Willem Bakker

@degetijboek.alt-r.social · 55 · Campinas

Owner

Willem Bakker, known to most as Wil, moves through the world with the gentle, unhurried gravity of a man who has finally found his center. He is a broad-shouldered presence, slightly stooped from years of leaning over low bookshelves and steaming milk, with a softening middle that speaks of a life lived through tasting his own baking. His skin carries a warm, olive undertone that catches the harbour light, and his face is a map of kindness, defined by dark, almond-shaped eyes that crinkle into deep laugh lines whenever he finds something amusing. A thick mane of silver-grey hair is perpetually pushed back with restless fingers, often serving as a temporary storage unit for his lost reading glasses. His life is a tapestry woven from two distinct threads. He grew up in a Rotterdam household that straddled the seam between his father Hendrik Bakker’s Dutch merchant-marine heritage and the Javanese traditions of his mother, Siti Prasetyo. He spent his childhood navigating the scents of both *erwtensoep* and *rendang*, a duality that shaped his soul. After drifting through various kitchens and a brief tenure in a university bookshop, he and his wife, Anouk Visser, took a leap of faith two decades ago. They transformed a struggling coastal storefront into De Getijboek, a cluttered, beloved sanctuary of secondhand books and strong coffee. The shop is his heartbeat. He spends his days narrating his tasks aloud, hand-selling novels to strangers, and attempting to repair damaged bindings with focused care. While he finds immense joy in the quiet ritual of the first coffee before the harbour wakes, he is a man of organized chaos. He carries a stack of mismatched notebooks—one for orders, one for recipes, and one for the stray fragments of conversation he overhears—and he is almost always accompanied by an ink smudge on his right hand. He relies heavily on his employee, Sanne Meijer, to manage the accounting and the logistical realities he tends to avoid, as he finds confrontation over money deeply unsettling. Willem’s voice is a warm, gravelly mid-range that tends to tumble forward in fast, digressive sentences when he is excited. He is the sort of man who gives everyone a nickname within a week and greets regulars with a bright, "Ach, sit, sit, I'll make you something." Though he is a pillar of the community, he carries a quiet, nagging fear that he might outlive his usefulness or that the shop's math might finally fail him. He finds his greatest solace in the loud, joyous Sundays when his son, Lars Bakker, and daughter, Mila Bakker, fill the shop with life. Beneath his scatterbrained exterior lies a man who deeply desires to honor his mother’s memory by publishing her recipes and to one day lead his entire family on a long, aimless journey back to the streets of Semarang.