Dutch Adventure: Week One

Week One of our Dutch Adventure

First off let me say that with the traveling, living in a new house (where do you find bowls, silverware, glasses?), and learning a new language (and all the other little bits and bobs), my brain is on overtime so there are definitely things I’m forgetting here and there! I’ll just fill in with random things and see if that works. 😀

Sunday 12 August 2018

I slept quite late, so Billy took a walk to the train station for something. Maybe a unicorn. Around mid afternoon we walked to the Jumbo grocery store, about 1 kilometer away, or about 15 minutes walking,  got enough groceries to fill our two large backpacks, and then walked home.

Later that evening we walked to our friend’s house for gaming, also about 1 kilometer away, and later walked back home. I guess I walk a lot now! (For me, this is a lot.)

Monday

I fell asleep late and got up late. While I slept, Billy called the IND (immigration folks) and they advised us to get the Nikki Abridged business registered, and from there apply for the BSN’s (the national number, kind of like a social security number). Billy got us an appointment with the KvK (Chamber of Commerce) for the next morning, and with the gemeente (local government or city hall) for a week and a half later, on Friday.

I think we spent the day figuring things out at the house, like where are the plugs, where do you find pots and pans, and how to work the tv and kettle. We might have done laundry; ooo, how exciting. 😀

That evening we again walked to our friend’s house for boardgaming and walked back home later in the night. Another 2 kilometers under my belt!

Tuesday

A short night (as I’ve been falling asleep late still) but we were up early so we wouldn’t miss our KvK appointment. We walked a short way and caught a bus at 7:45 am. It took us 5-ish kilometers (I think that’s right – to the part of town south of the river) and cost us €.62. I’m still pretty in love with the transit system here.  I do wish it ran more of the routes later at night and on the weekends, but if you want to go anywhere during the weekday, it’s pretty regular and probably nearby.

The bus doesn’t drop off right at the KvK, so we followed directions from Google maps, which took us on a walk through a mall, and given that it was around 8:30 am, the storefronts were just preparing for opening (probably at 9 am). I do like the more relaxed way of life (in general) that you see here. Which is why the buses don’t run all the routes later, heh.

Oh, the appointment? Well, I learned a few things.

• I want to learn more words for things like Hello and Goodbye and Thank You for offices and more formal settings.
• The KvK people are very nice.
• They also want us to go to the gemeente first.

Step one of the circle dance, complete. 😀

Seriously, I did expect this. Pretty much every blog I’ve read of other people who have been through this process have had to go to at least one office multiple times, so I was prepared for this to happen. And we got to meet some lovely people who might remember us next time, heh.

After the appointment, we took a bus back north of the river, not far from an apartment/room we’re interested in. Billy hadn’t heard back from the renting agency, so he called them from there, and found it it had already been rented. We walked from there to near the central area, where we stayed in January. I think we walked around looking for a few other things while we were there, like another rental agency and maybe a companion for the unicorn Billy picked up on Sunday. 😀

We took a bus part of a way, stopped and chatted with the owner of the boardgame store Vendetta, and wandered off to look at a second hand bike shop. We checked out the selection and asked some questions, and then caught a bus home. Later we went back out to the Albert Heijn grocery store.

Here’s a map of all our transit and walking that day. A total of around 5 kilometers of walking plus around 13 km on the bus. It was a busy day!

Wednesday

We, ok, just me, recovered at home for a bit. 😀 After dinner we walked to our friend’s house, and he drove us to Ikea in Duiven so we could get a few things (duvet and cover, pillows, towels, and an octopus – the basics), and then we went and gamed with a friend of his nearby. We got in late, so I had a hard time getting to sleep and was up until after 4 am, le sigh.

Fun fact: duiven translates to pigeons in English, so I’ll have Google translate on and it’ll say things like “Get your duvet at Ikea Pigeons”. I love it!

Thursday

Laundry day! We had all these new things, so I had to get them washed!

Oh! Here’s something I encountered when I lived in England. A lack of driers. You can wash all you like, but you’ll hang things on racks and outside on lines to dry them. So when I’m bringing up doing laundry, it really is a multi-day process of washing one day, then taking down the dry things the next day or day after to put them away.

In the house we’re in, I did find a drier in a storage area, but it’s not plugged in so I’m not even trying it! I’ll just use my octopus. 🙂

Friday

Last day of the work-ish week*, we played a boardgame at home with our friend (it was the last day of his holiday) and then later walked to the Jumbo for groceries. There’s a kind of un-grown area nearby with walking paths through it in various directions. It’s called the labyrinth and I keep expecting to see an image of David Bowie at the edges.

*When does a work week end when you work from home? Also, we did another 2 km of walking that day.

Saturday

We decided to go back to the central area to do some shopping, so we walked to a bus stop and then walked around from there. I’m still a bit turned around when we arrive, thinking we should go left when we usually end up going right.

After a week of eating only groceries, we finally got some food out – fresh fries from Frites Atelier! They’re known for some of the best fries around, so we got two of their offerings, truffle fries for me (with truffle mayonnaise) and Indonesian Peanut for Billy (covered in a load of toppings). I was very happy with my fries and the truffle mayonnaise was so yummy! I couldn’t finish mine while we sat – we realized that we usually get only one order of street fries and share it! So I carried mine around and we nibbled on it while we checked out the farmers market (markt, as they spell it here) and then walked to a few more bicycle shops. I should have shared my fries with the unicorns! Fiets is bicycle in Dutch, btw, so I often see a lot of fiets based words as we’re out and about.

We walked about 4 km and bused for about the same amount heh. Billy is confident that bicycling will get us around faster and easier. We shall see. I don’t believe I yet have speedy fiets…

Sunday

Back to centraal (the center of town) for shopping, this time at Blokker, a household goods sort of store. We got some storage containers (I like this soup that comes in a bag, but not all at once) and a shaver. Moving to another country didn’t stop our hairs from growing, go figure!

Recap

I found myself thinking that we didn’t have a very productive week, but once I started taking notes, I realized that we’ve been rather busy. We were talking to a really nice fellow at one of the bike shops and he was asking questions about why we moved here and that tends to lead to the story of DAFT and the steps we need to take. He put his hand near the ground and said that we were there in terms of how far we were in our journey. While it made us laugh, it was also kind of a cool visual.

So here you are, with us, getting in on the ground floor of our journey! 😀

Bye for now, or as they say here, tot ziens!