Interview George Brady 1000th DWK

For almost two years George Brady has been our international columnist. He writes about all things internationals face in our village. And he is a very well-known dog owner in Park De Paauw.

By Ton de Best

My first experience with De Wassenaarse Krant
‘Fortunately, we had a NEE-JA sticker on our door in our first house and that’s when you get the paper. Then I started picking it up to practice Dutch and to figure out what was going on in town. Eventually, I started reading about local politics... now I’m a close reader. In the beginning, all I could do was scan the headlines and I understood about 10% of the articles and now even without Google, I understand more than 50%. So I was attracted to the paper, even though it took effort to know what was in it.’

The international page
‘We got to know each other (George and interviewer Ton) in the park and we were talking about local sports and American sports. Then I didn’t see you for a while and when I did, my wife was with me in Park de Paauw and you said that you were thinking of doing an international page. Before I could respond, my wife said: “He’ll write!’ At her urging, I have a blog site online, and I’ve written a few articles and uploaded photos, but I haven’t yet opened it to a broader audience. So building on that was actually one of my objectives when I moved back to Europe. Ultimately, the blog was going to be about music, but to begin I allowed myself to just write reflections. And just.. be me and not with the objective of having an audience per se, but just delivering it, just practicing and refining a voice and seeing what the voice was.

So then when you talked to me about the international page, the idea of writing was already in my head, with the blog I mean. But for the paper, I really wanted to figure out what life in Wassenaar is all about, to tap into ‘the Soul of Wassenaar’. My natural universe is my kids in school and my family at home but there’s no real work environment to tap into. It’s also the neighbors and now I’m famous for the “dog park”... haha... although somebody corrected me and said that it’s actually a national park which is part of Raadhuis De Paauw. So the experience of having two dogs expanded my world entirely. You create contact points within the community and then you spend your time connecting them.’

When you’re new in a place like Wassenaar and you’d like to meet people, get a dog!
‘We had a meeting with a bunch of internationals in Raadhuis De Paauw the other day. I said that everything that I do now, all of my activities, are related to a dog somehow. Somebody told me about Tennisclub De Oude Eik, about the golf here at Kieviten, about the Community Choir of Wassenaar, about guitar lessons with Jean and now with a band and of course the newspaper. With a dog, you have to be active. Same as with younger kids, if you bring them to the playground, you meet people there and join an informal community.’

Do your own boys read your columns?
‘They did talk about Carl Doeke Eisma who wrote about my article once in his column on page 3. The Dutch teacher at their school made them read that in Dutch. And then their friends said: ‘Hey, that’s your dad!’ Other teachers also talk to them about the articles. They read many of my articles, and also feel proud to see reports on their WVV volleyball team. For me, I like reading about local politics. It’s good practice and entertaining! For the international community, it’s much more important to keep up. I couldn’t do this without the paper. For me, it was a quick start to get to know about the community.’

Some advice?
‘I’ve always been a fan of local papers. Keep it up with De Wassenaarse Krant. And don’t lose it!’