update from March 15

Sunday March 15th:

We went to the Onkruid Beurs. Some background for people from outside Holland: A beurs is a sort of exposition, with lots of different stands set up by difference businesses or services around a particular theme. Paulus likes to go to the Bouw Beurs (for the construction industry) where he can talk to all the different painting supply company representatives about what they have to offer, for example. (and make lots of people giggle at his "Paulus de Kluskabouter" name tag.) The Onkruid Beurs is targeted at a different group....

Onkruid means weed, in Dutch, and Onkruid magazine is well-known fixture in the Netherlands associated with the... um... hippie crowd. The granola types -- you know, with all the nuts and fruits. The crystal ball readers and incense burners. Or as they say in Dutch, the people with geiten wollen sokken. (goat wool socks.) These kinds of people and events sometimes make me nervous. I work with energy and intuition and lots of "crazy stuff" but my background is in the sciences. For me, there isn't a contradiction. But for some people in the nuts & fruits crowd, concrete facts and evidence and scientific method are all "evil." And for some people in the scientific crowd, all intuition and subtle energies and spirituality are "garbage." And I'm stuck in the middle, both at the same time and neither.

But we wanted to go to the Onkruid beurs to look for people who might have advice for us or be interesting in renting rooms from us in our future house. So we said goodbye to our current B&B guests and off we went....

I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, there were a few fortune-teller types who made my "inner scientist" want to say, "garbage! You don't know what you are doing and are just taking advantage of gullible visitors." And a few air-filter salesman types who made my "inner yogi" want to say, "whoa there, I know you've got your sales targets to meet but money isn't everything. " But overall, most people looked radiant and passionate about their work and more interested in making the world a better place than in becoming rich and famous.

Among the crowd, there were several people who stood out. One was Elisa, the part time administrative person at Rio de Bio whom I helped to hire and train a few years ago. I thought, huh, what is Elisa doing here? Then I remembered that she has been busy following a course to become a meditation teacher/leader. She was there to sit at the booth for her school. We talked a while and I thought, wow, here is a perfect person to make a partnership with. She has the perfect sort of activity to run in the upstairs hall, and she could help us a lot with marketing, communication, administration, design -- all the things she has been trained in. And we could use her on a flexible and freelance basis, adjusted around our needs and her needs and her work at Rio de Bio. I asked if she would be interested, and she said yes, certainly. Turns out she loves Bunnik and for many years wanted to move there.

(An aside: the idea of hiring people to work for us gives me the heebie-jeebies... In the Netherlands, if someone is on your payroll with a "vaste contract" -- a permanent employee as opposed to summer help, for example -- besides having to deal with all the payroll taxes and insurance and stuff, you are responsible for their livlihood for years. If the person gets sick or has a burn-out or gets pregnant and wants a leave of absense, they still stay on your pay-roll. Also if the company goes out of business. They only go off the payroll list if they choose to leave themselves or if they do something really terrible (and well documented) and get fired. That is just normal, and in general I think it is great, but the risks are high for small businesses. Of course, you buy extra insurance as an employer to cover your payroll costs in case something happens -- but it is all an administrative nightmare. And Elisa knows this -- one of her first tasks at Rio de Bio, a task that took several months to complete, was arranging to get a former employee who became sick off the official payroll list.)

Anyway, another impressive person at the Onkruid Beurs was Henning, who stood at the booth for Free Alliance. (This group has a two-year course, and also sponsors activities and lectures, around greater conciousness and harmony. I just glanced at their website briefly. www.freealliance.org. They seem to be involved in a very practical way helping families in the Gaza Strip -- one version of their website is in Hebrew, or will be...) We stopped to chat because I recognized someone else at their booth, and we ended up talking to Henning the most, and later meeting his wife. What an interesting and enthusiastic person! He lives in Zeist, used to work for years for the government, and is currently treasurer of their organization. Their group rents out meeting room spaces like we are planning to do, and Henning knows all about the demand, the standard prices, and so forth. He also knows about the "competition" because he frequently needs to be able to refer customers to other spaces if theirs are full. He explained that it is a niche market -- you need to know what is out there, because if you refer a good client who is looking for an intimate setting to a place that is severe and business-like, for example, or vice-versa, they won't be happy with you. I said, wow, this sort of expertise is something we really need. If we manage to buy the Dorpsstraat house, could we pay him for some training sessions? No, absolutely not, he said. He'd much rather work out an exchange for Shiatsu treatments! And in the meantime, he said he would be happy to put something on paper if we need it for our business plan, basically his expert opinion that we can earn roughly such-and-such with our meeting rooms given such-and-such circumstances. Awesome.

Another interesting person was Johan, from an organization called Amadorra (www.amadorra.nl) located in Houten (Bunnik is roughly half way between Utrecht and Houten.) Johan and his wife set up Amadorra and he gives ... wait for it... Shiatsu treatments there! And they have rooms that they rent out to other therapists and there is a range of courses and lessons that people can take -- in yoga, meditation, drumming, Shiatsu, other therapies. In essence, everything we imagine for ourselves, minus the B&B part. Johan is a really tall guy with an easy smile, like Paulus.... he was standing there with a drum in his hand (Paulus loves drums) and they looked at each other, discovered they both do Shiatsu... and it was as if nothing more needed to be said. We all exchanged business cards and said, we'll be in touch!

We also took contact information for several interesting artists, and for a group/magazine called Genoeg! (Enough!) They are all about taking care of the Earth through simpler living and less consumerism. The person at the booth (oh rats, I see that her name is not on her business card, just her photo...) was very nice and I bet we can do something with her in the future. We're going to try to furnish the whole house with second-hand things (except for the technical equipment, for power point presentations and stuff.... that has to be new and working 100%) Maybe her magazine or website will have good tips for us, or be interested in publishing an article about us?

Speaking of publishing, there were also many alternative/spirituality type publishers at the Beurs and I learned from 4 of them that they would be quite willing/happy to look at my manuscript. Even though it is in English and that could make it more difficult to work with. My favorite was Zwerk. www.zwerkuitgevers.nl I like their name, their energy, the fact that they are quite small, and located in Houten. So, once this business with buying a house, moving, renovating, and getting our businesses up and running is complete, I can work on getting published. (ha) I have the feeling that I will have to get inspired by Obama some more, and try to do everything at once. If he can work on the world economy, national healthcare, climate change and green energy, peace in the Middle East, etc., all at once, I can combine moving with getting published.

(did you see in the New York times? The Obamas are digging up part of the White House lawn and putting in an organic vegetable garden!)

Here is an interesting coincidence, not really related to buying our dream house at all: We had to leave the Beurs rather early, because I had an appointment with my friend Anne (in the agenda for months) to meet with a small group of her friends and ...um.... read aloud from our manuscripts. We are all writing or sitting on book manuscripts. Just a coincidence. That also makes me think that I'm entering one of those life phases where everything happens at once.

Next report: our visit with Paulien the too-good-to-be-true B&B real estate expert....