Toolman: Life setup in Amsterdam

Well hello loyal readers, this is Toolman speaking in the first person. I can't be bothered writing in 3rd person, so this is from me only. We have been seting up our life here in Amsterdam, and I have some good news. But first:



Princess has been enjoying being able to cook again, and so we have enjoyed a few meals made just how we like it. This is Princess making some spinach puffs for dinner.



And how about our wireless keyboard - do you know this brand? I did a google search for "virroscit" got 0 results.



I got us a set of Logitech 230x 2.1 speakers, and they actually sound very nice considering their size etc. The sub (below) is pretty good.



So no more crappy laptop sound, we can hear stuff in full fidelity!

So my good news is that I have got a job at JTeam. From their website:

JTeam is always looking for motivated Java developers. The more experience you have the better, but far more important is your willingness to learn! At JTeam you will be continuously working on state of the art projects, ranging from advanced web applications to complex enterprise applications including difficult integration aspects. You'll take part in a growing development team of experts, including internationally known Java & Open Source gurus. You'll receive a thorough grounding in sound development processes plus all the tips and tricks of developing high quality code.

We strongly believe in personal growth. We allow and encourage you to explore a wide variety of topics that are not necessarily related to your current project, write blogs and articles, contribute to open source projects, speak at conferences about your favorite topics, etc. And to make things even more attractive; several times a year we all visit the leading Java conferences in Europe, SpringOne and JavaPolis. There we present and learn about the next hot things, meet our friends and have a good time together.

So I am very much looking forward to that. We both got our tax numbers, and I have applied for a bank account, so I have nearly everything I need for living here.

Including a bike! I got given a bike that needed some love. Its crappy enough to (hopefully) not get stolen, and good enough to not kill me on the roads. One of the guys at my new job had this one cluttering up his hallway. I spent $10 on spare parts and $50 on a padlock.



I also got some tools and proceeded to tidy up the bike - it now has front brakes, LED lights front and back, and no dangly broken bits.



Our house isnt very full, but at least I have some tools! Its nice to be set up - the first month here has been pretty low key, and we haven't seen much of Amsterdam as we have been saving money. Now that I am employed we can start seeing Europe!

Our house in Amsterdam

Amsterdam is a beautiful city which is steeped in history. Every building seems to be ornately decorated, therefore making it very interesting to look at! The museums in particular are really impressive buildings. They are so grand and impressive looking that they draw you inside for a better look. The museum pictured below is the Rijksmuseum which is not terribly far from our house. Princess is very excited about the prospect of so many exciting museums to explore. You can purchase a museum card which allows you to visit the various museums around Amsterdam as many times as you like. We will definitely be getting those.



As we have mentioned before, there are lots of bikes here. Today we saw someone who took security seriously:



Look at the thick cable used here! and how ridiculously long the cable is.



The lock is the weakest link in that case! It pays to be incredibly security conscious when it comes to your bike as apparently theft of bikes in Amsterdam is really common. This is why people tend to buy crappy looking bikes instead of incredibly flash ones. The more nondescript the better your chances are of it not getting stolen!



This is our street, with the usual litter of bicycles. The houses here were apparently built on sand, and over time the ground has sunk, leaving some of them (including ours) on a bit of a lean. We are up on the right there, see it? Our entrance looks just like all the others, and walking into the house we have three staircases, all dangerous and steep!



Yes, those banisters are vertical for most of it, and the stairs are about 5cm wide unless you swing out wide. It's quite scary carrying stuff up and down them as there is not a lot of room for error! Such stairs seem to be the norm in The Netherlands. Other Dutch houses we've visited have them too.



We have a locked door on the 3rd floor, and share a building with about 4 other flats. There is a lady in our building who comes from Whangarei in New Zealand! Chur.

Now we'll show you around our little house. As you walk in, on your right is the kitchen. It's a good size, with lots of bench space. As the house came fully furnished we didn't have to worry about buying pots and pans etc - they were already provided.


The kitchen is slightly risen up from the rest of the room. From here you can look out over the action in the rest of the room and also out the window.




The dining table/office is in front of the kitchen, along with the lounge, in an open plan room. We've got a nice black leather sofa which is real comfy and a couple of other chairs.



This is where the getting a job business has been operating the last week. Both of us have been scouring the 'net for jobs. On the left side of the flat is both the bathroom and the bedroom.



As you can see, the obligitory NZ Tui calendar is hung up. We have a bath and a nicely finished bathroom. Odd considering the rest of the house is so tatty.
Princess is really enjoying having a bath again, especially in this freezing cold weather!



The bathroom also has these glass tiles which look directly into the bedroom. They're a nice way to get some natural light into the bathroom, seeing as it doesn't have a window, but you can see straight through them! So, if you are coming to stay with us be warned - your nakedness might be revealed to whoever is in the bedroom at the time...



The bathroom glass tiles are to the left of this picture. Our bed gets real sunlight, and passes it into the bathroom too. The bedroom is really small, but as you can see there are some drawers for clothing, and there are also some shelves for toiletries etc. There is a reading light for Princess which is very useful!



This is the bedroom door, with the lovely large window we have in addition to a skylight in the roof over the dining table. Because of these the house is always light and airy.



The window looks over our street, very nice view. The houses look like they are made out of gingerbread don't they? The street we are living on is reasonably upmarket, so Tim is always drooling over the flash cars that are parked along the road.


And, like every building in Amsterdam, we have a hook to lift stuff in the top window. Its a good thing, because moving anything heavier then our backpacks up those stairs would be hard and dangerous. The house has lots of quirks, as it is not square in lots of respects.



Look a the top of that door! our floor has a definite lean to it, and they seem to have just cut everything to fit when the house sank or something!



Weird! The floor is also on a lean, and Toolman has demonstrated to Princess how a ball can roll from one corner of the room to another on its own.

Toolman did a video tour and posted it on youtube. it is embedded below, so you could watch it if you have broadband by clicking below:

Both of us are really enjoying being in a house again. It's so nice to be able to unpack our things, and to be able to prepare and cook our own food. After months of not particularly clean rooms it's nice to be able to keep things clean the way we like it. We're not sure how long we will stay in this apartment, but it's a good start for now.



End

Real time post: Second week in Amsterdam

After our xmas and NY with Mark, we took a flight from Heathrow to Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. We navigated our way to the hotel, after missing our tram stop and having to switch to one heading the other way!

We quickly checked in to our hotel, the Hotel Bellington and Toolman rushed back out to meet up with Jono and met a few of his Amsterdam based friends. Jono was here on his way back from the UK to NZ. We walked around the city, then Toolman headed to the Nomad, a lounge bar that serves huge 3 course finger food dishes, while Princess caught up on some much needed sleep.

It was good to meet some people who were knowledgeable about Amsterdam and talk about all the choices we had coming up. Where to live? Where is this? How does public transport work here? Bicycles? Lots of boring but useful questions! We did have a good night though, and some of Jonos friends are Kiwi - always nice to hear our accent!

We were in dire need to be contact-able and so we got new SIM cards for our mobiles. Unfortunately we had no NZ plug adapter, so Toolman rigged up a quick way to charge his phone until permanent arrangements could be made:



Yes this is not recommended practice, but we needed to be connected - we are contact-able! We are both now available via mobile numbers:

Toolman: +31 6 1934 1481
Princess: +31 6 1934 1479

We noticed that the numbers differ only at the end, '81 and '79, which are our birth-years. Unfortunately, we got them the wrong way around and Toolman already gave his number out as '81. Toolman takes safety seriously, so the exposed prongs were covered with a sock to make them less exposed.



The room we are in is small, but does have its own small bathroom, cable TV, and a kettle and fridge. Until we get a residents permit, we can't do anything like: work, rent a house, get a bank account, get a tax number, so we are stuck living in this room. The laptop has been invaluable.



Our hotel includes both wifi internet and a free breakfast, making it perfect for us to get the paperwork rolling and become residents, get tax numbers, find jobs and find accommodation. As CVs are going to be needed, Toolman got a wireless mouse and keyboard. Much easier to work on!



This is a particularly nice picture of us goofing around, we miss you all!



It turns out that the street our hotel is on is the most posh, famous and expensive street (PC Hooftstraat) in Amsterdam! Luckily the (2 star) hotel was not very expensive (or luxurious) but was perfect for us. Below is the view along from our window.



This road has some very expensive shops, and there have been lots of nice cars parked along the road at times. Toolman has been oogling plenty!



This is a nice black Ferrari.



And this is the new Audi R8. Toolman got a photo of one of these in a showroom in Shanghai, but this is on the street. He also saw a matching pair of black Maseratis (but no pics sorry) - was awesome! Plenty of money down this street.

In contrast, most of Amsterdam is very much public transport and push bikes. Traffic density in the city is very low, and there are lots of other forms of transport in use. Like these things:



Toolman is certain that they use lawn mower engines. They are 2 seater, but are so narrow they are allowed in the scooter lanes. They are not very fast, but the old people seem to love them, as we've seen lots of them buzzing about! If you look closely in the street picture above, you'll see another one.


(not our picture)

This city has an amazing amount of bikes. They litter the streets everywhere. The local junkies have a black trade in stolen bikes, so most people have very crappy bikes, in an attempt to minimise the likelihood of theft. And most people spend more on their lock then their bike!

There are some cool bikes though, like these bad boys.



Lots of lucky kids get front row seats to cycling around the city. No one here wears helmets, which is alien to us Kiwis who have been indoctrinated by the govt. enforcement of helmets. Our Dutch friend, Marloes, says that only German tourists wear helmets, and everyone laughs at them. So what do you think everyone? Safety nerd or peer pressured conformity?

We spent a night with our Dutch friends, Marloes and Robert. They cooked us a multitude of yummy Dutch foods and treats, washed down with all sorts of drinks. We ranted and raved about our travels, the drama of having to get jobs again, and discussed famous people from NZ and or the Netherlands. Robert recently told us that Lurch from the Addams Family movie was Dutch.

The tail end of the night got a little blurry, but the food and the company was excellent. Thanks guys! Dutch food is very tasty, and there are so many gourmet items that we have found in the supermarkets.



This city has a huge selection of foreign food in the restaraunts, but the number one local snack seems to be frites'. Luckily we like these too! There are shops on most corners selling them, especially around the pubs and suchlike. And yes, they do put mayonnaise on their hot chips unless you ask for tomato.

It took 2 days to find out that the immigration process had changed since we left NZ, and we no longer needed to register at the Aliens Section of the Police. We went to the Naturalisation department and talked to a lady at the information desk. She gave us forms that suited our situation - 1 year cultural exchange working holiday programme for NZ under 30s - and explained that we needed to make an appointment via the 0.20€ per minute phone number. Urg!

On top of this, the earliest appointment was over a week away! We had to take it, and wait out over a week with very little we could organise. We started looking for accommodation, knowing that the the process takes a long time. It turns out that there is not huge numbers of options, and the agencies are very slack, considering they charge one months rent for their show you the house service.

One of the few agencies that did show us a few places did have one place that was perfect. We asked the agent to go and find out how soon we could take it, and what paperwork the landlord needed. We ended up holding off other choices and nagging him for 2 weeks about the place. By our second week here we had cash and a resident permit, but couldn't seem to get the agent to get the paperwork happen. The rent for the agency offered place was €1100 per month, so you'd think the agent want that commission.

We went in and got our provisional resident permits, which all went smoothly. That afternoon, with all the correct paperwork, we went to the tax department to register for tax numbers. Not so easy! Again, we had to call a pay-number and book - we are now scheduled to visit on Feburary 11. This means that we can't work or get a bank account till after then.

We did look at lots of other places, and eventually we found somewhere that suited us. Our new flat is rented directly from the landlord, so there was no commission, and he was happy to let us move in straight away. So, as of January 25, we are now residing at:

Van Eeghenstraat 52
Amsterdam 1071 GJ
The Netherlands

Our flat is very central; it backs on to Vondelpark which is apparently great in summer. Our neighbor has generously offered her wifi for use, and so we are also online. We can't sign up for internet without a bank account, and can't get bank accounts till we have tax numbers.

So as of this evening, we are both settling in to our new flat, and pouring over the internet websites for job opportunities. Toolman has had a few interviews already.

In the next post we'll get some photos and show you all around, but for now you can look at the pictures the landlord has at his website:

http://www.kyboma.co.uk/souswww/3epics.htm

Stay tuned to our now-current blog!