Thursday, March 6, 2008

Rainy Welcome

As the plane landed in Amsterdam, reality began to set in. I am actually in Europe... not only am I in Europe, I live here too. Well... sort of. That is if living in Europe doesn't require having a permanent address. As of now, I am a vagabond, roaming the rainy streets in search for a warm place to stay.

Ok, that was overly dramatic... but I am without residence. After my manager picked me up from the airport we drove to "my apartment" in the center of Amsterdam. Side note: even in the drizzling rain Amsterdam is an extremely beautiful city.

Once we arrived, we found no person by the name of Mar Van Davart, who was "supposed" to have my key. Yes, I used his name for the whole world to see, because from as much as I can tell it is a non-existent person.

A guy I work with offered to let me stay with him, which was extremely generous of him and I couldn't have asked for nicer people to work with. He lives over an hour outside of Amsterdam to the east, on land that was man made which used to be a lake.

In return for his generosity, I made him dinner while he set up my room. It was a bare room, but he divided his bed in half- (no chain saws were involved) - and now I have a comfortable place to temporarily call my own.














So, in the now 12 hours I've been in the Netherlands, I went on an extremely short trip into Amsterdam, and took an hour long trip to a town I'm not even going to attempt to spell, non-the-less try to pronounce. The rest of the time I spent at work, looking on a million and one websites for an apartment.

HOWEVER... as unexpected as my first day has become, I've had a blast... what an adventure! :)


5 comments:

Gavin said...

ew I hope it works out with the apt.

-Gavin

sarah h. said...

That is an adventure. But looks like you are being taken care of and things will work out for you eventually no doubt. Enjoy it.

Gavin said...

did u end up losing $ on the apt?

ReL said...

WOW Clair well at least you have somewhere to stay until you can find your own place, that's a wonderful turn of events there. I really hope you're able to find an apartment for yourself!!

Dynamic Chiropractic said...

Does it make you wish you had the comfort of your Linden apartment? Yeah I didn't think so, although we had some really great adventures there, with the ceiling collapsing and all