Saskia Linssen has romantic dreams for a down-to-earth Dutch girl. Although she protests that she isn't impressed with the trappings of wealth, she waxes rhapsodic -- in her alluring Hollander accent -- when asked to describe her dream trip. "I'd love to ride horses in the Scottish Highlands, among
...the castles and the ruins. I'd go away for a week, take some food, stay in the shelters up there." For those of you imagining yourselves playing a Scottish Roy Rogers to her Dutch Dale Evans, whoa, boys! - rein yourselves in. She continues, "I like to ride alone, when the weather is not good. I want to hear the birds, see wild animals, not be with people." If you get the picture that Saskia is a solitary, untamed spirit, you're on the mark. Born the only child of a Venlo, Holland, sailor and his wife, Saskia seems to have inherited her poppa's wanderlust. She lives in Rotterdam with her parents but can't imagine staying there very long: "I don't want to get stuck all my life in a place I already know," she says. "I want to look at the world." Saskia, who speaks fluent English and German, in addition to her native Dutch, cites her country's historical inclinations to span the globe, saying, "We're so little we have to learn to deal with people from other countries." Still, Saskia's not likely to do it on anybody's terms but her own. With obvious relish, she tells the story of an encounter with a rude German woman with whom she once fought over a parking space. She stormed the woman's car, calling her a "Deutschland uber Alles-er!" We can probably rule out diplomacy from Saskia's career ambitions. Surprisingly, she's not at all certain that modeling or acting is really for her, either. She once was the equivalent of Vanna White on a German TV game show but hated the experience, dismissing it as plastic and phony. And she's not even convinced of her own beauty. "I'm very unsure about myself and my looks," she says. "It's very strange to model in front of a camera. It's almost as if when I put on the make-up, I become a different person. I need lots of encouragement." There are plenty of people around to provide exactly that. Saskia made her pictorial debut in the Dutch edition of Playboy, and its staff was impressed enough to put her on the cover of the magazine and turn her into a statue. "They put plaster all over me and I had to stand there for an hour, while it hardened," she recalls. Copies of the finished life-sized effigy will be offered to readers and business associates of the Dutch Playboy. Allowing a bit of pride to seep through, she says, "I'm like a Greek statue, formed for eternity!" She gives an enticing new meaning to the word statuesque.
