Message In A Bottle

Message in a bottle

Most regular readers will already know that about a year ago my wife and I moved up to Friesland. At the time of the move we had got as far as buying an empty field but it was still going to be a few months until a house was built on it. Not wanting to live in a tent on our newly purchased land until then we temporarily moved in with my parent-in-law.

The exciting news is that earlier this year construction on the new house began and a few days ago we were invited to visit the building site. To make things even more awesome the visit also included the opportunity to bury a time capsule/message in a bottle within the foundations of the house. As soon as I found out this was going to happen I knew I had to write something that started with the line, “greetings people of the future,” and that it would not be in any way serious. Here for you now is that letter. Since this version is going online some personal information has been redacted (to add to the mystery).

Greetings people of the future,

The letter you are now holding in your hands (or possibly examining under a microscope) is from February 11th 2016. Hopefully enough time has passed to make that impressive otherwise I’m afraid this is probably going to be a bit of an anti-climax. It would also be a bit unfortunate if not much time has passed because that would mean the house my family and I lived in (which was built on top of where this letter was buried) collapsed a lot sooner than expected.

You might have already noticed that this letter is written in English. Before we go any further I should point out that this is not an indication that the use of the Dutch and Frisian language began to go into decline in the early 21st century. It’s just that I am English and my Dutch sucks.

My name is Stuart ————. I was born on –/–/—- in London. I unintentionally moved to The Netherlands in 2001 and began a career as a game designer in Amsterdam. I once spent several hours trapped in a broken elevator in a deserted building at night.

My wife Simone ———– was born on –/–/—- in Holland. She is a teacher and once got stuck between the floors of her childhood home after falling partway through a hole in the floor between her upstairs bedroom and the ground floor toilet.

We met online in 2008, met each other in person a short while later, fell in love, and got married in 2010 in Rotterdam. At the time of writing this letter we have one daughter, Sophie ———— who was born on –/–/–, and a second child on the way. Sophie would like you to know that she currently prefers dinosaurs over dragons but I’ll be honest with you; that might have changed a few times once this letter is discovered.

I am giving this information about our lives for historical record in the hope that it will be of interest and that one day we will be featured in museum on whatever planets you have now colonized. Hopefully I’m not just making it very easy for someone to commit identity theft.

family letter

———————————————————-

Bottle 01
Bottle 02

The letter was placed in a bottle along with a picture by my daughter (who was not too happy when she later realized she would never get it back) and hidden within the foundations of the house by the front door.

Stuart

Stuart is an accident prone Englishman who has been living in the Netherlands since 2001. Even his move to the country was an unintentional accident, the result of replying to a cryptic job advertisement he found one day in a local British magazine. Since then he has learned to love the Dutch (so much so that he married one of them) and now calls the country home. He started the blog Invading Holland in 2006 as a place to share his strange stories of language misunderstandings, cultural confusions and his own accident prone nature.

6 Responses

  1. Congrats on the house and Bump! :D

  2. AstridQK says:

    So cool! Gefeliciteerd met het grappige begin van jullie huis en de nieuwe aanvulling op jullie gezin.

  3. Ahh! Congratulations on the new addition to your family! And on a completely unrelated topic (sorry) which is the best Frisian island, in your opinion?

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