My Dutch Dream

So I landed here 2 days ago and checked into the Stayokay Stadsdoelen on Kloveniersburgwal. Interestingly enough, this is close to Niewmarkt, an area of centrum that I have never spent much time in and to my surprise found to be as lively as, say, Leidseplein. And copious amounts of coffeeshops too which is annoying for me because I can’t smoke for a month as I’ve mentioned earlier. I can smell weed literally everywhere I walk, it makes me cry!

Anyway, I spent the last few weeks in London really busy, trying to sort out stuff I should have done ages ago but had left to the last minute. I also threw out a ton of stuff – such a move like this makes you realise just which material possessions you “need” and which you don’t. Needless to say, you don’t really need much. The rest of it went into a storage facility and I’m yet to decide how to move this stuff to Amsterdam: either with regular flights back and taking home the permitted 30kg each time or getting it shipped….probably the latter but not for a while.

With only 9 hours total sleep in my last 3 days in London, I felt “stoned” and out of my head, and also a little homesick. Bizarre. And minus the normal excitement of looking forward to 3 days stoned off my tits in Amsterdam.

But anyway, since landing and seeing Amsterdam completely unstoned for once, I have a new appreciation for it. Everything here as we know is much more relaxed. Maybe it’s because it’s totally different to London, but I really enjoy the way of life here and see it as superior.

The other good thing I’m enjoying is the exposure to the Dutch language. Obviously, everywhere I look I see Dutch writing and hear spoken Dutch. I’ve also practiced my Dutch with nearly every Dutch person I’ve met (e.g. in shops) so far. And all of them have been happy to speak in this combination of basic Dutch and then sprinkles of English when I clearly don’t understand them!

So I highly recommend Michel Thomas Dutch. It has really helped me a lot. Not the Introductory course (it’s too short) but the Foundation course. The Foundation actually contains the Intro one anyway and then has 4 times as much learning overall. I’ve only completed 7 out of 8 sections but it has helped me immensely. I have the Advanced course in my bag too and haven’t yet gotten around to listening to it. No books at all!

So far I’ve been staying at the Stayokay. The 20-bed dorm resembles a penitentiary when you first see it but it hasn’t been too bad overall. My first day here I spent buying a dictionary, getting a phone, hiring a bike, making an appointment at the gemeente etc. All the things I needed to do before even looking. The next day I contacted several people on Kamernet but most of them by email (only about a quarter leave their mobile phone number).

Today I viewed a couple of places to live. Touch wood, I don’t want to give too many details at this stage, call me superstitious. But I’m hoping to finalise things very, very soon. I have my appointment at the gemeente in two weeks so all should be good by then, Ik hoop.