Family reunion 2025

This year’s family reunion would be a bit of a re-run of the 2015 edition. My dad’s youngest brother would organise it, in the far south of the country. And the main activity would be to paddle down the river Meuse. 

I had organised to travel down with my sister and her family. It’s nice if you can use the travel time as social time as well. That worked fine. But the roads were full of holiday traffic. We would clearly be late. And we imagined we wouldn’t be the only ones. 

We got there in the end. And coffee and cake was waiting for us in my uncle Karel’s garden. He lives in such a gorgeous place! He spent decades doing up an old farm and he made it idyllic. And we could start catching up with those relatives we knew well, like my cousin Sandra’s family (she visited twice!) and we sometimes meet up between family reunions. And with those we didn’t, like the Canadian branch of the family. My cousin Jelleke aka Caroline (long story) moved to Canada a long time ago, got married there and had some kids, but now lives in the Netherlands again. We don’t know for how long. 

Detail of Karel’s house 

We weren’t the only ones who were late. We therefore had to get to the kayak/canoe/raft place a bit later. But we distributed ourselves over the vessels and set off. I ended up with Jelleke, two of her kids, my dad, and my other cousin (Jelleke’s sister) Sandra’s son Booker. A stellar team!

Getting started

Our raft in action

We weren’t overly coordinated. We did a fair number of unplanned pirouettes. But it didn’t matter! I had a good time. And we did get to a spot where we stopped for a picnic. 

After the picnic we made our way to the end point, where we pulled our vessels ashore again. From there we would go back to the start by e-scooter. (Except the very young and very old.) for most of us it was a debut. Speed preferences varied! But we were just following the river, so I didn’t think it would a problem to spread out. 

The whole family, and the Meuse

I got the hang of it! And made my way back without issues. There we had to wait for the stragglers. And it turned out some scooters had run out of battery power, and one of us had managed to take a wrong turn after all. Oh dear. We already were late! It got worse now. 

Scootering back

When we were all back we quickly made our way back to Karel’s. He sorted out lasagne for all. And we had more time for catching up. But it’s a 200 km drive or more for everyone, so we didn’t linger too long. Luckily, the roads were much quieter than on the way out. I went back to my mum’s. And this time, I went straight to bed! It was late. But it had been a good day!