‘In normal life you sometimes forget to watch out for things’

“I used to be a high school chemistry teacher, but I realised I wanted to see more in my professional life. I found an opening at TU Delft as a management trainee in 2012. When I read the description, I thought it was really something for me and it was. I have worked here for almost 10 years now. I currently work in the Biotechnology Department (Applied Sciences) at BioTech Delft where I work together with Jenifer Baptiste to organise advanced courses for academics and business people.

Years ago, when I worked at the teacher’s academy a flyer came across my desk that I thought was very interesting. It was a programme that takes students between the ages of 16 and 18 to study while sailing the oceans. I applied for the job because I thought it was adventurous to be on a boat. I got the opportunity to work as a chemistry teacher again and since then, I have done this three times now. There are usually four teachers on board and six experienced sailing crew members. Trips are usually six to eight weeks. It’s exciting because it’s a sailboat so the wind takes you where it wants. The captain and the head teacher normally plan the route, but sometimes you might not arrive when you expected to.

On the ocean, my experience is like being in a bubble, disconnected from everything else and really focussed on the here and now. It’s de-stressing, being so focused only on what happens on board. It’s very dynamic with 40 people in close quarters so you really know about everything that’s happening on board. There is no internet and no mobile phone service so all you have is the people on board. What I enjoy as a teacher is showing the students that we function like a small society there and that they depend upon each other. What one person does affects everybody else. And sometimes danger lurks, like once a student fell and broke her arm so we had to return to the mainland to get it taken care of. But in general, it’s cool to be so close to nature on this adventure because in our normal lives everything is made very risk free. In normal life you sometimes forget to watch out for things.

‘You find hidden spots, learn tales about the city’

As a course organiser, when Covid hit a lot of things got cancelled so I had some time to do something else. A friend of mine, Martin Bruggink, who also works at TU Delft had taken a sabbatical. During that time, he was thinking about starting a company and asked if I wanted to join him. Together we created Outside Escape and we make adventurous routes through different cities in the Netherlands. Via your mobile phone you can solve riddles that lead you on a walking adventure through a city. You find hidden spots, learn tales about the city, get to know about interesting people and places and see the city in a different way. All of the tours are in Dutch and up until now seven are also available in English. We don’t necessarily want to push people into learning, but we want to create an environment that invites them to learn something. It’s just like it was on the boat.  

In the future we would like to build more routes commissioned by others. For example, we worked with the municipality of Utrecht to build a walking route for their canals. There was a big project in the city to replace a highway and restore the old circular canals to go around the city, and they wanted to draw some attention to that. They asked us to build a route to show people that the canals used to be a city defence. We wrote a story about a wood worker from the past who suddenly arrives in our time. He explains Charles V is coming to his city and orders new bastions to be built. We’re now at the point of trying to build adventures for others, like municipalities or companies. Who knows, maybe we can even make a tour of campus for the new employees of TU Delft.”

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Heather Montague / Freelance writer