'Kantoorbediende' is Dutch for 'Office Clerk' or 'Office Worker'.

In the past we have sometimes thought about putting a billboard in the garden with our names on it and the term 'Office Clerk' underneath to indicate the services we could offer.

Such a sign should certainly have been interpreted as a nod to the tremendous job title inflation that has led to everyone trying to get the term 'manager' on their business card, while in many cases the term 'office clerk' does much more justice to the daily activities.

It was therefore not surprising that the domain name Kantoorbediende had not been claimed by anyone in the Netherlands.

Traveling

We love to travel and have done so a lot. During those trips we took many photos, notes and letters (which in turn turned into scrapbooks and, in more recent times, printed photo albums). We have made a selection from this abundance of material for this website.
There have also been trips for which we have almost no material: not in the mood for walking around with a camera again. As a result, England and Germany in particular receive relatively less attention.

The 'Travel' section is split into three groups:

• Shorter trips: trips with a maximum duration of about five weeks.
• Medium trips: trips with a length of six weeks to three months.
• World trip 1996-1999: a journey of 1000 days in various areas.

Letters

During the longer trips we sent letters, and later emails, to family and other interested parties. These texts are displayed largely unchanged. However, subheadings have been added for readability. These texts also include illustrations that were hardly or not present in the original letters and emails.
The persons appearing in the letters have been made less recognizable if necessary, especially for outsiders, although acquaintances will sometimes be able to identify them.

Perspectives

The same topics can appear in different places. The most important angle is that of 'trips'. Here the trips are presented more or less chronologically. The 'letters home' are also included under this perspective.

Under the 'countries' section you will find a very brief introduction to our trips in that country with links to the relevant parts of the website.

Under 'topics' we have combined similar topics from various trips and countries. If possible, the criterion here is even more arbitrary. For example, the combination of images may have occurred on the basis of a strongly present color, but also, for example, by the recurrence of a subject in several places. The number of images for a theme is certainly not exhaustive, but a fairly limited selection of the possibilities for a topic.
The idea is that you click through from an image of such a topic and thus end up in the middle of a fairly random journey. This way of 'random surfing' takes you to places that you would not have reached so quickly if you had made a conscious choice.

Duplication

Photos and texts may appear in various places on the website in the same or similar guise. Captions for individual photos are often excerpts from the complete letters. Photos for topics often also appear in 'trips'.

No wiki

The website is not designed as a wiki. So you cannot simply look up information about the birds of Costa Rica. It is our conscious intention to let visitors browse around the website themselves. Perhaps more cross-references will be added over time.

No travel tips

Although travel is an important ingredient of the website, it is not our intention to be yet another site with tips ["1000 - fill in the blank - that you should not miss"].

We are Dutch, so the website is designed in Dutch. At the moment only a very limited number of pages are available in English. Languages other than English are not provided.

The pages in English are partly translated using software. Time is lacking to edit those translations accurately. Moreover, English is not our mother tongue and mistakes will undoubtedly creep in.

If you visit a Dutch page for which an English version is available, there is a button in the top left corner with the indication EN. Click on that and you will get the English version. If you click on another link on an English page, there is a good chance that you will end up on a non-English page. Then it will have to be translated in a different way.

Google Translate

If you view the website on a desktop, you can use Google Translate for most common languages. Those translations, especially into English, are very decent nowadays.

If you are viewing the website on a mobile device, Google Translate is not yet available for Firefox. This will become available in the future, but it is not yet clear when.
View the website via the Chrome browser (or another browser that supports translations).

All images are made by ourselves.

Older images

The images from before 2005 were originally mostly slides and in some cases color photographs. The slides in particular are now severely discolored and/or darkened. We scanned the photos and slides and attempted to restore them. In several cases it was not possible to achieve acceptable quality. However, we have also included a number of those bad images on the site to maintain continuity, especially during our world trip.

Size of the images

For placement on the website, the photos are greatly reduced in size, usually to 600 pixels high or wide. This makes the display less appealing, but the considerations around response time and storage weighed more heavily.
The quality is therefore insufficient for reuse by third parties. If you would like to use larger images, please contact us via the contact form.

This photo shows a detail of the inlay work on the Taj Mahal in Agra (India).

I derived the background pattern of Kantoorbediende.nl from this photo: reduced in size, rotated, colors toned down and cropped in such a way that it can be 'pasted' seamlessly like a wallpaper pattern.