In this second chapter Tonny describes her teenage and adolescent years, when she set out to discover the world by bicycle, train, and hitchhiking. Tonny travels to France and Spain. While staying in La Mancha she finds out what it is like to live in a house built round a patio. This inspires her to make a study of the patios of Manzanares and neighbouring villages.

Her most important concern during these years is to find a connection between nature and architecture. In Spain Tonny discovers that, in order to pursue her own notion of design, she needs an environment combining unspoilt nature with plenty of sunlight. In the summer of 1963 Tonny decides to leave the Netherlands, where she was studying architecture at Delft University. Holland, she felt, was not the place for developing an artistic approach to architecture.