Having lived in a house the villagers of Bouchove sweetly call ch telet, I realised I have enjoyed a privileged life. This is also true for the place of my birth, Maastricht--the most beautiful town of the world, I shamelessly claim. I have grown up there in a good family with ten children. Eighteen years old, I started my study on Rural Development in Wageningen, which is the smallest university town of the Netherlands. There, I had the luck to find my lifetime wife, who followed me to all the places in the world my ambitions reached for. She gave birth to our two daughters and a son--three children we raised together and who developed along different lines into worthy individuals. Looking back on all this, I praise my luck and thank the Lord for it.