13-II-1976.
Some time in the afternoon we got into Jimmy's rotten Simca and drove to Arie's parents in Wasenaar. The weather was slightly over zero and my feet almost froze, as there was about zero insulation on the floor. Luckily, Netherlands is a small country and nothing is too far. Looks like 50km on the map. Arie stayed in Amsterdam, and Jimmy left me there and went back too. The kid brother is a cute kid, and mom is OK, though I didn't hear much from her. Dad, however, is trying to be pleasant, but he's an admiral or something, somewhere high in the hierarchy of the pact, and passed around a couple of racist jokes. We sort of respected each other - I was the host to his son the year before, so there's some debt - but I think the dislike was mutual.
By dinnertime, Rudolf arrived, in his orange spaček. We sat for a while and then took off. He was quite sleepy, specially after having dinner in a warm house (the spaček doesn't have much of a heating, in his words "it never gets warm enough") and after having worked to shifts to make time for this meeting and seeing me off to the airport in the morning. So he told me to drive until the border, which was about halfway. I never drove anything with engine in front, specially not this, but hey, how hard it can be. I learned of the red button (the starter), which is a major source of trouble, because every now and then some girl would ask "hey, what's this special red button for" and would press it while engine is running, costing you a new bendix and possibly whole starter. The gear shift in the middle of the dashboard doesn't look that much as an umbrella handle as did the one in Inge's Renault, but that's only because it ends with a billiard ball. Still, I got enchanted with small french cars, specially the Citroëns, with all the ingenuity that went into making it very comfortable yet cheap.
We made a stop at, I'd say, Hengelo, because I remembered I wanted to send some postcards, and we found a post office with stamp vending machine outside, so I mailed them on dutch side of the border, mission accomplished. Then he woke up fully and drove the rest of the way - which wasn't that much, less than three hours even with such a small engine. He had to drive because of the insurance - the contract specifically voids it if any foreign national is driving it in Germany. So it was fine outside...
The border crossing wasn't much, we just nodded to the guy in the booth and he nodded back and let us go. European community or whatever it was called that week.
This shot was made when we arrived at his place and had that last drink before the last night. He just couldn't stay for the second, being exhausted. This is his official stick, quite stiff and heavy, or perhaps something he had before, looks like just a piece of pipe with a strap, wound in electric tape. And yes, I did wear such colors, though the flash and the scanning make them stand out a few shades more vivid than in reality.
Mentions: Ariejan Verschoor (Arie), Inge Hertmann (Inge), Rudolf Ochsner, spaček, in serbian