The Apartment

After 35 days of essentially living out of a suitcase in a bed and breakfast and hotel and on a friend’s couch, I’ve been given keys to my new apartment.

Retrospectively, I think I was a little charmed in finding the place I did. I only looked at three apartments before this one, and they were 1250, 1600, and 1500 euros per month. This one was 1100 euros, and it didn’t feel any worse than the others, so I grabbed it. I felt a bit of ambivalence, since it was still two and a half times what I paid in the U.S., and it would be the smallest space I’d lived in since the dorms at ASU. Plus it was a bit tough to get a picture of how nice (or not nice) it was during my visit, since the previous tenants were still living there, and they hadn’t prepared the apartment for a walkthrough. They’d set it up so that their bed was in the living room, and the bedroom was actually a “bunny room.” But, overall, it seemed like it might be the best deal I was going to see.

This ambivalence dissolved when I got the keys to the cleaned apartment. It was still small and expensive, but it felt like a home the second I walked in.

The view from the street - I'm on the fourth floor, with the slightly open window.

It has a living room/dining room that faces east and gets lots of natural light from the three large windows that cover a large portion of the east wall. The landlord had a TV and dining table that she included in the apartment. The apartment is only a five minute bike ride from the central part of Amsterdam, but it’s tucked away on a quiet little street.

The view from the living room window.

The kitchen is small, but it will work. I bought a cast iron wok, a cutting board, a stainless steel pan, a rice cooker, and an electric tea kettle (along with some oolong and gun powder green tea) to round things out.

Both the kitchen and bedroom have large glass windows/doors to a patio that faces the apartments to the west, with the ground floor apartment yards below. It’s quite nice on the patio this time of year; there are lots of birds singing and people mending their gardens.

The apartment came with two twin beds that can be fit together to make a king. I had a mini shopping spree at a bedroom store yesterday and bought a device to keep them from spreading apart, a mattress pad, a down comforter, two pillows, and sheets.

The apartment is about a sixty second walk from east of the east bank of the Amstel river, and less than a five minute walk from a bridge.

Facing south on a bridge over the Amstel river.

So, overall I’m thrilled. Dutch housing is very different from U.S. housing (at least in the suburbs and cities like Phoenix and Albuquerque). My apartment building has five stories, with each apartment fairly small and sharing walls, floors, and ceilings with other apartments. But, from all of the apartments I’ve seen, there’s plenty of quality in the construction, maintenance, and, well, beauty, to make up for the lack of quantity.