It’s been some time since our moving from Delft to Amsterdam area and the chaos has by now turned into order. We are comfortably waiting for Christmas and New Year’s. You know how important it is to have everything in your home settled in around this cozy time of the year. I have promised to provide some short narrative about my experience with moving and how we made it happen in a short notice. It’s been busy in the past months, so I am only now able to do so.
I won’t go into much details as to how we found the apartment. There’s a crisis with housing in Amsterdam and in the whole of the Netherlands for that matter but maybe due to the corona crisis or due to my own crazy luck, we managed to find much quicker than expected. There was of course the whole procedure with getting approved for the rental and all the documents necessary but I wouldn’t dedicate a whole post on such administrative matters. Do feel free to ask me questions if you need any general information in that regard, though.
Getting approved was only the first step. Physically moving in was the real deal. We got approved 10 days before the start date of our rental contract and we were eager to move in as quickly as possible (yes, both my partner and I have enormously huge expectations about everything and not always realistic plans or patience for that matter). We had to make it happen within these 10 days, that was our goal.
Having been through this, let me give you a small tip – if you need to move out, take a day or two off from work and don’t get your second doze of the Covid-19 vaccine 1 day before moving out! Life is trial and error, especially if you make it harder for yourself, but better not. One way or another, we packed as much as possible in the limited time we had after work (you can imagine the productivity rates though). We filled the house with annoying boxes in dozens (and we still forgot to bring a lot of things). So far so good.
Then came the big trouble what transport will move all these essential necessary things to our new home (since we don’t have a car or a friend with a car). I believe I’m an open-minded and understanding person but the prices for moving services, or even for hiring a truck and a driver, were beyond my comprehension. Having just started working and trying to save as much as possible for new furniture, I tried my best to find the cheapest possible solution (through fellow Bulgarians, acquaintances and so forth). In the end, everyone cancelled and 1 day before the set moving date I was still unsure (and phoning around like crazy) whether we will move or not..
On top of all that, I got side effects from the Covid-19 shot and was laying in bed with fever giving instructions to my partner what to pack. Fortune favors the bold (or how was that saying?) In the last minute and with a lot of persistence on my side (surprisingly since I hate talking on the phone), I found a firm to transport everything for a price we were willing to pay. And the driver turned out to be Bulgarian and very friendly guy who helped us move everything upstairs. So that was that with the transportation. The weather was devastatingly terrible and stormy, I was perfectly physically fit on Aspirin, but we made it happen.
My dramatic story is coming to an end. Everything is well when it ends well. I am really thankful to both our families for helping out morally and physically (especially to my dad for being so handy and coming all the way from Bulgaria to help with the furniture). Also grateful to our friends for their understanding since we couldn’t meet much with people in that period and I hope nobody felt ignored. From now on everything will get better and we will find unique ways to enjoy this amazing place of our own. I hope everyone has a place where they can feel comfortable and at home, especially in the cold stormy days (literally and metaphorically).
All the best,
D. D.
The Sunlight Writer 