Hi, hello Robert,

Yes, I do have concern regarding the environment, although this may be just a rather relative statement. I grew up at the edge of a village not far from a medium sized city in the south of the Netherlands. My parents, and their parents, appreciated nature and the environment as nothing else. We did not go by car to football matches on Sunday and we did not go for motor biking. We were watching cycling –oh, environment friendly activity– on television and we would always go for walking, hiking, biking or ice skating (on natural ice obviously) during our free time. People say that Brabant is a beautiful province with many forests and many quiet places, and in my youth we were usually focussed on that.

Parents of my mother have always voted labour, and my parents used to vote labour and for the past 15 or so years they mostly vote an environmentally concerned left wing fraction. I am also supporting that one and I feel that it is completely the one that fits me.

This time of the year I am preoccupied listening to birds and the return of species of breeding birds that spend the winter time in remote areas.

My father did not drive a car. For twenty years or more he went to his office –as a PR-manager in Dutch probation headquarters– on bike. I just grew up like that.

After secondary school – pre-university education – I attended lectures on a college for business and marketing economics but, although my results were good, this was not my piece of cake. I have changed my studies then to forest and nature management, also a program on the level of professional education. Also there I had good study results – yes, I even enjoyed the studies, very much even, in forestry I could live my studies!

The college of forestry is – perhaps not very surprisingly – situated in the vicinity of the biggest forest area in the Netherlands, which also in international perspective is a rather vast area of wooded land. Trees are among my best friends.

Anyway Robert, I do not give a damn about your tiredness; that is not my problem.

To me hitchhiking is related to environmentalism. Bernd Werchner wrote in one of his columns that the four key motivations for hitchhikers are 1. Budget, 2. Adventure, 3. Social encounters and 4. Environment.

Well, perhaps it is clear that I am a hitchhiker for environmental reasons, but all the same as well because I do not at all like travelling alone. For me, the best alternative for hitchhiking is going by train and then by car, although the latter allows one to drive straight to a goal (provided that there is a road, which usually is not the deal). Bike is not a true alternative as it is too slow on a distance of over 20 kilometre.

Dan (or Daan) Toner, the long term editor of the Autostopguide to Europe [Europese liftersgids], and in the past an enthusiastic hitchhiker as far as I know now, also values riding a bike very, very much.

With kind greetings, do not get too tired…

Frank