Welcome home

Finally, the months of living out of boxes and suitcases, packing and unpacking, obsessing and worrying, have reached their most welcome end. Marlon and I moved into our new home last Thursday (eight Internet-, cable- and phone-less days ago!), and every minute in it has been nothing short of bliss.

Our building, on a quiet residential street in Amsterdam Zuid (zaud, or South), dates back to 1928, when Amsterdam hosted the Olympics and built blocks upon blocks of dormitories for athletes. After the Games, the dormitories were turned into private residential apartments. I love fitting into this slice of the city’s history. And I love the fact that I now live in a building that’s approaching a century old!

Though the building is old, the apartments inside are usually refurbished to modern standards. It does feel a little bit like a dormitory when you stand in the entrance/hallway and see a whole bunch of doors.

The first room on the left when you enter is a dining room. It has two things that are completely new to me: a coat closet and china cabinet. The dining room adjoins the living room, with heavy wood and glass sliding doors in between. They’re a bitch to close, but I guess they would be useful if you want to heat up either room faster or keep the heat in just one room.

Our bedroom faces the south, which apparently gets the most sun. Hurray!

So does the guest bedroom, which has a door that opens out onto a balcony that runs along the entire length of the apartment.

Ting alert: I can picture a couple of chairs and a small table for alfresco dinners in the summer. In fact, we already got a table, discounted from €275 to €35 at the very chi-chi Moooi Gallery’s warehouse sale. A few locals I spoke to had no idea about the sale and were shocked at the markdowns. Go me!

The kitchen has all the essentials: fridge, stove, oven, washer and dryer, and that life-changing invention known as the dishwasher. What it lacks in size compared to our Singapore kitchen, it makes up for with the abundance of natural light. I was horrified to unpack our appliances and cookbooks in the sunlight—and to see, for the first time in years, how greasy and grimy they had gotten. We had such poor light in our old kitchen that we’d simply never noticed. Never again!

Yay, a bathtub! The toilet is separate and is one of those odd German toilets. Well, I don’t really know if they’re German in origin, but I first saw them on tour in Germany. Instead of a big ol’ bowl, you get a small bowl and a sort of little shelf. So whenever you—er, unload the goods, they land on the shelf, forcing you to… inspect them before flushing them away. Very strange.

Sylvia, our yaya from the relocation agency who helped us move in, was shocked at how low we managed to wrangle the rent for an apartment and neighborhood of such caliber. What a relief! So while this house was actually our third choice, it turned out to be just the perfect one.

Next up: moving day!