Promotion
From the beginning of last year we have been considering ways by which we can bring our company tot the attention of our future guests. Naturally, our friends and family do not need an extensive introduction (hopefully) because you have been informed, possibly at nauseam, about our plans fro the beginning. If you are not enthusiastic by now, we will have our work cut out in order to win over the others. To do this, you will need a website first and foremost, but what type of information do you put on it and more to the point: how much information do you need to put on a website? Many photos/pictures, little, but informative text, a clear layout and few frills these tip we received from our 'web guru's' Marcel and Ingrid. However, we wanted more; inserting a 3-D plan of our future building project on the website would be a clever idea, wouldn't it? We were not aware that this would turn out to be one hell of a job! By now Galit and Marcel have spent many a Sunday poring over our blueprints and working on the computer, which resulted not only in a 3-D picture, but even in a 3-D animation. At this moment Ingrid is finishing the website with pictures and text, so we have come a long way

Interview
Through mutual connections we were approached by Willemijn who is a freelance journalist with the monthly magazine 'Safe'. This magazine also features a selection Risk; in which people tell about how they made a radical change around their lives. Our story is published in the January edition. The interview took place in an Amsterdam pub; the photo shoots at our place in Benschop, where the photographer decided to move the set to the nearest paddock. While we were standing up to our ankles in mud (Roel had to keep on his tailor made suit for contrast!) ignoring hail and rain and with our neighbour's plastic cow in the background, this typical Dutch scene was photographed. (you can see the picture on www.0031.com/images/pers/Artikel_in_safe.pdf ). The magazine has a circulation of 200.000 with a reader's public of 800.000, which naturally constitutes a wonderful promotion for us.

Morocco
We want to give our guesthouse an Oriental character, for instance through its lightning, the way the walls are decorated, the bathrooms and all types of accessories. During a holiday in Marrakech earlier this year we spent a lot of time on getting ideas, much to chagrin of our friend Hank, and on shopping for hours for lightning/lamps, carpets, tajines etc. Obviously you can't take all that with you in one go, so we looked for an alternative. Mum Metzlar had a brilliant idea: use the services of her trusted Moroccan help in the household. In Marrakech her father owned a van, that needed to be driven to Holland shortly. This seemed to be the solution to our problems, so we gave the father a bag of money and a list and sent him on his way to do some shopping and to return with a loaded van. He left in august and unfortunately we haven't seen him since...

The Moroccan bathroom
In our bathrooms we want to apply 'tadelakt' a method of painting that is commonly used in Morocco, but which is totally unknown in Brazil. In order to master the ins-and-outs of this method Galit, Tallina and Janneke travelled on a Saturday to an ecological (..) building company in Vogelenzang. In one single day they would learn this refined technique and be capable of applying it directly to our bathroom, at last, that is what the company flyer promised us. During the course it became at once painfully apparent that Galit and Tallina had more feeling for the technique. Janneke, however, not only experienced a lot of difficulties with her practice slab of cement, but above all with her bleeding-heart teacher who tried to tell her each fiasco that it's not the result that counts, but the journey to reach it...
After this course this journey appears to be a very long one, so we might have a look for some alternatives.

Brazil!
We have just returned after two weeks in Cumbuco. We have been busy with further preparations and with re-adjusting our time frame. Deadlines in Brazil turn out to be somewhat more flexible than here in Holland. Oh well, we will consider it as another learning experience.

Until next time!

Janneke and Roel