Wilhelmusje
From our dear friends Janine and Gerard, we received our ‘masqotte’: the Wilhelmusje. Promise to be made: explain in every country what this is and take a photo with it in each country we are passing through. And so we did in NL, BE and FR. For all you lovely readers: ‘Wilhelmusje’ is a Dutch play on words. The national anthem of my country is called the ‘Wilhelmus’ and a ‘mus’ is the little house bird everyone knows, the sparrow.
This Wilhelmusje has been introduced for the Worldcup this year (please correct me if I am wrong) and can be bought everywhere in NL.
It is orange, because our royal house is called ‘Van Oranje’ (from Orange) and therefore our national colour is orange.

Saint Christopher
As protector of travellers, we received a St Christopher from my mum and Gerard for safe keeping on our journey. Very precious to take, as this one used to be from my grandfather. We are keeping it in our home to make sure this special place is protected while we are on the way.

Marlies’ gift bag
We received a delightful bag with several items from Marlies. It contained the following:
– a spiralled rugged little notebook so we can write things and tear the page out if we need to give it to someone
– cleansing wipes (2 packs!), which made Marlies so happy on their world journey and I am sure they will come in handy on our journey too, as Saeed has been lying already several times under the car getting his hands quite dirty;)
– Dutch mini-stroopwafels for when we are feeling homesick
– and a delightful card with very meaningful, personal message from Jaap & Marlies to be read in times of trials and tribulations so it can cheer us up

From Rachid we received a string of crystal red peppers to protect us.

It all started with a little, blue bird I received from Elisabeth… flying away to other corners of the world!

Thank you all for your thoughtfulness!
Also all of you who had wanted to give us something for our journey, your thoughts alone are plenty, thank you for spending time with us ‘en route’.