{"id":1910,"date":"2025-05-09T08:48:15","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T06:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/?post_type=blog&p=1910"},"modified":"2025-06-30T09:24:21","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T07:24:21","slug":"daan-heerma-van-voss","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/blog\/daan-heerma-van-voss\/","title":{"rendered":"Daan Heerma van Voss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Daan Heerma van Voss<\/h1>\n

Daan Heerma van Voss (b.1986) is an historian and writer. He was awarded De Tegel for his journalistic work. His literary work has been nominated for various prizes, and translated into Swedish, Spanish, German and Chinese. In 2020, his Corona Chronicles was published. His new book The Anxiety Project was published in the spring of 2021.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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A Confession Left in the Margin<\/h3>\n

Fine, we\u2019ll start over. The first version of this piece has been rejected \u2014 a forced literary reflection on the kindred spirits of the writer and the hotel (something about being in transit and unknown doors), with a Cees Nooteboom sauce over it, and dusted with Arnon Grunbergian sprinkles about not having a heimat. And voil\u00e0.<\/p>\n

Things turned out differently. I had books with me, a notebook, a laptop, but I was no writer. I was a twelve-year-old boy, with acne, on the verge of the big growth spurt. A young boy who had done something terrible.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d been working here for one afternoon. Thanks to Lucas, a holiday friend. Lucas, his little brother Louis, and I were playing football, scuffing along the canal-side and kicking snail-shells. Their father, Wouter, was always sitting on the quayside. Beside him, books. Philosophy books, Buddhist books, books about stones. Wouter was \u2018the boss\u2019 of an Amsterdam hotel. And I was allowed to help out for the day, if I liked.<\/p>\n

Lucas led me round; he sometimes admitted that maybe sometime, when he was grown up, he\u2019d take over the hotel. I wanted to do everything well, didn\u2019t want to disappoint Lucas, nor Wouter, the creaking stairs, or the CoBrA paintings. I\u2019d been let in to a tradition of butlers and bell-hops, of supervisors and honourable carers. It didn\u2019t go terribly well. The windows that I washed with a thick yellow cloth didn\u2019t turn translucent. The breakfast tables that I\u2019d laid never seemed entirely symmetrical, however often I shifted the butter knives. Well, anyway, that\u2019s when something really went awry.<\/p>\n

An American man \u2014 a travelling salesman? A spy? \u2014 asked me if I could carry his trolley suitcase. I placed the case beside his bed. One click. I opened my sweaty fist and I saw a scrap of plastic \u2014 a clasp, a lock? When he wasn\u2019t looking, I laid it back in the right spot, hoping that he didn\u2019t see me. He gave me two-fifty as a tip, but I declined the honour.<\/p>\n

Oh, what honour? Something had been placed in my care for safekeeping, something important, and now it was broken. I was furious, hurt. I have no idea what I said to Lucas, to Wouter, no idea what I gave as a reason why I wouldn\u2019t be staying on beyond that afternoon.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s still pottering around here, Lucas. His hands folded proudly behind his back. He\u2019s the boss, as his father once was. And I sit on the terrace on the canal-side, thinking of that man who\u2019d once sat on the quay \u2014 him with his books, me with my notebook.<\/p>\n

What is a writers\u2019 hotel? A place to arrive, to think about people you no longer speak to, to experience how we\u2019re all passers-by. A place you can call your own for a little while, until you hand back the key to someone who smiles at you, forgivingly.<\/p>\n

PS: To the relevant American spy agency that reads this: tell your colleague that I\u2019m sorry about his case.<\/p>\n

View the column on\u00a0the website of \u2018Het Parool\u2019.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

What is a writers\u2019 hotel without writers? A pen without ink? For a period of six months in 2021, one author a week was invited to stay at the Ambassade Hotel and describe their writing lives at that time. Throughout the period May to November 2021, the newspaper Het Parool published the Writers\u2019 Hotel columns in its weekly Arts Section.<\/p>\n

Read more about\u00a0this column project\u00a0in collaboration with \u2018Het Parool\u2019.<\/p>\n

Would you like to stay at the writers\u2019 hotel as well? Enjoy a unique experience in the Ambassade Hotel\u00a0with these special offer packages\u00a0or come and admire the library after visiting our sunny\u00a0terrace on the Herengracht!<\/p>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":true},"blog_category":[6],"class_list":["post-1910","blog","type-blog","status-publish","hentry","blog_category-writers-hotel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/1910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"blog_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_category?post=1910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}