest in Laura’s
presentation, there was no one who wanted to take on the risk of a flop. But
then I had an idea, the right one as it turned out later.
Bürgerkulturzentrum
Windeck
In the
past weeks our
local press had
announced that the
opening of an conference hall in our village was
imminent. Over time the hall, a former factory building built at the turn of
the century, was modified into “Bürgerkulturzentrum Windeck (Kabelmetal hall)”.
A non-profit organization owns the hall in which the Windeck municipality has a participation.
The
calendar of events showed empty dates for September and October, so an event involving
Laura could be a possibility. To the mail I sent in which I proposed Laura’s
presentation I sadly did not receive an answer. A phone call wasn’t possible since
they had no phone line yet. No luck either with Windeck’s municipality where I
was told that, of course, the person in charge was out of the office that day.
Finally, I
wrote to Mr.
Orthaus, the spokesman
of BürgerkulturzentrumWindeck. My
mail was answered in just a few minutes and it was obvious that there was a
strong interest on their part to my offer. In follow-up mails
Mr. Orthaus
asked about the
details for the
event such as honorarium for Laura, some costs to be paid by the owner
of the hall, advertising. Eventually he
promised to take care of it.
The days
went by and on
September 18 I was told by the
Windeck municipality to contact Mr Schadel who is the event manager of the hall
about this matter. Pretty much excited I called him and
briefly shared my
concerns. Yes, Mr.
Orthaus had already had discussions about the event. No,
there was to be no objections to this event because the financial risk and the
effort (I: “A microphone and a projector is all Laura needs”) were
minimal. However at this moment Mr.
Schadel said that he was very busy with the opening of the hall planning and that
yes, I could already forward to the Dekkers that the event was going to happen.
I could barely trust my ears and I needed approximately half an hour to get
used to
the idea : Laura would
be on stage of the
Bürgerkulturzentrum Windeck in about two weeks.
On the
opening day which coincidenttly
was also Laura’s 18th
birthday, I visited the new
Bürgerkulturzentrum. I immediately knew
for sure that this hall that had been renovated at great effort, was the
perfect local for Laura’s presentation. Maybe I should mention that up to the
late 1980s my father worked as a mechanical engineer for the very same company
that had owned this hall originally.
Shortly
before the official opening ceremony I ran into Mr. Orthaus, who told me he was
looking forward to the event with Laura. As it turns out I learned that Mr
Orthaus is a sailor, too! Could anyone be that incredibly lucky – I had found a
brand new hall equipped with the latest state of the art technology and
with a sailor
for a spokesman? Obviously
I had! Now all I could to do was
to wait for Monday.
Early –
too early –
on Monday September
2,3 I called
Mr Schadel the event manager . We made an appointment for half past 11 for
coffee/tea at his flat. With the BILD am Sonntag newspaper interview with Laura
in my pocket I walked over to Mr Schadel’s flat. At first I had to tell about
my relation to Laura. We talked
about possible dates, the
entrance fee, Laura’s honorarium and advertising the
conference. We finally agreed on October 6 at 18.00 (Mr Schadel: “Not later
than that. There’s ‘Tatort’ on TV at a quarter to eight and many want to watch
it”) and 14 Euro entrance fee. For
advertising because time was very short I promised to strongly engage myself on
the internet and in the production and distribution of the event bill. But
first Mr Schadel had to ask the owners of the hall for permission which was but
a mere formality. On September
24 the owners
granted permission and
we finally had the green light for the event.
Preparations
1
First there
had to be
a bill created
for the event.
Happily, the Delius Klasing publishing
house agreed on the
use of one of the photos
from Laura’s book. I quickly created a simple and nice bill. Because of
our small budget and lack of time big prints of the bills was out and so they
were to be done in A4 size and printed on Mr Schadel’s home laser printer.
On the
morning of Sepember 26, I picked up the first prints that I immediately sent to
my acquaintance in Siegen so he could distribute them. Also spokesman Mr
Orthaus asked me
to deliver a
press release as
soon as possible. So
I quickly wrote
a text about
Laura and her
presentation and created a PDF
file that contained the bill, the press release, a journey description and a
few links as well. I also sent that file to Laura’s father and asked him to make
it available for downloading on Laura’s website.
As if
that wasn't enough I had
to travel to
Hamburg to attend
the official presentation of Laura’s book that same evening, which I
really had not enough time for because of the preparation of our event.
Another
problem was the sale of Laura’s book after her presentation at
Bürgerkulturzentrum. Sadly, the publishing house could not provide books for
sale on commission and I was snobbed when I asked at a bookstore in the
neighboring village if they could organize the book sale. Eventually, I was
lucky when I received a call from a small book store in the nearby district
town of Waldbröl, whose owner spontaneously agreed to provide 25 books for our
event. Her phone call came in only minutes before I went rushing to Hamburg for
the book presentation at the Hamburger Segelclub.
Hamburg
In a
nutshell: I was already late going and got
stuck in a
traffic jam not
far from Hamburg and was an hour
late for the book presentation. Luckily I had enough time for a chat with
Laura’s boyfriend Daniel (he was born in the city of Bonn, about 40 kilometers from
where I grew up) and with Laura who I had not met since March 2012 in
Amsterdam. She was very happy with the preparations for our event the next
week, and she also liked our bill. The Delius Klasing publishing house gave me
a big box with several hundreds postcards promoting Laura’s book and a poster
of “Ein Mädchen, ein Traum”. I still had to drive back home that very same
night and at about 4 o’clock in the morning I was back in Windeck.
Preparations
2
In the
morning of September 27, I picked up the second edition of bills for Laura’s
event from Mr Schadel. Then it was all about “being on the knocker” (going
door-to-door) to post the bills in as many stores and strategically favorable
places in my village and the neighboring villages. Of course, many people had
heard of Laura and probably had seen her on TV in the past weeks or had read
the interview on BILD am Sonntag newspaper, so mostly I had positive reactions
like “What?! SHE is coming here?!?! That‘s a doozie!!!“ as happened at local
hardware store. All in all I was sent away only two times.
And I wrote
plenty of mails to yacht clubs in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Hessen
and Rheinland Pfalz, and to other places not too far from
the venue. Of course, ‘Zeilmeisje’ on Facebook was also involved in the
advertising.
That is how
I filled my days until the event. I must say honestly, I was pretty upset with
Laura’s father stubborn refusal to post the event’s bill and the PDF file on
the homepage of Laura’s website. Instead just a rather small and easy to
overlook link was placed there and it lead to Laura’s blog pages where the text
rewritten by Laura’s
father used extracts of my text and changed them without having
consulted me. To my many remarks indicating that my text couldn’t be posted
like that with so many mistakes Laura’s father replied in a stroppy (curtly)
way. For an unknown reason he
seemed unable to
understand the relation
between advertising for the event with attendance at the event and
income for Laura - well, I confess that I am powerless with people who are
closed to all suggestions.
On October
1st I picked
up the ordered
books from the
book store in Waldbröl. A few days prior to the event
I saw that my press release had been
printed in the Windeck municipality bulletin.
October 6, 2013
On Sunday
morning October 6,
everything was set. I had
spent all saturday in my kitchen
preparing a meal for
this day. My visitors arrived at
half past 11 and we spent time chatting while waiting for Laura and Daniel
to join us.
Around noon the phone
rang. The small screen on the
phone displayed a number from Bonn - I knew Laura and Daniel had stayed there
before during Laura’s stay in Germany -
I had a bad feeling.
I
remembered that later in the afternoon at around 16.30 we had planned to meet
with spokesman Jürgen Orthaus, who would also act as the moderator for the
event at Kabelmetal hall of
Bürgerkulturzentrum Windeck. I picked up the phone:
_Thomas?
_Yes.
_This is
Daniel, Laura’s boyfriend. How are you?
_ I’m fine
(No, please do NOT tell me that something went wrong and the event is not going
to happen! I thought).
_I wanted
to tell you that we’ll be about one hour late and won’t have lunch, Laura is
not feeling well, probably she has an upset stomach.
_OK, but
you’ll come anyway, won’t you?
_Yes. See
you later!
Well then
OK, no venison and Crème brûlée for Laura and Daniel. Pity. So the remaining
three of us had dinner without them. We three, that included Christoph, the
sailor from Siegen who I had met for the first time at HISWA in Amsterdam in
March 2012 after which we had stayed in touch for a year or so via mail, and
his girlfriend Silke, and I of course.
14h00, 14h15,
14h30… I looked
out the window
in the street. At the very same
moment an old white van with a Dutch (yellow) number plate and a well-known
drawn fish on each side stopped in front of my house, the Guppy-mobile! A
minute later I was
greeting Laura and
Daniel, Laura with
a slightly pale
face but definitely Laura nonetheless.
_I was
asking myself if we were at the right place, but pointing at Christoph’s car
decorated with bills for the event and parked in front of my house, I was sure
we were! Laura said.
After short
greetings in the hallway we moved over to the living room where a big, flat and
gift-wrapped box that Silke and
Christoph had brought
was opened to reveal its secret :
a pirateship Guppy cake from
their local bakery
with Guppy written in sugar
icing. Laura was
very happy about it. Christoph also gave
Laura a book.
Sadly, we can’t remember the
title but it was something about sailing.
_ Maybe
we’d like to try the cake, Laura suggested.
_ We’d love
to!
The table
was soon set and a few minutes later the five of us were sitting gemuetlich (cozily) in my dining
room. If someone had said to me in late August 2009, when I read about
Laura’s story in
the Rhein-Sieg-Anzeiger newspaper
that she would
be sitting at my table four years later, I’d have called him a weirdo. But
that’s exactly what happened on this October 6.
We did not
cut into pirateship-Guppy-cake but choose to go for Silke’s tasty apple
cake. Laura preferred
hot chocolate over
black tea; I did not
have any peppermint
tea that Daniel
had asked me to brew for Laura. However, she obviously enjoyed Silke’s
apple cake. We talked about this and that, about sailing and about how many
meters of anchor chain one has to let out when dropping anchor, about the
translations that West North and I did for Laura (Daniel had no clue about that
and I noticed that Laura didn’t appreciate when I told) and about some other
things.
Daniel had
never tried a Crème brûlée, even though they had celebrated Laura’s 18th
birthday in France.
_ Reminds
me of Christmas, Daniel said as I caramelized the sugar with a gas torch. Laura
tried a few spoons. Obviously she liked it.
_ Did you
cook it?” she asked
_ Sure did!
We would
have liked to spend more time with Laura and Daniel and entertain more
important subjects, but Laura and Daniel had to go for a brief visit with
relatives. And the long case clock (Daniel: “That clock reminds me of Big Ben”)
in my dining room
indicated that it
was less than
an hour until
our scheduled meeting with the moderator at the hall.
Sounds
incredible, but it’s
true: Daniel, whom
Laura met on a
bus on the other side
of the world in New Zealand, has
some relatives living in my neighboring village.
_ How long
have you lived here? Laura asked me getting inside the GUPPY-mobile.
_ My whole
life, my family has lived here for more than one hundred years. I said. Laura
looked at me in disbelief.
_ See you later! she said and off they went.
One hour
later, at about
16.45 Silke, Christoph
and I arrived
at the Kabelmetal hall. On the
left side of the stage the speaker’s desk was set up. A large screen stood at
the center rear of the stage. On a lower podium in front of the stage a leather
sofa was in place for the interview.
Mr Orthaus and Laura had already discussed the
course of the event. “She’s really an easy going person”, he had said to me.
Indeed, she is.
Except for
us there were only a few people in the auditorium and two little girls that
kept asking Laura for autographs. Could this be the kids of my Facebook friend
Sascha? Indeed. They had done the three hours long journey by car just to see
Laura. An other fan had travelled by train from Holland to Windeck-Schladern.
On each
chair in the auditory we placed one copy of the postcards that I had brought
back from Hamburg the week before. Next we had to organize the sale of the
book. We quickly set up a table to the lower right side of the stage and
decorated it with a few books and the poster that was given to me in Hamburg.
While I
was still busy
with fixing the
poster to the
table, I noticed from the
corner of my eye
a dog
entering the hall
– it was
Spot, Laura’s dog, and
the man in tow behind
him was Laura’s
father, Dick Dekker. He was followed
by Riek and
Dick Dekker senior,
Laura’s grandparents from Holland. They had come all the way from
Woerden near Utrecht to attend Laura’s presentation. I don’t know if Laura was
really surprised by their
visit. I had knowned of their
presence a few days
earlier, but Dick Dekker had asked me not to disclose
anything to Laura. At least Spot was happy to be with Laura again and expressed
his joy
uproariously. Sadly, Laura’s
sister Kim couldn’t be with us
because she had to attend school early the next morning – and as we know the
Dutch officials have no mercy when it’s about attending school. While I
was still busy
with preparing the
table for the
book sale, Laura’s grandmother stepped close to me and
told me in German that she’s Laura’s grandmother - “I
know” was all
I replied and
that was obviously
confusing to her, but she added that she had not seen the German version
of Laura’s book before.
A few
minutes later I saw Laura in a conversation with her grandmother who obviously
was asking Laura about me as she pointed in my direction, and uttered an “Oh!”.
I can’t tell if this “Oh!” was meant as a positive or a negative. While Laura
was sipping her peppermint tea, Dick Dekker asked me in German whether I did
advertising for the event. A weird question, really since…I have
to say that I answered
him coolly as
we haven’t had only friendly
correspondence in the past.
When trying
to connect Laura’s computer with the video projector it turned out that despite
the five millions of Euros that were invested in rebuilding the hall, that
money hadn’t been enough to buy an adaptor to plug-in an
Apple laptop. Happily,
Daniel’s relatives in the
neighboring village had an adaptor that fitted. Just before
the start of the event the question arose if there should be a break after the
first half of Laura’s presentation.That eventually was found to be unnecessary.
Laura
handed a poster to me that I fixed to the entrance door to the hall. I later
learned that it was the very same poster that Laura had photographed for her
September 22 weblog. Daniel and I agreed that I would sell the books I had from
the book store in Waldbröl and that he would
sell the books Laura
had purchased from
the Delius Klasing publishing
house. To be done after Laura’s presentation.
The clock
showed a few minutes past 18.00 and to my surprise and to my pleasure almost
all of the 90 seats in the auditorium were taken. Laura’s family were seated on
the left side in front of the stage and Laura was waiting to be called as she
sat on her father’s lap. Then the show was on!
Moderator
Jürgen Orthaus began with a brief introduction about his work at
Bürgerkulturzentrum Windeck. Then he introduced Laura and they both took their seats
on the sofa. When the applause from the audience faded, he asked Laura the first question : „Why is Laura
Dekker giving her only public presentation in Europe in Windeck?“-You will
remember that question from the beginning of this account. I
have to admit
that I felt
pretty touched by
Laura’s answer, however I was
brought back to
reality when Mr
Orthaus suddenly held the
microphone in front
of my nose asking
me how the connection to
Laura had come to be. Well, summing
up four years
in one or two
sentences is rather difficult if not impossible so I kept to some platitudes
and simply asserted that Laura is worth being supported.
_ Some time ago it was said that a
circumnavigation is not that difficult: Sail southbound until the butter starts
melting and then simply turn left. But that’s not how it is, is it?” said Mr Orthaus to lead back into Laura’s circumnavigation.
_ You can try doing it like that too,
however that’s not how I did it.
_Then please tell us how you did. And then it
was Laura’s turn to tell us.
What can I
say now but that of course I know Laura’s story but listening to her live and
first-hand was something really, really special. A nice moment happened when
Laura called Spot
on stage to
show that she wasn’t completely alone when on her
sailing trips at ten years old and without a grown-up for company.
The whole
time of Laura’s presence the auditorium hung on to her lips, spellbound following
her account as she showed many
pictures, most of which are not
published on the
internet or elsewhere.
Another
show-stopper was the inflatable globe, on which Laura’s route was displayed.
That globe hung down over the speaker’s
desk attached by a
string. Laura only
had to loosen
the string to lower the globe by two meters, and show her entire route to the
audience. The week before in Hamburg her boyfriend Daniel hat to
temporarily make-do as
somekind of globe-mount.
Maybe the Bürgerkulturzentrum’s team manages to
install a little motor to hoist and to lower the globe at the push of a button
before Laura’s next presentation in Windeck.
Laura’s
presentation was over much too soon and under loud applause from the audience
she again took her seat next to moderator Jürgen Orthaus on the sofa. After
a little chat during
which Mr Orthaus
asked some interesting questions to Laura, the Q &
A period for the audience was on. You could tell from some of the questions
that many of the
people in the public must have been
sailors because they asked for technical details like the safety line
and so on.
At the very
end Mr Orthaus again thanked Laura and me and closed the event with a nice
quote by Johnny Depp: “You can’t buy happiness with money, but you can buy a
yacht with which to sail into happiness.”
That was
it! It all went perfecty well, there were no incidents technical or of another
kind. Now it was all about Laura signing books, giving autographs and chatting
with her fans. Even I was engaged by attending journalists and interested
bystanders hearing praising words from all sides.
Christoph
and I also had a chat with Laura’s father. Later Christoph told me that he had later
asked Dick Dekker whether West North’s and my work for Laura would be
acknowledged and thanked for publicly to which Dick answered that it would be
unusual (!) and that no one would do that. Maybe Mr Dekker should occasionally
take in hand and reread the books by other circumnavigators who have thanked
their benefactors and sponsors in speeches and print.
And then it
was time to wrap-up. According to
event manager Peter Schadel the event turned out to be a
“black zero” for Kabelmetal – no win but no loss either. All in all there were
62 paying guests attending plus the Dekker family and several journalists. The
result from the book sale was also good. Laura seemed to be satisfied. At least
that is what she said each time we asked.
Slowly the
hall emptied and we packed our things up. Then we had to bid farewell. In the
parking in front of the hall we talked
for a few minutes before we said good bye to each other. Daniel told me that
Laura had another appointment
in Salzburg,Austria, the next
day, but did
not know what it was about. While Silke, Christoph and I drove back to
my house and Dick Dekker
drove back to
Holland with the
grandparents, Laura and Daniel went over to Daniel’s relatives
who invited them for supper. We would have loved to have them back at my home
to end the day. Maybe next time, but honestly I don’t believe that but well,
you never know, after all I was also completely wrong in my appreciations after
HISWA 2012.
Thomas
Weber
***
Acknowledgements
I’d like to
thank everyone who contributed and made Laura’s appearance at “Kabelmetal” a reality!
I
especially would like to thank Mr Peter
Schadel for the
organization and the
spontaneous acceptance to host the event,
To Mr
Jürgen Orthaus, who I want to thank for his great moderator skills during the
event and his advocacy in preparation of the event,
To Miss
Tamoschus of the
book store ‘der
buchladen’ in Waldbröl,
who without hesitation agreed to provide Laura’s books for selling at
the event,
To Mr
Andreas John of segelreporter.com who posted the announcement for the event on
the Segelreporter page.
Furthermore,
I would like to thank Miss Friederike Krempin from the Delius Klasing publishing house,
who kept informing
me and Laura’s
fans with the
latest news during Laura’s stay in Germany.
And
finally, I’d like to thank Laura very, very much, who, despite she wasn’t
feeling her best, made that day a very special one for all us. We won’t ever
forget!
Epilogue –
a bitter aftertaste
Several
days have passed since the event with Laura and things have now come back to
normal. On Friday morning, October 11, I received a mail from Dick Dekker. He
wrote that there would be an interview with Laura on the radio that very
same evening on
NDR, that “had
been recorded a long time
ago.” Then shortly before noon, when I had just came back home, the unbelievable
happened! Without a clue to its content I opened another mail by Dick Dekker,
that had the inoffensive subject ‘Windeck presentatie’ (Presentation in
Windeck). In that mail Dick Dekker accused us, the operator of the hall and me,
of having financially cheated Laura at the event at Bürgerkulturzentrum
Windeck. According to his estimation there had been at least 150
people in the
audience, hence Laura
had to receive
a four digit remuneration. Laura, as Dick wrote on,
had been cheated many, many times
in her life,
and he, Dick
Dekker, would never
forgive me for that. According to Mr Dekker I had talked nonsense and
allowed people to attend the event for free, including giving access to
third-class (!) reporters. The moderator had been too expensive and had only
said three sentences. Never before did Laura earn so little money and she feels
very much cheated by us.
All the
effort was in vain - acknowledgement or even thanks? Forge it! I somewhat expected
something like that would come from Dick Dekker. In fact we, West
North and I,
have experienced similar
attitude and then some in the past from Mr Dekker but accusing me of
cheating Laura is on a totally different level. Of course, I immediately wrote to
Laura and asked
her about it. I have had no answer yet
however this doesn’t necessarily mean that she shares her father’s
opinion. Hence, after the book presentation in Hamburg we, Laura Daniel and I,
had a brief chat
about the film documentary about
Laura’s journey, and as it turns out her opinion is very much
different from what her father says in public. In all his statements he has
kept up the impression that in fact he is expressing Laura’s opinion. But as
Laura said herself : ‘’ (Laura: “I find it [Maidentrip] nice, except for
some minor issues.”)."
For my part
I told Dick Dekker in very clear words that I reject his accusations and find
them totally inacceptable after all I did for Laura and him since the summer of
2010. I also put his statement in doubt about Laura never earning so little
from a presentation. In subsequent mails Mr Dekker got caught up in
contradictions about the conditions for Laura’s speech on the one hand and Laura’s
statements towards me on the other hand.
Eventually, Laura’s
blog of October
24 turned out
to be a big disappointment. Not a single word about
Windeck, no thanks to the people who got involved with it, not even a photo.
But what did I expect? After 360 translations from Dutch to English of Laura’s
blog and the other work I did, no mention or public thanks. For some reason the
phrase “thanks for your help” doesn’t suit the Dekker family’s self-image.
This, of course, would be a confession that they need others and that is a
complete no-go.
To me it’s
especially disappointing that Laura as it seems, was more interested by her
remuneration for her speech than getting in touch with her fans. What
did Laura say
once? „In Holland and
Europe they only
think of money.“
I had always
hoped that Laura was different.
Let’s hope
that Laura will learn soon that she can’t continuously treat other people with
disregard. And I would like to quote a famous German circumnavigator :’ maybe
these words were spoken in the wind.’
Th. Weber
