Ikea. Do you?

Apologies,again, for the slowness of posting blogs! This post pertains to last week's activities...

A whole week has passed since the end of our travels and our arrival in Rotterdam. How fast is this year going? It’s already April! Yikes! Easter is almost here, again. We are seriously missing hot cross buns, haven’t seen any around Europe. Please have some for us! We’ll trade, stroop wafels for hot cross buns ;~)

This week saw Justin’s first cricket practice and the first day at his new job. Besides not having played for about 10 years and pulling a poof, cricket practice went really well. Cricket here is a bit different to SA. Apparently the pitches are a lot slower and there isn’t much bounce. Players from overseas also seem to be more all-rounders rather than a bowler or batsman. It was nice to meet some people and everyone at the club made us feel very welcome. It was also interesting trying to find a sports shop that sells cricket gear, there is only one in town! One sports shop we went into didn’t know what cricket was, hm.

Justin’s first day of work also went very well. He was shown around the company, given a computer and a new project! They don’t waste any time here. The first project is in Nigeria, hoping an assessment or other visit is not required!  There are still forms to fill in and other admin to sort out but most of it is in Dutch so some help is required. But he felt very welcome and thinks he will settle in well. We were invited to a farewell party for someone in another division on Friday night. We gate-crashed the party a little but everyone made us feel welcome and it was nice to get out and meet some people. 

This week we also visited Gouda on Thursday. Thursday is market day in Gouda but due to the rain it ended early and we missed most of it. Gouda looks like a nice quaint little town though, it has a much older-chilled out feel about it. We will have to come back on a nice day to explore! We did manage to get some cheese at a local cheese shop; a camembert and Gouda Black, matured for 24 months! It is hard, has a strong flavour and is smelly but is very yummy!

We also discovered the Rotterdam market on Tuesday and Saturday. It is quite large, in the streets near the city centre and you can get everything from socks to flowers, fresh produce and furniture. Initially we weren’t that keen to check it out but I’m glad we did! The markets here are so different to the craft or flea markets in SA and everybody seems to shop there. The fresh produce is much better priced than in the supermarket, if you are feeding a family the market is a good place to shop. We bought some fresh cut tulips and some sprouting tulip, hyacinth and narcissus (daffodils) bulbs to plant. Our little place is looking very colourful! We will definitely be back at the market!

We watched another movie this week, The King’s Speech, also in English, yay! What a good movie! If you haven’t seen it yet, go see it! Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush really do a good job, it’s very inspiring. People in the ‘bioscoop’ here talk all the time, it is most annoying! Since most people are reading the sub-titles they don’t need to listen so yak away. At the beginning of the movie along with the switch-your-mobile-to-silent message, there is a message to please keep quiet now, but the silence doesn’t last very long.

Justin also managed to open a bank account on Thursday. The Gemeente said it would take two weeks to get an ‘ID’ number but fortunately for us it arrived in the post after two days. So, in the last blog post I had it wrong. We thought we need a V-number to open a bank account but we need a sofie or burger-service number (BSN) from the Gemeente which is what we got. We will also get a V-number but that is after registering with immigration or the IND, don’t think we do much with this number. So now that we have a bank account we can start the process of getting a landline and internet at home. However, it’s a little more complicated. Apparently there can only be one account and cable per house and there is already one at this address and since we are not number ‘a’ and ‘b’ we are not sure how to go about it. We need to chat to our landlord and the service provider together and work something out. It’s a little complicated & I don’t understand it but it has to get sorted so watch this space.

We also survived our first real Dutch conversation with little to no English, lol! Our landlord’s Mother lives one floor below us and there was a leak from our kitchen basin into her linen cupboard. She has no English whatsoever and we have very halting Dutch, lol! Was interesting but we managed. She is a very sweet lady and has made us feel very welcome. We also met with our landlord again, he came to check out said leak, and has also been very welcoming. He was surprised to find that the apartment was still empty and immediately offered us a mattress etc. We are very lucky to have found such hospitable people to rent from. We think we will be happy here and are looking forward to being unpacked and settled. We think it is important to learn Dutch to integrate here and experience Dutch life in the full. People at Justin’s new work told us about some options for courses which we will investigate soonest.

Today (Sunday) we took a trip to Delft. We needed to get some bookshelves and a new lamp for our place so we thought we would go see what Ikea is all about. Delft is a really pretty town! We really liked it there. It is similar to Amsterdam with many canals but the pace is much slower and more chilled out, it is a student town after all. We will definitely have to come back to explore! Ikea was a bit different to what I expected it to be. The products are set out as rooms in a home so you can see what it all looks like together and work out what you need. Then you go downstairs to the self-help pick-up and check-out section. They have practically everything you need for starting a home; from beds, to couches, kitchenware and everything in-between. Ikea is more pricey than I thought it would be but they do have quite a big range so it is possible to find what you are looking for in your price range. Due to our skew walls we are limited to what will fit in the straight parts. We managed to find a reasonably priced cube with divisions that will work as a bookshelf. They were however 19 kg each which made for an interesting trip home on the bus, train and tram! We could only carry one box each so the lamp will have to wait till next time. After a few that-doesn’t-look-right moments, we have assembled bookshelves! Yay! They are pretty simple but we like them and they will work anywhere in our place. All we need now is for our books to arrive…

Our furniture is still scheduled to arrive on the 11^th of April. We also have our first guest staying for one night on the 11^th. Our friend Gary whom we met on our Contiki ski week in Hopfgarten in February is coming to stay for a night after running the Paris Marathon on the 10^th. Murphy’s Law that our furniture is arriving on the same day, sigh. Hopefully we can still do some fun stuff together.

Other than that, this week holds more of getting back to normal. Justin has his first full week of work since December and cricket practice again on Tuesday. Bron has another cold and is trying to get better! There is also the Rotterdam Marathon on Sunday so we will be keeping a low profile as public transport will be limited. Other than that we are enjoying exploring Rotterdam and are slowly getting to know the area around our place.

Until next time, hope you are well!

x

The Box 

The contents

The assembly

The finished product!