Viem formed in April 1993, age 8, on a two-day schooltrip to Leusden, in The Netherlands, though we actually met in March '93, or the beginning of April, but we're not exactly sure.
Emily was the new kid in school, Montessori School Waalsdorp in Den Haag, grade 3 (in Holland it's called grade 5) and the teacher assigned a table to her next to Mirte (Victoria's friend and Emily's future
friend) and opposite Victoria. Almost right from the start we were friends, but in Leusden it really started. Like we said in "About Viem" unofficially, because we didn't call our friendship "Viem" back then. We acted like a couple of bitches there, with all kinds of "secrets" our other friends weren't allowed to know, only if they guessed our password, which was impossible, as our password was "spijsvertering" which means "digestion". We only played with eachother and not with the other kids. Anyway, that was the beginning of Viem.

We had a four-member club of friends and outside that little club Victoria had a best friend at the time, called Francine, who was in one grade higher than us. Emily had a best friend, Melanie, who lived in Ridderkerk, near Rotterdam. So, we weren't even best friends then.
Our club of friends contained Mirte, Daria and us. We always played together and it was really cosy. We passed through grade 4, without any complications.

In grade 5 Viem began to change more to what it is now. We got other teachers, Elly and Mark. We started T.S. together, which you can read about in the southside of our island. We'll explain shortly what T.S. is.
T.S. is some kind of boarding school, created in our minds, and we used to play the kids that were on that school. There was a lot going on in that school, the events back then are too irrelevant to mention. It sounds now like just a couple of kids playing, but it was more than that, it is more like soap opera, that continues on and on. Actually, T.S. still exists, in another manner, the characters have more depth now, and all relationships are very complicated. You can call us crazy, maybe we are, but T.S. has become another world for us. T.S. brought us closer to eachother.

The highlight of the fifth grade was our (Victoria and Emily only) skipping gym-class. Totally crazy for 10-year-old primary school kids. It began a few days before the gym-class. We had always hated that class so we had written a poem about it. You can read the poem in the East. We read it to the teacher and he laughed, and told us we didn't have to come the next time. Now it's getting a little bit complicated. We had gym-class two times a week, one lesson given by our own teacher, and that wasn't that serious, and one lesson given by the gymnastics teacher. We knew damn well that he meant his class. But we figured that class was much more fun than the one of the gymnastics teacher, so we decided to skip that one. After all, he didn't actually say which one we were allowed to skip. We had a great time hiding in the toilet and under the stairs, and we succeeded in our goal: skipping class just once. But of course our staying away wasn't unnoticed. All kids were acting really stupid about it, they thought it was stupid to stay away from class, but we think they were just jealous because they didn't have the guts to do it. One girl said it was weak of us, because she thought our reason -we had said we just didn't feel like coming- was dumb, and what she said next totally did it: she said one boy skipped gym class as well, but with a "good" reason: he always told the teacher his leg or something was aching. We think that is dumber, he lied, and didn't sound exactly cool, we just told the truth and did sound cool... So we were feeling really good and in the break we were happily playing in the schoolyard, when we were told by one kid that we had to go to the teachers' room.
Which we did.
We got off well, we had to make up for the skipped class, and we actually had a nice time doing that.

In grade 6 Viem became official. That wasn't until the end of June 1996 or begin July though. We used to spend our schooldays working together in studyrooms, writing short stories together and doing nothing. (We had finished nearly everything in the first half of that year, and the remaining work we didn't feel like doing, and beside that the teacher had told Victoria that she didn't have to do anything anymore, because she knew enough already ;-) So we spent our time laughing and talking together.

That was our last year in that school. We ended the year with the traditional musical performed by the 6th grade. Of course we only had a small part...but it was fun.

That summer Victoria spent two nights - we thought that was a very long time back then - at Emily's place, and we remember going to the beach every single day of that time, talking about never seeing eachother again for the rest of our lives, hopefully making new friends, because we were going to different High Schools.

Emily went to Het Haags Montessori Lyceum and Victoria to the grammar school Gymnasium Haganum. At first it seemed that we had been right about that. The first few months in our new schools we didn't contact eachother, but that changed. We both had lessons in the same riding school, but at different times. We requested for Victoria being transferred to Emily's group, and when that happened, we saw eachother once a week. We also started calling eachother more often. Then we started seeing eachother in the weekends, calling eachother every day. Viem became closer and closer, and we are still getting closer with each day that goes by. We're in 10th grade now, spending every minute of spare time we have left together, missing eachother badly when we're not together. When you don't have a friendship yourself as good as ours, you can't possibly imagine how good it feels.

Maybe you wonder what we do when we're together.
For starters, it totally depends on the season of the year. In the summer we like spending our time on the beach, cycling through the dunes, lying in the sun there or in the woods, having a picknick.
In the winter we stay at home, watching video's, we go to the movies, and we do T.S. Of course we work on our Island and do other stuff. We dance a lot, and we are working on our own horror-film scenario. Despite all plans made for shooting it, we haven't done it yet.

In 1999 we got married in Vick's room, under the conditions that we are allowed to date any guy we want, and we can always marry another man :-)
We renewed our vows in 2001 and gave eachother new wedding rings.

In 2002 we both graduated from high school. We worked until January 2003 when we realized the dream we had had for so many years: going to live in Italy for awhile. We went to school in Florence for one month to learn italian. We stayed with a host-family there and we had a really great time. After that we went to school in Rome for two months. After all this hard work we travelled back to Tuscany where we lived for another 3 months in the little village of Montepulciano and just chilled there, playing and writing music among other things. After three months of isolation and nothing but olive trees to talk to we went to live in Rome again where we worked as "props" for a pub crawl. That was amazing: it was a huge change from our previous, quiet little life and we met so many wonderful people.
We had a fantastic time in Italy and we are already brainstorming about what our next adventure will be.

In September 2003 we both began our academic education at the University of Amsterdam. Emily as a psychology student and Victoria as a law student.

Of course our history grows every day. And we hope - we know that Viem will go on and on...forever.

From left to right: Emily (8), Mirte, Francine, Victoria (8), Daria.	Emmie and Vicky on Emmie's 10th birthday.
Standing: Victoria & Emily (9)	Upper left: Emily (11), upper right: Victoria(11), on the ground from left to right: Daria(11) and Mirte(12).
From left to right: Emmie (11), Vicky (11), Mirte (12) just before our performance in the musical from the 6th grade.	In the schoolyard (11)
Viem in the riding school after Victoria's riding-lesson.	Okay, we need to explain a little about this one. Emmie was engaged to vlaflip (her dessert) and thought it was time to marry him. Only there was one small problem: she had already eaten him. So Vicky took his place and married Emmie in his name. This marriage was dissolved later on, so we could marry one another:-) In this picture we were 12 years old by the way.
Left: Emmie on Beauty Star, and right: Vicky on Jolly Jumper.	Sweet sixteen;  Emmie(l), Vicky(r)

Wedding anniversary 2002, only
two weeks before taking off to Italy

Back to North|Back to main