Our stuff.....

.... did indeed arrive today!! jaaaajjj!! i kept waking up this morning, and every time i thought the movers were somehow standing in front of our door (one time i even imagined them saying something in english... at 5 or 6 this morning). but... they called to let us know they would be arriving in 1.5 hours (they came from the UK). of course they rang the wrong doorbell (we live at the 4th floor but the house number is 3, but next to the bell it says 4 and then tim made a note saying its 3, and so everyone always rings at our neighbor, who is not too happy about that). compared to the real city center of amsterdam, the streets here are not too tiny. but they are one-way, and apparently too small for the gigantic moving truck (they had stuff from others as well), so they parked on the main street. buuuhhhh, i really looked forward to seeing the huge truck coming into the street so that i could take a picture from the balcony. they had carts, tim helped them and in no time all 19 boxes and our lovely bench were in the hallway downstairs; and i never got to see the actual truck!!

we didnt drag them all upstairs. right now we dont have enough space and also still need to paint the bedroom. but its so nice to have some of the stuff back again!! and yep.... as you can see above, i had that huge plastic container of cheese balls shipped home... i just couldnt resist, and when there was still some space i decided i could nicely use it to pack some of all the spices, seeds and flours i had collected in the us.... and next to it my cook books! jaaaajj, so nice to have those back... (especially the bread book). theres still more kitchen stuff... so i will have to be creative in finding space for it all in the already overflowing kitchen..... 

we bought elvis a few weeks back here in amsterdam (i never cared for elvis until we visisted graceland.......). ah, and to the far right you can see (part of) our orange bread box hanging on the wall.... i do hope the walls are strong enough... ;)

From Boston...

tomorrow... if all goes well, we should get our stuff that we shipped from boston. these boxes, to be precise... i wonder whether they still look like that. i hope they do..... may 29 they left our place in the usa, so thats ore than 2 months! i remember some of the things we packed and i am eager to see that stuff again (like the mug above... i cannot comment as to how that came into our possession, but now at least i can pretend, even in amsterdam, i am in the IHOP.... ;) ). the kitchen stuff (like pie pans and my marble dough roller), my sports clothing (3 pairs of running socks is not enough!!), oooh, and of course my shoes... all my shoes.. 

friday we last minute had to pay some customs fee to ensure they would deliver our stuff tomorrow. apparently the container with our stuff was chosen for a random check, and we had to pay the extra costs for that (100 dollars). quite a bit annoying, and not part of the deal. i hope it doesnt mean they went through all our stuff......

so now its time to sleep. all those boxes somehow have to get up 4 stairs, and we were too cheap to pay the moving company to do that for us...... ah, it will save me from going to the gym to do weight lifting... 

Oooh, waste!

its still gorgeous weather but i dont allow myself to go out since i should be looking for a job... :( tim gets up very early every day, and comes back relatively late, and i want to work too!! i guess its always the same; once you work, you wish you had days to spend doing nothing. but without the immediate prospect of work, its actually not that much fun. so... i havent been exploring much, certainly not the way i used to in boston. even though amsterdam is sort of a new city to me (at least to live in, and biking... well... im still not a pro... hahahaha. ofcourse, once you learn how to bike, you will never forget it, but to bike with confidence through busy streets, packed with pedestrians, cars, other bikers and  public transport... iieeekkk).

what i dont miss is the above; paper cups for coffee! here i had an espresso. it did not even fill 1/8 of that cup, but i did get a plastic lid (to the right), and the paper holder to not burn your hands (to the right), such a waste!!! moreover, putting that little coffee in such a huge paper cup... makes it cold before you can drink it... now thats not to say we dont have paper cups here in the netherlands. but its definitely less and i hope it stays that way. on the other hand; we have not been out to dinner once since i am back! its just different here. the ease, speed and availability of food at any time of the day (or especially (late) night) is just different here. ah well, a home cooked meal is probably healthier and cheaper... :)

Upside down

yesterday i didnt know what to post, so i didnt post anything. and today i didnt know either. i went back to our first year in boston and found photos of us packing around this time. we had lived in a temporary place for 3 months and were about to move to our current apartment. and now, after 3 years, there is only 1 night left here before i fly back to the netherlands.

yesterday some people came by and they took some of our stuff. i was so happy about that! and... one of them was actually flying to the netherlands that day, for just a week and he was willing to take 2 pairs of my shoes, my folder with recipes (i forgot to ship that, so stupid), and some other stuff!! today i could get rid of some more stuff to other victims i lured into our apartment, and then me and my sister brought quite some bags to the garbage receptacles that were already overflowing. i also put some small stuff in the hallway, and some of it was taken by our anonymous neighbors.... 

this picture i took somewhere in cambridge 2 years ago. right now i am not really here anymore, but i am definitely also not in the netherlands yet. i guess mostly im just worried about my stuff. now that i think about it, maybe i should start practising the philosophy of non-possession, as it is weird actually, how much you can worry about stupid possessions... but i think i wont start that until hmmm, at least next week or so.... ;)

i packed one suitcase, and my second one is half packed. i hope it will all fit but i am still not sure...

American eagle

we were at the forest hills cemetery in boston the other day, and suddenly we found a grave with a huge eagle on it. here you see a part. it was really huge and quite intimidating... :) and, to me, very american.... :)

its on the grave of 2nd lieutenant kitchell snow who was killed in 1923 (thats how its on his grave; born 1899, killed 1923). so far, i cannot find much more, other than that he was a pilot and landed the first plane on what is now boston logan airport (then still a tiny piece of land), in 1923, just a month before he died.

i will be having my last weekend in boston. it will be mostly consisting of emptying out the apartment and worrying whether everything will fit in my suitcases (maybe i should start packing so that i know!), and whether there are things i forgot to do/arrange etc....

Last days...

there are only a few more days to go before i leave the usa.... i start to get a littl more nervous. i look in my closet and wonder how its all going to fit. i look around the apartment and wonder how i will get rid of all the stuff still left (without having to trash it), i look at the fridge where i put up all these colorful post-its with things i have to do before leaving. (we had these post-its for 3 years, and only now i am using them). then there is my little booklet in which i had made a list of all the things i would still like to see, do and/or photograph in boston. me and my sister did some today.

and my mind is not so much on blogging.... but here is a picture i took yesterday from the local cemetery. the clouds were so ominous!! and yes, not long after it started to rain. and not much later lightning, and very, very heavy rain. somewhat later again there was a gorgeous rainbow, but i managed to miss that... :( many others didnt, as you can see here.

yep, boston is showing its entire weather repertoire.... from quite hot and sunny to chilly, rain and thunder. and back again.... while i actuallywould just like the sun... but well....

Two weeks

last sunday we parked the truck next to a row of cars that had been standing there for a very long time. including the one above. all cars that when fixed up, would be so impressive! but now they were just standing there, a little sad. tires empty and falling apart, rust everywhere..... it was funny how i was very much aware that for at least a while "our" car would be standing there too, unused. i wondered when and how these cars were left, if the owners ever come back, whether they are at least planning to come back, some day.... i couldnt get the safety belt perfectly straight from the passengers seat, and somehow that seemed very important. we also left a tin with some candy in it. candy that you can keep forever, so thats fine. i guess it was a bit on purpose, although it is very likely that tim didnt think about it for one second, while i am now writing a blog post about it, hahahaha.

the next day i brought tim to the airport. and everything we did that day, breakfast, swimming, going down with the suitcases, locking the door, taking the subway, would be the last time here together. again, tim was most likely just thinking about his flight and his new job starting in just 2 days, but i tried to remember every moment. even though we did all those things so often, and i never thought about it! (and its not like we will never visit the us again; theres still so much to see!)

and now there are only 2 weeks left before i will leave as well..... the kitchen is still so full with stuff (quite some food and we hardly packed any kitchen ware). will all my clothes (and the ones i bought on top of that during a 6.5 hour shopping spree yesterday) fit in my suitcases? what do i still need to do? what stuff still needs to be arranged? (change of address, cancelling subscriptions, my bank account, etc etc). and sometimes i remember an item, and am not sure whether i brought it to goodwill or packed for shipping. more often than not i hope that i packed it..... i guess (i hope) when we get our boxes in amsterdam, it will be kind of like presents on christmas....

Bye Tim!

today i had to say bye yet again. this time to tim... i shipped him off to amsterdam this evening while i will stay here for another 3 weeks. i have some work to finish. also, the weather is probably better here than in the netherlands, and there is a outdoor pool just downstairs, so..... 

oh, and the apartment complex did not want to let us break the lease one month, or even a half month earlier. it ends july 1st. we first inquired about a 1 month extension which was perfectly fine, but when we asked whether we could leave 1 month or half a month earlier they said no. they literally said that "it was of no benefit to them". tim calculated how much rent we paid over the past 3 years (a very painful number), and asked whether that wouldnt warrant a little leniency, but the answer remained no. (we saw many people moving out the past week, i dont think they are doing very well currently). so.... the best option for me was to stay. in a week my sister will arrive, so we can say goodbye to boston together!

tim in the meantime will start his new job this thursday. while we were sorting everything out in our apartment, we found many, many pens. it could be that we have well over 50 of them. they seemed to appear from everywhere, which is weird because i never could find a pen when i needed one. while walking to the subway station tim realized he did not even take one pen with him. then he found one from his new job, so i think thats a sign! it has the name of the hospital on it (bovenij; "ziekenhuis" means hospital). he had a huge amount of luggage. luckily i could convince him to check an additional suitcase. 2 suitcases of 23 kgs each (max weight), a backpack and a large carry-on.... while he now is somewhere above the ocean with 3 pairs of my shoes (the additional suitcase was of benefit to me... ;) ), i really need togoto sleep... good night!

Bye car!!

today we said goodbye to the car we were happily driving the past 3 years. or rather, that tim was driving since i dont have a license... (since a few months i have a learners permit, but... well... i will not be able to obtain an american license anytime soon... buuhhhh.. :( ). it belongs to tims parents and it made our life quite a bit easier... we had absolutely no trouble obtaining furniture, as it all was just thrown in the back of this huge car! we had no trouble getting groceries either... (theres no supermarket in walking distance of our apartment. and we got used to doing shopping only once a week, or less. very undutch! there i used to go whenever i was cooking dinner, just a little walk from my apartment). i got used to climbing in this huge thing, and very much enjoyed the royal view above everyone else.... and of course, it made me feel like a real american, sitting in a real american truck!!

thats why yesterday was so stressful; we HAD to get rid of the couch, even if it meant secretly throwing it in a dumpster somewhere, anywhere.... (i found out normally the dump we brought it to is not open on saturday, and we were there not that long before closing time. pfew..). today we got up early and drove the car to its storage, an hour away. when we had it storage ready (tim did most of the work, lucky me, it was so very hot again), we got a cab to the nearest train station, and had our very first train ride in the usa.... :) as it is sunday, the train was going only 3 times, over the entire day!! if we had missed it, we would have had to wait some 4 hours!! (thats also rather different from the netherlands!). it took forever to get back into boston, but it was actually quite relaxing to sit in the very slowly moving train for 1.5 hours....

bye bye car, we will certainly miss you!

Decaying beauty

june 1st! another month has gone by, its theme day and our apartment is empty... this months theme is the "beauty of decay". i actually have quite some pictures of abandoned places (i like to visit those), but currently we are busy to "abandon" our apartment... so, heres another picture... :) its all i can think of right now....

we sold the dinner table and chairs on thursday. since we had some boxes left, tim immediately set out to make us another table, as you can see (compare with the original situation here!). today we also got rid of our bed and couch. we got the couch out really easy, and also carrying it down 2 flights of stairs was not too bad (it was horrible getting it here when moving in, so we were a bit worried about that). while getting that all done i was also doing laundry and baking bread as we had a goodbye BBQ this afternoon; when we had gotten the couch down one flight, i had to run back up, just to check on the bread.... not to rest, ofcourse.... ;)

we went to goodwill to drop off the couch, only to find out they didnt want it... it has a small tear and the guy accepting "donations" said he only takes things he would want to buy himself. having brought numerous itmes already over the past days, that really pissed us off. moreover, now what to do with that huge couch??!! certainly the soaring heat (35C!!, around 95F) did not help to cool us down... after some ideas of where to secretly drop the couch, some weirder than others, we finally figured out that we could bring it to the "solid waste station". i was very sad to see our couch being brutally dumped into a huge, disgusting, smelly pile of waste.... it didnt belong there at all!! buhuhuhuhuh. moreover, we had to pay 6 dollars and 40 cents, as dumping goes by the pound, and we dumped 160 lbs of couch.... :(

for more beauty of decay, go here!

Everything gone!

i had a very hard time falling asleep last night. went over and over the boxes, their content, their weights... etc. then had weird dreams of an empty apartment filled with pillows....  today i thought the movers would come at ten, but then tim told me between 10 and 12! so even more hours of wondering whether it was all ok...  i decided to make one more box at the last moment.... then the movers came, and they were so nice! and the boxes were not too heavy and it was all done quickly and i just watched and didnt do a thing..... how convenient! in the end we had 18 medium boxes, and one bigger one to the left (we have some really nice picture frames that didnt fit in the medium ones). underneath the stack of boxes is a wooden bench that we bought off craigslist for just 40 dollars but that is just so very pretty that ever since we got it we knew we would ship it back home... its originally from a ship and the top opens. we used to keep (a portion of) our (my...) shoes in there, and whenever it wasnt covered in bags and stuff you can sit on it to actually put on your shoes... :) they wrapped it thoroughly and one of these weeks it will once again be on a ship, this time to amsterdam.... so... with the boxes some worries went as well... now i just hope we actually receive the stuff in amsterdam. i will let you know, of course!

that movie poster was always hanging on one of the doors in our apartment (the one with the washer/dryer, i always thought that was funny). we got it at the cinema when we saw the movie. its a good movie, i think, sad but funny as well, so watch it if you havent yet!

Empty apartment....

nooooooo.... this is not from today!! its from xactly 3 years ago... i actually intended to look for a picture of tim looking like a doctor (see yesterdays comments; the tim doctor post will have to wait a bit), but then thought; hmmm, lets look what pictures i took 3 years ago (i.e. during our first months on boston). and this is what i found..... isnt that a sign.. somehow? here we had already signed the lease and all, the place was "ours" (oh, how excited we were!), and it would be waiting for us until july 1st, 2010. they painted 2 walls for us for free, so the wall to the left is now actually light purple.

the apartment now does not look like that just yet, although a LOT of furniture has disappeared over the past few days. basically, the living room now only has the couch and dinner table left (im so disappointed nobody wants our table, its the nicest piece of furniture we have! :) ) there is a lot of random stuff standing around, and everything we want to ship is now in boxes (or so i hope). tomorrow the moving company comes to pick them up. it makes me so very nervous!! did i pack it all right?! arent the boxes too heavy? wont they fall apart during the move? will everything left really fit in my suitcase? is it enough...? did i make the right choices..? did i pack something essential (which i now wont see for the coming 8-12 weeks)? did i forget something? it goes on and on and on in my head like that. i know, i know, there are much bigger worries in the world, but currently those are my worries.... pffffttt.... 

ok, i guess its time for bed..... good night!

Loading boxes....

as tim leaves soon now and i dont want to be left with all the packing, the mover comes next week and takes the stuff we cannot bring by plane. we started packing today and now the house looks like a total mess, boxes, clothes, shoes, books are lying around everywhere..... stuff we want, stuff we dont want, stuff we want to sell, give away, or are not yet sure about... piles and piles...  it makes me nervous as i dont know whether we will end up with far too many boxes (i.e. a very expensive move), or that we forget stuff or that i bring stuff that, when it finally is delivered in amsterdam, i actually dont want at all!! (it takes about 8 to 12 weeks before it is shipped over). moving does clean up, we both have a lot of stuff we decided we dont need anymore.... but its hard to get rid of some stuff, even though i didnt look at it for over a year, or didnt wear... stuff i wouldnt get rid of if i didnt have to get it to the other side of the ocean.... but well...

Bye IHOP

slowly we are saying goodbye to some of the places we like to go. one of them being IHOP (i.e. the international house of pancakes)... :) not every week of course. just every now and then! we got up really early on sunday, and we were rewarded for that; the restaurant was still pretty empty. coming in a little later on the weekend and the place is packed, with many waiting to be seated (which luckily goes relatively fast). to us, such breakfast places with too much food for not that much money and cheerful waitresses are really american. something i will miss when back home.... (although being able to get great bread and pastries just about everywhere is a nice alternative)

a full thermos of coffee and pancakes, eggs, hash browns, bacon..... hmmmmmm.... the above is just 9 dollars, and then something for the coffee. we shared the middle plate, but each had our own pancakes. far too much food, but oh so good! in the beginning i was overwhelmed by all the choices you always have here. you cannot just order something, everything has to be specified; how do you want your eggs? bacon or sausage? etc etc... nowadays i often can just tell the waitress what i want, and dont need to have them tell me all the options (often far too fast so i miss half of it), followed by eehmmm, uuhhhhmmm.. hmmm, ok, i'll take that.... im pretty proud of that... :) i now also like that you have options, and literally can order things exactly the way YOU want it, not the way the restaurant always prepares it (which is usually not the case in the netherlands). dressing on the side? sure! whole wheat bread instead of white? absolutely! no cheese? we'll take care of it! and if its not exactly the way you ordered it, they take it back without a problem (usually.. :) ).

It's official....

... today we sold our yellow barstools, and also the black ones... :( i was truly sad when we were in the car, bringing them to their new owner...... it officially started something we already knew for a bit (but not that long, really); we will be moving back to the netherlands soon..... we always planned on staying  here for about 3 years, and we passed that time point in april. moreover, our lease is ending july 1st and we are totally fed up with the new owners of our apartment complex. oh, and tim found a job and is due to start june 6!! he will work as a doctor in a hospital in amsterdam. all a bit sudden. we thought to spend the summer here (the dutch summers are less warm and sunny), but well.... sometimes you cannot have it all....

i will stay a few more weeks, my sister will come and we will enjoy the boston sun for a bit, and then its also time for me to leave. no job yet, but i do hope to find one asap....

when we found this apartment with the enormous countertop i wanted nice barstools. most dutch kitchens dont have such a bar, so i wanted it to be as american as possible! but.. most barstools were not to my liking, or too expensive. then we got the black ones. of course right after that we found the ultimate barstools, those yellow ones! the shop was closed and we could only admire them through the window, from a distance... the next day we got up early to be at the shop right at opening time so we could buy them before anyone else. luckily they were still there! (we tried to sell the black ones, as we really didnt need 6 barstools, but never managed). i always thought we would ship them back to the netherlands, but at that moment i didnt know how crazy expensive that is. and... we dont have such a fancy countertop back home..... buuuuhhhhhh... so... this is it... the table and red chairs are up for sale too, and so is the white armoire.... (let me know if you are interested! ;) here is the other stuff we need to get rid of... ) its a very weird feeling, i can say that much.... (oh, and pardon the mess; the advantage of having such an enormous and beautiful table).