One out…
As explained previously, Andy & Laura have recently found a house in Amsterdam-Noord. Today the day finally came for moving, which I was of course happy to help with. Thankfully this was not such a horrendous endurance test as the last time, which was a good thing since I had been out till very late last night with some folks from the DAI and had of course sunk quite a lot of beer.
The lack of much in the way of furniture, plus the fact that this time everything was going down our very narrow staircase, meant that it was all in the van in well under an hour. A quick trip under the IJ later and we were in Noord and ready to unload, but not before some trouble with parking; Laura didn’t feel up to reverse parking the van next to their front door, and so I stupidly volunteered to do it. I forgot to mention of course that I have never driven on the right, and in fact have not driven any vehicle of any kind for about four years or so. It is very strange to suddenly have everything swapped around, plus the thing was an automatic, which is also new to me. I thought things were going OK, when suddenly I heard a horn blaring from behind; there was a car driving up the right hand side of me which I had not seen and which I was about to drive right into. The man driving it was not impressed.
In the end I did get it parked OK, but stupidly with the side door facing away from the house, so it wasn’t really much easier than where we had been to start with. Think I’ll stick with my bike from now on.
