I'm Henk and I have been active since 2006 on this site.
I'm living in the Netherlands in Leusden (about 1 hour from Amsterdam) and Married and have two sons and a daughter.

When I was about 8 years old I found a old Monopoly boardgame on the attic from my grandfather and from that time on i liked to play boardgames. I played a lot of Monopoly with my 1,5 year older sister.
My 5 year younger sister was never interested in boardgames.

As a Teenager I played a lot of Risk, Olie voor de wereld, Jumbojet, Axis and Allies, Samurai Swords and Rolplayinggame het Oog des Meesters. Dierik one of my buddies on BBG played also a lot with our game group. From 1995 till 2001 I playes less boardgames only
Risk and Chess occasionally. I was more a computer gamer.

In 2001 a bought myself a Risk computer game and I played it ones (boring) and the next day i brought it back to the shop for refund for money. The game couldn't be safed in a campain mode. I couldn't get my money back (40 euro) but I only could pick something else from 40 euro in that toyshop on that day. I was 30 years old had no children so what can you buy? Another Pc game or something else? And that I saw a pile of Settles of Catan. I had never heard of the game. There was a pricewinning logo on the box and I though it can't be a worse game. Well I picked this up instead of the Risk Pc game. A half year later I was taking it on holiday to France.

I played this with my family and even my father loved it (normally he never play boardgame, for so far I can remember two time monoply since my birth) We had a lot of fun and played it a serverall time during our holiday in France. Later I bought the expansions and started playing boardgames more often again like in the 80's. I was moved two time to another City and State and I had only had contact left with Dierik from my old gamegroup.

Settlers had made a "rebirth for passion for boardgames again".
Dierik also pickedup his passion again. We started visiting boardgames events and since 2004 we are visiting "Spellenspektakel, Ducosim Conventions and Spiel in Essen".

English is not my best language in writing and I hope it will become better after reading more stuff on BGG.