Tobias discovers how things work

On the table of the Repair Café in Oosterwolde lies an open device. Screws are scattered beside it, the casing has been unclipped, and a circuit board is visibly protruding from the plastic. Tobias de Bruijn examines it closely. Not because he knows exactly what is broken, but because he wants to understand how it works. “For me, it’s always like an expedition of discovery,” he says. “You take something apart and slowly uncover how it’s put together.” That curiosity is precisely why Tobias has been a volunteer at the Repair Café for years.

Naturally curious

His curiosity began early. As a child, Tobias was fascinated by technology. When central heating was installed in his parents’ home, he wanted to know exactly how the system worked. When his parents weren’t home, he would sneak down to the basement. “I’d unscrew cabinets just to see what was inside,” he recalls. “I wanted to understand how it worked.” Using parts from his Meccano set, he even built his own switch clock. It was the start of a lifelong habit: taking things apart to discover how they work.

Repairing instead of replacing

That curiosity continued to play a role later in life. For years, Tobias drove a Renault 4 that he repeatedly repaired using parts from the scrapyard. “At one point, my car was probably eighty percent made up of parts from the scrapyard,” he laughs. For him, that was perfectly normal. While many people replace broken items, Tobias first tries to understand what’s wrong and then fix it.

Puzzling together at the Repair Café

When Tobias retired, he looked for a way to stay active. Through his wife, he heard about a Repair Café in Drachten. The idea immediately appealed to him. There, he could do exactly what he loved: puzzling over broken appliances. Inspired by his experiences in Drachten, he started the Repair Café in the Estafettewinkel in Oosterwolde together with Debora Faber. The Repair Café has now been running for over ten years, and Tobias is one of its regular volunteers.

“You learn by doing,” he says. “You look at a device together and try to figure out what’s wrong.” Sometimes, this leads to unexpected moments. The learning doesn’t just happen between volunteers; sometimes, surprising intergenerational encounters take place. For example, a high school student once did an internship at the Repair Café. Initially, the volunteers thought they’d mostly keep him busy with small tasks, but it turned out differently. During a repair, the boy watched as an electronic device was laid open on the table. He immediately pointed to a component on the circuit board. The capacitor was broken. Shortly after, the device was working again. “That’s when we realized he could teach us things too,” Tobias says. The boy still comes by to help regularly.

For Tobias, this perfectly illustrates what makes the Repair Café so special: people of different ages and backgrounds working together to solve a problem. Everyone brings their own knowledge, and everyone learns something new.

A small journey of discovery

For Tobias, repairing remains an adventure. A vacuum cleaner that won’t start. An amplifier with no sound. An automatic cat feeder that stops working. Sometimes, he manages to get the device working again. Sometimes, he doesn’t. That doesn’t really bother Tobias. “At least then you know how it works,” he says.

Clocks that start ticking again

Outside the Repair Café, Tobias continues to repair things. As a volunteer, he delivers meals to elderly people in the village. He noticed that many homes had beautiful clocks that had been standing still for years. Sometimes, it turned out that no one had looked at them in years. Then Tobias would ask if he could take a look. The clock would come home with him. Not because he knew exactly how such a mechanism worked. On the contrary. “I actually knew nothing about clocks,” he admits. But that doesn’t stop him. In the attic, he carefully unscrews the clock. Step by step, he tries to understand how the mechanism is put together. “I just start by looking,” he says. “You take it apart and slowly discover how it works.” For Tobias, that’s the best moment: when the puzzle slowly unfolds. And when he returns the clock later, it often brings the same reaction: a smile from the owner and a clock that ticks again as if it had never stopped.

Daring to try

According to Tobias, many people think repairing is complicated. But in his view, it starts with something much simpler: curiosity. You just have to start and see what you encounter. And if it doesn’t work? Then the device was probably already headed for the trash anyway. “The risk is that you might break it further,” he says matter-of-factly. “But it was already on its way to being thrown away.”

For Tobias, repairing remains a way to stay curious. Every device is a new puzzle. And every repair is a small discovery. With volunteers like Tobias, Heel Ooststellingwerf Repareert shows that repairing often begins with something very simple: daring to be curious and just giving it a try.

Curious about how the Repair Café works?

The Repair Café in Oosterwolde is open on Saturdays from 10:00 to 13:00 during even weeks at Omrin Estafette. Volunteers like Tobias enjoy looking at broken appliances together with visitors to see if they can be repaired.

Everyone is welcome to visit Omrin Estafette at Venekoterweg 21, 8431 HG Oosterwolde with a broken appliance or just to take a look around.

Check out the opening hours of the other Repair Cafés and the Verstelcafé as well.