The water on the windowsill

I will never forget that evening in July 2021.

During the day it had already rained for hours. Not one of those summer showers where you wait until it's over, but rain that just kept coming. In Valkenburg we talked about it as if everything would not be so bad. The Geul was high, perhaps much too high, but we had seen something like that before.

Until I saw the water.

I was standing by the window at home when I saw a dark stream passing through the street. Slowly at first, then faster and faster. I opened the front door and looked outside. The water was now above my shoes.

“This isn't right,” I muttered.

Within an hour the water was in the hallway.

I tried to put things up. Chairs on tables, boxes on cupboards, appliances off the floor. But the water was faster than me. Voices and sirens sounded from the center. People walked through the water looking for family or a safe place.

When the water reached my windowsill, I knew this was no longer an ordinary flood.

I looked at the height of the water and thought about the hotels, shops and homes in the center. Everything that made Valkenburg so familiar was now under pressure. The streets had turned into rivers. Cars crashed into walls and doors. De Geul had left its borders and took the city with it.

That night seemed endless.

The electricity went out. In the dark I mainly heard water. The splashing against the walls, the tapping of rain against the windows and occasionally a loud bang when something collided with a facade.

I sat on the floor and looked down.

210 centimeters.

That number will remain in my head forever.

I thought about my house, but also about the people who might be sitting alone. To the elderly who could no longer go upstairs. To families with children. To the hotel guests who had to leave their rooms in the middle of the night.

It was impossible to sleep.

When it finally became light, Valkenburg looked as if someone had erased the city and redrawn it.

Mud was everywhere. Furniture floated into rooms. Shops were filled with water and sand. Hotels that were normally full of life were quiet. The streets were littered with rubbish, branches and things that had been swept away by the water.

But amid all the misery, something special happened.

People helped each other.

Neighbors who hardly knew each other stood together to scoop water. Young people helped the elderly carry their belongings outside. Shopkeepers tried to save what could still be saved. Volunteers came from all sides.

The cleaning went on for days.

Shoveling, carrying, mopping. Over and over again.

I was walking through the center one morning and barely saw my own city. Yet I felt something that is difficult to explain.

Valkenburg was affected, but not broken.

Since then I have looked at water on the windowsill differently.

Because for me, that windowsill is no longer just a piece of stone under the window.

It is the place where I realized that nothing is self-evident.

And that you only really know what a city means when the water comes.