{"id":1901,"date":"2025-05-08T16:59:54","date_gmt":"2025-05-08T14:59:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/?post_type=blog&p=1901"},"modified":"2025-05-21T15:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-21T13:11:08","slug":"adriaan-van-dis","status":"publish","type":"blog","link":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/blog\/adriaan-van-dis\/","title":{"rendered":"Adriaan van Dis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Adriaan van Dis<\/h1>\n

\nAdriaan van Dis (b.1946) grew up in Bergen, amid half-sisters and parents with an Indonesian (war) history. In February 2021, KliFi (CliFi) was published, a bitterly cheerful narration about walking out of step, about our tendency to conform and to simulate, and about difficult friendships. In November 2021, his short story collection, Vijf vrolijke verhalen (Five Happy Stories), was published.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The Best Place for You to Stay is Ultimately a Book<\/h3>\n

\nPampered in the briefest of nights, woken by birds along the canal\u2026 Rhyme flowing towards me in the Hotel Ambassade, after an intense reconnoitring of the minibar: cognac, Johnnie Walker\u2026 yes, that\u2019s when the muses play up. And the recollections: how many writers will Ellen Jens and I have visited here over the last forty years? Guests who were invited for our Dutch television book programme Here is\u2026 Maya Angelou, Roald Dahl, Elfriede Jelinek, Martin Amis, David Grossman, Annie Cohen-Solal, Hilary Mantel\u2026 Their books signed and housed in the hotel library, their signatures in the guest books: See you next book, Amos Oz wrote.<\/p>\n

We never held preliminary conversations (the recipe for tedium), we became acquainted over a glass, or we slurped an oyster along with Umberto Eco, who ordered dish after dish. And now, I was a guest\u00a0myself, and I was sleeping at walking distance from my own house. The traveller in me would love to live in a hotel: clean sheets each day, breakfast in bed, lots of staff and the comforts of the minibar. Vladimir Nabokov occupied a suite in Le Montreux Palace, Arthur Miller and Patti Smith wrote in the Chelsea in New York, and Oscar Wilde died in the H\u00f4tel d\u2019Alsace in Paris \u2014 tormented by the ugly wallpaper: \u2018My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.\u2019<\/p>\n

To live in many countries, and not to be at home anywhere \u2014 that\u2019s still my ideal. Once, it almost threatened to happen, when I had to re-sit a year at school once again, and most of all wanted to leave home. Hotel Management Studies in The Hague struck me as a good escape. \u2018On one condition,\u2019 my mother said, \u2018first get some hotel experience to see if you like it.\u2019 I chose the grandest and dearest: Chateau De Hooge Vuursche in Baarn. A lodging house for royal guests and stars of broadcasting. Although the post-war prime minister, the socialist Willem Drees, wasn\u2019t recognised or served there during his holiday, as cyclists weren\u2019t welcome. I trained to be a waiter there. Salary: twenty-seven guilders a week. I was measured for a cropped, white jacket, with gold epaulettes. It was one big initiation: flamb\u00e9ing peaches in Grand Marnier, filleting sole with a spoon, uncorking wines. At home, we\u2019d drink a bottle of mulled wine once a year at Christmas (and after one glass, my mother would lament, \u2018Oh dear, I\u2019m tipsy\u2019), and now for the first time in my life, I was seeing heavily inebriated men in dinner jackets and women in d\u00e9colletage.<\/p>\n

After obtaining the certificate of Ambulatory Waiter A, I did the entrance exam for the Hotel School in The Hague. Failed. \u2018Adriaan is more of a practical boy.\u2019 Thus, too stupid. So, in wretchedness, I just finished school and started to read a lot. The best place for you to stay is ultimately a book.<\/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-1901","blog","type-blog","status-publish","hentry","blog_category-writers-hotel"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog\/1901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blog"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"blog_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ambassade-hotel-nl.ont.stuurlui.dev\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blog_category?post=1901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}