In 1955 Gerrit and I started our studies at the Technical University Delft. We did not know each other but met soon because we both started with an initiation of 3 weeks, a fairly unpleasant period necessary to become member of the DSB, one of 5 student societies. There were only 3 mining students in that year in the DSB. Gerrit was 4 years older than me because he had done his conscription. The centre of Delft is beautiful with canals and churches, the town of Vermeer, painter of the Girl with the pearl earring.
The Technical University was considered to be one of the best in Europe. The mining department was one of the smaller faculties with in our year approximately 30 students. The existence of thisfaculty was justified by the coal mines in the utter South of Holland and Shell, at the time a Dutch oil company. Most students were related to family working in these enterprises. The mining department turned out to be extremely traditional and offered (in my view) very poor quality of education, also in comparison to other faculties. A few anecdotes. Most exams were oral. Tail coat morning dress (in Dutch “jacquet”) was the compulsory dress. A student could not just knock on the door of a professor's room. You had to find a servant who had tot ask permission for the visit. Gerrit and I studied really independent of each other but it took us both too many years. Gerrit ran into the problem of his integrity. A professor asked in his oral exams always the same questions. Students gave proof of their social student's life when they asked the answers from their colleagues. Gerrit refused to do that with as result that he failed one particular exam four times. It certainly slowed his studies. The whole mining department was riddled with this kind of corruption. For one subject for which the students had to take a written exam the teacher during the last lesson presented all the questions of the exam plus the answers. Another example of the corruption I'll explain later.
One of the most useful in hindsight parts of our studies were the internships (I don't know a better word) during the summerholidays. Three of these internships I did together with Gerrit. The first time was in a coal mine in the extreme south of Holland. I remember going on my bike to Utrecht, staying with the Hos family one night and then riding the next day with Gerrit, about 180 km. We didn't have to do any work but we spent 8 weeks joining workers in various departments underground. This I still recall as a very impressive experience. Gerrit and I were in different mines but shared a lot of time together. The next occasion 2 years later was spending 8 weeks on and around a drilling platform. Gerrit and I agreed to avoid the traditional location and spent these weeks in the northern parts of Germany. We shared a private room with all meals provided but had different drilling platforms. The Germans worked hard: 24/7 drilling was done by just 3 crews of each 5 people. We had tot join one crew. During one of the few free weekends Gerrit's parents came and took us out to Bremen. The third period in the summer was somewhat different. We had to practice as geological field work, had tot analize the geology of a particular section of the Lahn valley in Germany. Students did that in groups of two. Gerrit and I went together. This time we travelled by motorbike, Gerrit had a nice 250 cc motor, a Jawa? He drove, I sat on the back. In one day we drove approximately 380 km. Gerrit's appearance in these days didn't show his toughness, he looked more like an intellectual, a sharp contrast with what was expected of a tough mining engineer. But I remember that in these days he told me about the hiking tours in the Alps with his cousins regularly. He must have missed that in his later life in Canada. Arriving in our prescribed 5 by 5 km area we found a deserted old open mine pit where we installed Gerrit's tent. There was an interesting incident. Gerrit got a terrible heat rash and was lying inside the blistering hot tent when a man dressed in a wrist watch only, approached our tent and told me that we had to leave. The next day the police told us the same because sex offenders used tot roam around there. We found another camp site and I remember a very unpleasant argument between us two. It was quite obvious that Gerrit's insight in geology was much better than mine. He more or less wrote the report that had to be presented to the person concerned in the ming department. We got an insufficient grade, Gerrit's analysis was not correct. We should have copied an analysis from students from previous years, gagain corruption.
For the last part of our studies we had tot choose a specialization: I chose extractive metallurgy, Gerrit oil exploitation. Somewhere in these last years my wife Inge and I visited Gerrit and Carla in an apartment in The Hague. It was more or less standard procedure for new mining engineers with oil exploitation as their specialisation, to apply with Shell. Gerrit did that too but was refused a job. Probably did he run into the old school mentality of this part of society. He had not been member of the right student society, he had no family working for Shell and with his fairly small posture and high pitched voice did not radiate the usual “masculinity” for Shell. This is only my guess. Gerrit choose for the option to emigrate to Canada and got a job without any problem, I think. In these days we did not have any contact and I think that at the moment of their departure to Canada, I had gone already with my family to Uganda for a teachng job. Years later we emigrated to Canada also but decided after three years to return to Holland.
Again years later we wanted to show our teenage daughters where they had lived. We could stay with Gerrit and Carla in Ottawa, the 5 of us, the kids got a chance to waterski for the first time in their life in the lake near the cottage, and they offered to use a car for a long trip through Canada and the USA. I want once more to express my gratitude for this exceptional hospitality, later on shown in Calgary also, when I visited them on my own.
