A Vagabond's Tale

Martijn (pronounced Mar-taa-yen) was born in the fisherman community of Vollendham in northern Netherlands. Growing up next to the dikes, he began to appreciate how a country with more than 30% of land below sea level stayed dry. He remembered his elders thanking the atlantic ocean, rather calm in that part of the world as opposed to shores of US Gulf coast, for their sustenance. He also noticed how the sun would set at 10:45 pm at night in summer due to the high latitudal position of his country. Growing up he made a lot of good friends in school, and although he really revelled in their company and his tiny village, he always yearned to travel around the world and see how things were different from home.

Opportunity came his way, as his dad got transferred to southern France, where Martijn was exposed to the terrain of high Pyrennes and Alps. Devoid of such terrain in the dutch countryside, Martijn started learning the variations in weather and eco-system brought by high altitudes. Often times he missed his friends back home in Vollendham, and would try to stay connected to them over phone/mail. But it was a matter of time before he made new friends and started enjoying their camaraderie. As he travelled the new world of Alps, Basque country and high desert of Spain, his ties with his dutch friends loosened while he forged friendship elsewhere. During his adolscent years, he spent a lot of time travelling in Europe and spent at times, months in a different country. He noticed how Northern Italy was cold and wintry, while southern italy enjoyed temperate climates. He enjoyed the moderate weather of the mediteranean countries and learned about the different culture. As he shifted his loyalty from milk(dutch) to wine(french) to capuccino(italian), he also made and lost many friends.

By the time he was in his late teens, his dad had transferred to eastern Europe, and Martijn started studying in Turkey. He saw how the coast maintained a moderate mediterranean climate, while the mountains prevented it to seep inland and as a result some of the high plateaus experienced extreme weather. By now he had started appreciating the vagaries of nature in detail. As much as he had enjoyed travelling and living in new places, he started missing some of his friends from back in Vollendham and the Pyerenes. Often times, due to lack of strong family and friendship ties, he would feel a lonely stranger in a foreign land.

By now he had majored in Geography, and took the opportunity to travel to Eastern europe and also spend 3 months travelling the trans-siberian rail to land as far as eastern Russia, China and Mongolia. During his travel, he made a lot of friends, and learnt some amazing stories about different cultures. His perspective on life was greatly broadened by such encounters with people from different lands. However, at most times his acquaintances were fleeting and the contacts were lost a few months after his travel ended. As he struggled to maintain contact with his good old friends from middle school, he realised that his closest friends were always the once he met the last.

After obtaining a graduate degree from Kazhakastan, Martijn decided to take up a job as a lecturer in Singapore. South east Asia was in stark contrast to Europe - a totally different culture and weather. He learn't about Monsoon, and travelled through dense equitorial jungles in Indonesia & Malaysia. He learnt more about the Muslim & Buddhist culture and started appreciating the differences in cultural beliefs. He finally met his love of life in Vietnam, and against his parents wishes got married. His best phase of life arrived when he got a 5 year contract to teach in India. He was completely dumbfounded by the amazing diversity in the country. He travelled extensively with his wife from the high altitudes of bone chilling Himalayas to the arid scorching Deccan plateau to the rain soaked Konkan coast. 5 years in India had begot umpteen new good friends, but he lamented the loss of relationship with his Southeast Asian friends.

Only in his early 50's did he succumb to the urge of moving to USA. Here he started noticing climatic patterns of hilly east coast, flat central plains, dry high altitude west and the beauty of the pacific coast. He noticed the country to be a melting pot of all cultures, and courtesy his varied background, was able to make friends easily with different ethnic backgrounds. He also noticed political differences between liberal progressive cities and conservative hinterlands. However as his close knit circle of friends migrate elsewhere, Martijn started planning his next move. After his retirement he decided to move south to Latin America and settled in the vibrant city of Rio. He now travelled to the high Andes, the dense Amazon and the frigid antartic like south Chile. His smooth portugueese and spanish tounge got him new friends in this foreign country. At most time he found people hospitabe and soon he had a great circle of trustworthy friends surround him.

However, widowed and kidless, he finally had a strong sense of nostalgia attract him back to the village of Vollendham in Holland. As a septugenerian, he was still able to recognise some of the friends he grew up many moons away. He noticed a vast majority of people in the town lived their entire lives in the same place and hence had made friends for life and almost lived like one big family. People here didn't mind staying ignorant about the outside world, as long as they could spend their leisure time with friends partying and reminiscing on good old days. These folks had grown up together and spent an entire lifetime with each other, and hence fostered bondings as strong as siblings. Sick and feeble, Martijn spend his last few days reflecting back on his wanderlust life and inability to hold on to a strong bunch of faithful companions. It's a pity that a man who made friends in 73 countries, spoke 13 different languages, understood principles of 20+ different religion, experienced temperatures ranging from -60F to 140F, died alone in his own "hometown" !