I’ll keep this short, as we’re around at a friend’s house, using her computer.
As you can surmise, we made it to Amsterdam intact and are now living in a rented house. However, we’re quite unhappy with it and are considering moving elsewhere.
For one thing, most of the nice furnishings that attracted us to the house in the first place have been removed since our friends viewed the property, so that which we signed for is not that which we received. I’m very angry about this, but accommodation doesn’t grow on trees here, so I’m not yet sure what the solution will be. In the meantime, we have no comfortable furniture, no tables and a crappy old television that can’t even do Teletext.
Since arriving, we’ve accomplished a few of the bureaucratic tasks through which we must wade, but Sarah’s residence permit is going to take longer than I’d thought, because extra time is needed to verify our marriage certificate (yes, even though it has an apostille attached).
I’ve got a new mobile phone. If you want to call us, ring my old mobile number and you’ll get my voice mail message, informing you of the new number.
We were supposed to have a new house phone as of last Friday, but it’s not working and no-one works at the weekend. Hopefully, this problem will be fixed early in the coming week.
DSL is going to take a little longer. I received a letter from the KPN, informing me that I can expect to wait 20 business days for our new DSL connection to be delivered. Bah! I might try to see if I can cancel the order and get cable Internet instead, because that would probably have a shorter delivery time.
The culture shock is surprisingly significant. Things feel (and are) very crowded and neither of us is used to this (any more). Places are not baby-friendly (lots of smoke), the weather is horribly humid and the pace of life is snail-like. It takes an infuriatingly long time to get anything done, partially because no-one whose job is to provide service is in any hurry to do so.
As you can see, I’m complaining already. It feels as if we have a mountain to climb in terms of the number of tasks we must accomplish to establish something approaching a normal life here. At the moment, things feel very alien — even to me — and we’re struggling quite hard just to stay in good spirits.
It’s clearly going to take a while to get on our feet and feel settled here, perhaps a lot longer than we’d considered. Time will tell.
Given the lack of Internet connection, communication from our side is going to be sparse for the next four weeks. Don’t expect blog entries or replies to e-mail during this period.
Bait and Switch, eh? That’s pretty nasty, bastards.
The Netherlands is one of the hardest countries to get into, even if you are married. In fact, for some countries it is darn near impossible as the Vreemdelingen Politie assumes that you a) have a mail order bride or b) it’s arranged for visa purposes. And you not being born Dutch probably won’t help either. I have heard some horror stories. Best thing to do is realise you don’t need these things any time soon because you or Sarah won’t be looking for a job. Just sit back, relax and don’t care…
I’ve read a lot of stories from Europeans who move to Australia with their spouse or even long-term partner (min 1 year living together, doesn’t matter if this is a hetrosexual relationship or not) and thank god all the stories there are about how smooth the procedure it. Apply for visa in the UK, which takes about 4 months to process, and you are done. That’s what I get to look forward to for next year.
What about other connection providers like BBNed or Cistron? Or do they need the actual work to be done by KPN as well? My brother has XS4All “Power ADSL” (8K/1K) which is provided from a Cistron DSLAM and service has always been excelent.
Ian, I think both you and the Netherlands have changed since you last lived there. But still, I can think of much worse places to live. Everytime I am there I am very annoyed with all the smoke everywhere, not only not child friendly, not Bas friendly either. Here in London I just have to avoid the inside of pubs, restaurants are usualy fine.
Have you considered not living in actual Amsterdam? There are loads of lovely places within a stone’s throw of the place for a long term Google employee to retire to.