Dennis sits comfortably on the white chair in front of me; I am drinking coffee. He wears a light-pink t-shirt and his face is tanned from the beach sun. We have been already talking for half an hour, laughing a lot and its more of a casual chat than an interview. Why do you think that you are shy?  I ask – I wouldn’t normally get that impression about you. Dennis thinks a little while – so…now, I have my sunglasses on – he pauses to make me think – so I might feel more comfortable and safe if you cannot see my eyes, hmm? – he smiles – that is kind of being shy – he adds. He takes his sunglasses off. In this moment I can now see his eyes and the mood of the interview changes instantly to something a little more intimate. He puts his sunglasses back on and that feeling of closeness disappears. Now you know what I am talking about? – he asks with very confident face. Good point. Now I know.

Dennis Littel is a very “funny” person. “Funny” in an intelligent way. He is smiling a lot and this smile is always very expressive and natural. Dennis is honest. He is from that kind of person that if the situation requires he might prefer to say: “I am embarrassed” instead of pretending “not to be embarrassed” as many people might do. That makes him believable and trustworthy. He appears to be very talkative and open. But for some reason he describes himself as – a quite shy guy. At least we can for sure put him in the group described as “very tall”. Dennis’ 199cm frame stands well above most windsurfers on the tour. I wonder what they are feeding the Dutch children.

Dennis’ first experience with windsurfing took place when he was only 5 years old. On a trip through Europe with his family they passed through a popular windsurfing spot in France. Right there and then Dennis was intrigued by the sport and thought it was something he should be looking into.

The first experience Dennis had with windsurfing was to sit on the front of the board while his father went windsurfing. Dennis’ eyes lit up while he is retelling this childhood story. I had a so small, childish sail – he describes his early windsurfing attempts. His father was quick to see the talent in Dennis on the board and motivated him to continue with the sport more seriously. When Dennis was young he also played soccer, but after these memorable holidays in France he started to spend more time on the water than on the football field. Eventually he stopped playing soccer completely. Around this time he was training regularly on the nearby lakes in Holland.

I did remember one family meeting. I was very young at the time. All my family were eating and I was busy trying to sail in the nearest lake. My parents tried to call me back to eat something, but I didn’t listen to them. Just sometimes I was shouting to them – Mum, dad ,did you see it?

20 Years?

Dennis, now at 26 years of age has already been windsurfing for 20 years! He doesn’t even remember how his life was before the wind and water arrived in his heart. His first windsurfing competition was in 1994 at the Dutch ‘Super 8′ Slalom Event (which is still running to this day). My first competition? – Dennis delves back into the past – I remember very well – he adds vividly – I didn’t even understand the rules!! So I chose a completely different way than that which was required. That was pretty funny! Of course I couldn’t win because of my misunderstanding, but I enjoyed it a lot! His first international competition took place in Italy and since that day he has been travelling all around the world for competitions. The first thing that traveling may help you a lot with is the ability to speak better English. Maybe that sounds funny, but constant travel and the forced necessity of speaking that language to get around has made my English very good now. I think that all windsurfers can speak English. Normally that is the language we are using in our windsurfing world for the competitions. Windsurfing opens your mind for many things. Here we are all equal, no matter what you are doing at your home, what you are studying; if you clean the garbage from the streets or you are working in the office. We all are the same.

Dennis is currently working in Media and Web Design. He started a company with his sister in 1999.

I intentionally chose that job. Because now, my office can be everywhere, I just need the internet to make it active. I knew that kind of profession would leave me a lot of freedom for windsurfing..

Myth: A Girlfriend in Every Country?

Dennis smiles widely. Yes, I think it is true - he admits – not for me anymore, because I have met the right girl and I don’t need anybody more than her, but in fact before you find this right person, you might have girls everywhere – Dennis laughs.

Well, girls are attracted to windsurfers. We have a lot of interesting stories to tell. We are traveling all around the world…

He thinks a moment and adds – I assume that that kind of lifestyle is more fun than, for example, working in an office. I cannot even imagine what guy who sits 8 hours in front of a desk can say to a girl: “I was in the office, I had some breakfast; yesterday I didn’t take a shower which I should have taken. It was a very big change for me to skip this one shower” (laughter from both of us).

Another thing is that windsurfers are very open to communicate with others. As you travel a lot, many times just by yourself, you have learned how to deal with people, even from other cultures. It makes that not only girls are attracted to windsurfers, we are just interesting for everybody, mostly because we are open for everybody. Dennis thinks a moment. At the beginning I was a lot more shy than now. I still think of myself as a shy person, but definitely I lost some of these instincts that blocked me through living the windsurfing lifestyle.

My Girl

Why is Femke my girl? Because she is cool. You know? Normally with every person after one week I will get annoyed, but with Femke I have never felt like this. She is just easy going and we always have a lot of fun while we are together.

Me and Femke met 2.5 years ago at a big windsurfing event in Holland, The Mission. After the event we were corresponding a little bit with each other. Femke is also windsurfer; that means that we both understand each other a lot. Our next meeting was in Maui, Hawaii. Maui is the Mecca for windsurfers. One day our common friend invited us to Australia and as Femke wanted to go to Melbourne for a Championship it was an additional result. Leaving from different places in the world, we met up in Australia. I took Femke from the airport knowing that we will take a trip to this guy’s house together. Unfortunately or maybe fortunately our friend wasn’t at home (complicated story). So more or less we stayed together in Australia and started traveling on our own searching for windsurfing spots. Spending this time together and getting through the difficulties of how to organize our travels in Australia while the place to stay at our friend’s house was not available anymore started our love.

Today they live together in Rotterdam, Netherlands. One day they plan to buy their own house “and we have to have a lot of space around, because Femke loves horses, so we need to have a place for them also” - Dennis finishes my sentence.

Friends of Mine

Friends are important for Dennis. Close friends are people with who you can communicate on the same level even if you haven’t talked to them for a couple of months. Dennis is not much of a phone person, he doesn’t need to talk with his mates everyday. He rather avoids this but of course it doesn’t mean that he doesn’t care about them. Nowadays, most of his friends are from the windsurfing world, but he also has some good mates from his school days. My school friends are used to the fact that I am not always available. I am very happy that they understand this. For example, on my best friend’s wedding I could only be there for an hour because I had a Dutch National Competition at the same time. But my friend knew that I was there especially for him and he was happy that I could be there at least one hour. To my friends I also say more deep thoughts. My very true and honest feelings which I cannot put on a website for example.

Back Doors

Dennis is a realist. Nowadays all the money I am able to earn through my company I use to keep going with windsurfing. But Dennis knows also that from this industry he cannot gain enough benefits to make his future safe. He doesn’t think of himself as a professional windsurfer. Being a professional windsurfer means that you are able to train fulltime and you are able to devote most of your time for improving your windsurfing skills. He can train sometimes but as he said – I have to rely on my intrinsic talent, this is one power I have nowadays. Because I have to give a lot of my time to work to earn money for windsurfing. Dennis thinks about future seriously. I am asking myself questions like: what will happen if I get injured? What will happen when I am 35 years old? I have to know the answers to that. You have to have some back up plan. Windsurfing costs a lot! And you don’t get any money from it, If you are not professional. Dennis and Femke aren’t thinking about a family right now, but they both know that whenever they will want to buy a house they will have to forget the traveling in the way they both doing now.

What’s A Dutch Guy Think of Dutch People?

Dutch people are different from the rest. I don’t know how to describe it in the proper words… to describe my thoughts as I have them in my mind. Dennis falls silent. After a while he adds –

I can say just who is Dutch and who isn’t. I can recognize it just because of they way people are moving their bodies. Some might think that it is exorbitant, but its not. It is really like this. Yesterday I saw Dutch people who were passing the beach and look we are in Portugal now, and I just knew that they are from Holland. When I heard their language I realized that I was right.

Since Dennis started windsurfing he has visited many different parts of the world. Many nationalities compete in windsurfing. They are dealing with each other in every competition they are doing together. Culture makes a big divide between people but for windsurfers this difference doesn’t mean any distinction in quality. Dutch people - are not in the front and not in the back, but they talk as though they are in the front – Dennis uses metaphor to describe his feelings about the behavior of his nation’s people. When you meet a Dutch family on their holidays they will definitely talk to you, but while they are in Holland they will keep everything to themselves. I don’t know why it is like this.

In some circumstances we are a reserved people. Dennis draws a picture – so when I was in Spain once, a guy who I didn’t know that well gave us a place to sleep. He didn’t know me well, but he still offered. In Holland you obviously can find people like that but you have to have a good glasses to find them. Normally people will not invite you into their houses just like this. I just mean that you have to put some time into a Dutchie before you get to know them better, but when you do, they are very trusting and then anything is possible. Dennis smiles and says with honesty – well I am a bit like this, I think so, I am doing my things and I want other people to let me do that. Dennis is so polite and open when he is saying this that it is almost hard to believe in that. But we could assume it’s in that way that he defines himself. People are… Like this that they talk a lot and that their conversations have no value. It is not because of just being talkative, because there is nothing wrong with that, but you have to know what you are talking about. I can think a lot of things in my mind, but I don’t always express everything.

In People I hate especially one character trait… If you do something small that makes you happy and you are proud of that, even if I know how to do this better, I am not that person who will correct you and advise you in a very arrogant way. I will let you be happy about your achievements and what you have done. But some people will want to be smarter than you just to show off. I just hate it. 

“Let’s Split This Water Into Pieces!”

Snowboarding is also one of Dennis’ passions. He is mostly snowboarding in Austria and Switzerland. Dennis finds windsurfing and snowboarding similar in some cases. Both are connected with overtaking nature and in both you have to find your own way to go.

You can have a lot of fun with it and you can also be killed by nature.

A popular sport in the windsurfing world is ’snowsurfing’ as they call it. Basically it is just connecting a small windsurfing sail to a snowboard. It doesn’t even require wind, you can use the motion of the board and the slopes to gain speed; however it opens up a whole new bag of tricks that aren’t possible on a snowboard alone. It also open up a whole new bag of injuries that probably weren’t possible on a snowboard either!

FTW: Dennis when you are windsurfing, do you play with nature or against?

Dennis: Well normally I play with nature but obviously sometimes you have thoughts in your mind such as: Lets split this water into pieces!!!

The Windsurfing Lifestyle For You.

The Windsurfing Lifestyle… teaches me how to not be afraid. It teaches me that we can always find a solution for every problem, that we have to trust that it will be fine. After all my adventures, traveling with windsurfing gear that requires additional attention; after the millions of stories and experiences I’ve had, I know that you can always manage somehow, that you can always find a solution for everything. Last year when I went with Femke to a competition in Turkey we didn’t even book a hotel. We thought, sure!… It would be fine, and it is always fine! As I said, we were traveling on the West Coast of Australia, sleeping in a tent, without any idea where we should go, because our place pre-organised place to sleep wasn’t available anymore, so we stayed alone, with our car and some money in the pocket. That is the Windsurfing Lifestyle: Lack of fear!”