Our New Apartment

Today we moved out of the Novotel and into our new apartment. It was bittersweet saying our goodbyes to the hotel staff, many of which know us by name now. We promised to come back for occasional visits. John went into work early today hoping to get quite a bit done before our 10:00 appointment at city hall for our registration. Not much actually work got done, but he did get a mobile phone, which is a completely new experience for him. After fiddling around with it for a few minutes he realized it was in Dutch, so a colleague helped make the conversion to English. It takes 24 hours to be activated, so we'll see how it works out.

Upon our arrival to city hall we found out that we're not really married--not for Dutch government purposes anyway. Since we've been married for less than 10 years, they apparently don't trust our marriage certificate--they're going to have to obtain special permission to classify us as married. Who knows, maybe we'll just get married again over here. That way, we can two anniversaries--one in the spring and one in the fall. Don't be surprised if you get a wedding invitation in the mail.

After the trip to city hall we went back to the hotel to pack up all our belongings in John's car (a sweet 4-door Peugeot 206). We figured out how to take apart the seats in the back so we could fit everything in. Then John went back to work for a little while, before figuring out that it was about time to go withdraw a large sum of cash from the bank. It's a long, sad, story, but what it comes down to is the wire transfer for the deposit and real estate agent's commission did not go through, and we did not receive an invoice for the first month's rent until last night. Because the Dutch have migrated away from using paper checks, and instead rely on electronic transfers, it was not possible to make the transfer quickly enough to get it to the landlord's bank account by our 4:00 check-in appointment.

So, John spent a fair amount of time dodging cars, bikes, trams, and pedestrians in the city center. There is only branch in Amsterdam where cash is accessible from a teller. When he arrived, he quickly found out that special approval was required to obtain the cash, and usually requests should be made in advance. After spending more time than he would have liked in the bank, he emerged with the rent, and made it to the apartment by 4:45. By this time Erin had already completed most of the check-in procedures, and she was happy to find that his mission had been accomplished. We signed all the paper work, forked over the cash, and they handed over the keys.

We then went to eat with Jacob and Annette Cooper, who arrived from Chicago about a week ago. The Italian restaurant was called Pasta E Basta, and it was quite unique--throughout our three-course dinner, the wait staff showed off its musical talents. We were entertained delightful performances including "Here on the Street Where you Live" from My Fair Lady.

After dinner (we had to hurry out because our €6.50 parking pass only lasted for 2 hours) we returned to the apartment and unpacked our suitcases. Erin has already been busy making shopping lists and cleaning the apartment. We are both excited about the fact that we finally have access to the internet. The computer will work all night uploading the 258 photos we have so far. We'll add descriptions to the pictures later, but feel free to look at what we have. Many of the pictures are from our apartment search--we took pictures of all 11 so we wouldn't get confused when we were making our decision.

It's almost midnight now and we're going to turn in now. Tomorrow will be a full day of shopping for new things for the apartment. Over the next week or so we'll try to play "catch up" on all the adventures we've been having.