I went to high school in Haarlem and then to university in Amsterdam. After I dropped out in 1976, I did all sorts of menial jobs until I went into journalism in 1982. I came to Hungary in 1989 and worked as a freelance Dutch correspondent (here and in Southern Africa) until 2006. Between 2006 and 2010 I was editor-in-chief of Business Hungary, the English language magazine of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hungary.

From 2010, I work as a freelance correspondent, a writer of travel guides (Hungary, Slovenia), and as tour guide for foreign tourists in Budapest and Hungary. My wife and I also rent out holiday apartments.
I have been editor of Where Magazine Budapest since June 2014.

1. When did you arrive in Hungary and what brought you here?
I first came to Hungary in August 1989 as a freelance correspondent for Dutch radio and newspapers, covering the former Eastern Bloc. I settled in Budapest in February 1990 because it was in the centre of my work region.

2. Have you ever been an expatriate elsewhere?
I lived in South Africa between 1994 and 1998, also as a correspondent, and then returned here because I liked it so much and I didn't want to go home to a 9-5 job in the Netherlands.

3. What surprised you most about Hungary?
The huge space and relative emptiness of the countryside with its tiny villages in the middle of lots of nature, the friendly neighbours, chickens in the road and people tending their own pigs. It always makes me feel like I stepped back in time to the way Holland was in the 1960s when I was a kid; a world that has been modernized away.

4. Friends are in Budapest for a weekend - what must they absolutely see and do?
Besides the usual landmarks, they absolutely have to go to a bath house (Széchenyi, Gellért, Király). It's fabulous when the weather is fine, but maybe even better in winter with snow and ice around you.

5. What is your favourite Hungarian food?
I'm not a very big fan of the traditional Hungarian cuisine, as it is too fatty for my taste. But every now and then I love to dig into a meal with juicy roast or grilled duck, wild boar or deer.

6. What is never missing from your refrigerator?
A bottle of elderflower (bodza) syrup. We produce our own every year and mixed with soda water, it makes one of my favorite non-alcoholic drinks.

7. What is your favourite Hungarian word?
Inter-pici, which is the word Hungarians use for the very small diesel train that connects several villages. It's not only a cute word for a cute train, but is also almost like the Dutch word " ici-pici" (in Dutch ietsie-pietsie) which means something similar: "very small" (both come from Yiddish).

8. What do you miss the most from home?
The way friendships work. Back home, good friends can be very easy-going with each other as well as brutally honest at the same time, and there is loyalty and love, even though you can sometimes totally disagree about things.

9. What career other than yours would you love to pursue?
I would love to travel the world, stay for 3-6 months at one place, write about my experiences and then travel on to the next project..

10. What's a job you would definitely never want?
Being a factory worker or something equally mind-numbing. I've done that kind of things for years and hated it.

11. Where did you spend your last vacation?
In a small village near London. We do home-exchanges and also visited Berlin, Milan, Paris and Amsterdam this way.

12. Where do you hope to spend your next one?
We just agreed another home exchange with a family in south-west France: an old house in a 13th century village not too far from Toulouse.

13. What was your favourite band, film, or hobby as a teen?
I was very much into Pink Floyd, Dylan, the Eagles, the Beatles and Lennon. I'm afraid 60s and 70s rock is still my favorite.

14. Apart of temptation what can't you resist?
Eating "zachte zoute drop" (soft salted licorice) which is a Dutch specialty most non-Dutch find absolutely awful, but I can eat a pound of it in one go if it is there. Which is why I usually don't buy it very often (and luckily they don't sell it here in Hungary).

15. Red wine or white?
Definitely a fruity and fresh white, although I make an exception for a bottle of old and really good red.

16. Book or movie?
Both really: I read two or three e-books a week and see as many movies; my way of traveling.

17. Morning person or night person?
I wake up between 6 and 7 pm and work best in the morning hours. The days I stayed up with friends all night are long gone.

18. Which social issue do you feel most strongly about?
I think a modern and European education system is absolutely vital for the future, but sadly Hungary is going the opposite way in that respect, as well.

19. Buda side or Pest side?
Neither, I live in Vác nowadays: a pretty and relaxed provincial town just half an hour from Budapest, so I'm there very often.

20. What would you say is your personal motto?
Carpe diem, but don't do to others want you wouldn't like others doing to you.