Monique Polak

Today we are in Leiden, my father's hometown.

Last night, I spoke at the Musea Zutphen about my book Een Andere Wereld -- the Dutch language translation of What World Is Left.

Just before my talk, we had a "dol gezellig" (there is no real English translation for the word "gezellig" -- let's just it's cozier than our word "cozy") dinner with Joris de Leur, the publisher at De Fontein, my Dutch publishing house, and also with my Erlijne Runia and her boyfriend Pim, who is also in publishing. And to make the evening even more complete, my brother Mike, who is Montreal's Honorary Consult of the Netherlands, was there with his wife Penny!

Here's a pic of the audience -- with me standing behind my parents. On the left side of the pic, you can see my brother and Penny... and that's Joris sitting in the middle.

Over dinner, Joris made a small speech. I was in heaven again! And I got a chance to tell Joris and Erlijne how I felt they had taken such careful sensitive care of this story that means so much to me and my family.

I want to tell you more about some of the people who were at last night's event, but my dad wants me to go for a walk with him to see the house where he grew up. (I can't very well say no to that, can I?) But I will post one more pic before we go. Have a look at the audience in this pic. Check out their faces, okay?

I'd say my talk went really well... but I can't claim that those people you see in the pic were looking like that FOR ME. That's because I snapped the pic when my mum went up to the microphone and told a story about her own grandmother and then began singing some funny old Dutch songs. As we would say in Canada, the audience "lapped it up"!

Can you tell this has been a special week? How about I ever going to go back to ordinary civilian life? xo from Holland