It’s Ours!

I’m knackered. I slept badly last night and awoke this morning, feeling quite under the weather. Of all the days to get a cold, the flu or whatever it is. Bloody typical!

The days are short here now, so we arose in the pitch black and prepared to bike over to the new house for the run-through. The heavens opened while I was sipping the smoothie that Sarah had made, boding ill for our plan to use the bikes. By the time we were ready to go, however, the rain had stopped, so off we went.

When we arrived, our estate agent was waiting for us at the door. The run-through went pretty much as expected. The current owner had kindly put together a pile of manuals for the kitchen appliances, thermostat, alarm, etc. That will make our life much easier as we get to grips with the new technology.

After the run-through, we drove over to the notary’s office with our estate-agent. The signing of the leveringsakte (deed of delivery) didn’t take anywhere near as long as the signing of the contract of sale. We were finished with everything in little more than half an hour, I’d say.

After the customary congratulations and handshakes, we were away. We had entered as renters, but were now officially home owners. Our estate agent dropped us back at the old house, where Sarah took Wiesje upstairs for a nap.

Around noon, we walked over to the new house through the Vondelpark and put the key in the door of our new home for the very first time. Sarah did the honours.

We didn’t have to wait long for our new bed to turn up. The two guys who assembled everything did a very nice job, in spite of the weather, which was switching back and forth between hard rain and a dry spell every few minutes.

Just as they were finishing up with the bed, the people for the alarm system arrived. Unfortunately, they weren’t able to finish the job, as we need a working telephone line for the system. They’ll be coming back next Thursday to finish the job.

Once they had left, the three of us strolled over to the stadsdeelkantoor to register our change of address with the population register, a chore that was completed surprisingly quickly.

Back at the new house, Sarah tried to get Wiesje to have a nap on the new 2000T, but she wasn’t having any of it. I went out to visit the local Albert Heijn, which really is a poor one: no in-house bakery (so no gevulde koeken, bread fresh from the oven, etc.), no large bottles of Coke and many other missing items. Woe is me!

We had planned to spend the first night in the new house, but I was feeling too groggy to want to stay any longer at this point. We had so few of our own things around us that I just wanted to go back to the old place, get some food and settle down for the evening.

Unfortunately for me, there was still the neighbour’s party to attend. We’d been invited to the Christmas party of our neighbours a while back, but Eloïse had missed so much sleep today that Sarah decided to remain at home with her. So, off I went, feeling really lousy by 20:30, to the Christmas party, just to be sociable and meet some people from the new neighbourhood.

As it turned out, the party was very animated. Most of the neighbourhood must have been present and I got talking to a good few people. I enjoyed myself and found myself feeling better when I left than I had when I arrived.

Now I’m back at the old house, writing this. We have to be back at the new place tomorrow morning to meet a guy from a furniture shop, who is coming to give us some advice on dining room table purchases (and who knows what else?). Apart from that, we have no other commitments tomorrow, something I’m feeling very happy about. Like I said, after today I’m knackered.

Since most of the light fittings have been stripped out, we’ll probably take a trip to IKEA tomorrow to purchase some emergency lamps, just to shed some light onto the place until we find some more permanent illumination for the place.

And that just about covers the events of this personally historic day. We’re home owners now and it’s a rather daunting thought. No more landlords to pay rent to, but also no more landlords to fix all of the problems. It’s all down to us now.