The diary of a Scot in Amsterdam

In the two and a half years or so that I have been living in Amsterdam, I have naturally collected quite a lot of things. It’s strange to think that I came here with only the things I could carry all that time ago.

With going travelling, the problem of what to do with it, and Astrid’s stuff too, has of course arisen. The most sensible thing seemed to be to put everything in storage somewhere, and after some searching I was able to find a company with fairly reasonable prices, and who would better yet pick up our stuff for free.

The condition attached to this offer was that everything needed to be packed up and sitting on the pavement at 8.30 this morning, and needed to be in the van in half an hour. Also, they were not willing to make two stops, so we first had to get everything together in one place at my studio.

This was where things went a bit wrong. The idea was that Astrid would hire a bakfiets yesterday and move everything to mine while I packed up my own stuff, but she fell ill yesterday morning. The storage company were not willing to shift the appointment, and so I had to move all Astrid’s things. This left no time to pack my own, meaning that I spent all night doing it instead and consequently got only an hour and a half sleep. Not the best start to a day of moving.

Daniëlle kindly came to help us with th moving, which turned into quite a dangerous business of dodging bikes, trams, and cars on the Kinkerstraat whilst lugging heavy boxes and suchlike at a frantic pace. Finally though it was all in the van, on time, and we were able to set off for ’s-Graveland, the middle-of-nowhere location of the storage company.

Getting everything into the space available was actually a bit easier than expected, and in fact we were able to hire a smaller (and thus cheaper) space than we had planned. So, the first thing about this trip which has cost less than expected.

By this time I was about ready to fall asleep on the floor, but that was not to be just yet. The woman in the office filling out our contract was new in the job and got just about everything wrong, making the whole process seem to drag on forever. But eventually it was done, and our stuff is safe until we return.

In the evening we made a trip to a travel bookshop on the Overtoom. Here we bought maps for (almost) the whole route to Hong Kong; another larger outlay of money, of course. Also, I can imagine things getting a bit trickier later on, since the quality of maps for Kazakhstan |eaves a bit to be desired. Time to learn the Russian alphabet, perhaps.