Moving - Anna Style

Step 1 - Throw garbage bags full of clothes from 4th floor window

2 - Have the police show up

3. Sleep it off

Luckily my friend/then roommate David was on hand to take pictures, because now I can look back on this experience and laugh. When I came back to work after my move everyone kept asking "How did the move go?" Without thinking I gave the default answer, "Fine", because at the end of the day I succeeded in moving my things from Point A: Van Bossesstraat to point B: Zoutsteeg. In reality it was the worst move ever. Let me break it down...

The movers never showed up. I kind of worried this could happen because I live in Holland, and that's how things are done here. But when it actually happened, even though I wasn't totally shocked, I was super pissed. I desperately called a bunch of moving companies; all of them were booked. At one of them I reached a very nice lady (of course she wasn't Dutch), and she gave me the number of a man with a van. Luckily the guy had enough time to squeeze me in if all my stuff was ready to go and we could manage in one trip. Disaster averted.

Next I had to get my stuff downstairs, fast, and with no movers to help. I lived on the 4th floor and carrying bags of clothing down the stairs was too much work - so I stuffed them in garbage bags and tossed them out the window. David was downstairs spotting to make sure it went well.

Now that my stuff was all on the street the movers never showed up, but the police did. My psycho-bitch neighbor (I've had many encounters with her, my favorite being the one where she randomly accosted me on the street an accused me of on throwing loaves of bread out the window...) called the police telling them I had put the garbage out on the street when I wasn't supposed to. I had to open up the bags and show them my stuff as well as take them to the empty apartment to prove that I was actually moving. The police were sympathetic and said they wouldn't even go talk to the woman after they saw what was going on, also admitting that some people just "hate foreigners". That was the first time I had a Dutch person admit to some sort of discrimination in "tolerant" Holland, so it was actually quite refreshing.

We finally got my stuff to Zoutsteeg and it was nap time amongst all my clutter; we started early and still had a rave to go to later that day. Unfortunately we got to the party at the same time as the cops who were there to shut it down. Too much police for one day, and worst moving day ever.