We're hobos!

As of 10:00 AM this morning it’s official: we are now a homeless couple. Our landlord has evicted us. All that we own (well, the stuff that didn’t go into the container, or to the pawn shop or to the dump Cor) is now stuffed into our car, of which the warrant of fitness has run out, to top it all off. We do not even have a bed anymore. Luckily Emma’s parents in the city of Wijchen (near Nijmegen, NL) have agreed to let us stay with them temporarily, so we don’t have to sleep on the car.

This morning we had to hurry to get all the stuff ready on time... after the stress on Monday morning we were so tired that we didn’t do much that afternoon and the following day. Laziness we now have to regret, unfortunately. But oh well, the hand-over of the house went perfect. After the handover we did a last tour of Eindhoven. We did manage to be on the doorstep of the city hall (for unsubscribing ourselves as inhabitants) half an hour after it had closed… I guess we will have to do that by mail now. Our planning lately stands out by our standing before closed doors :-/

In the late afternoon we drove out of Eindhoven for good, destination Emma’s parents. I must say that knowing we wouldn’t return to this city that we had lived in for over a decade was a bit of a strange feeling. The journey was an adventure all by itself though.

Our car was filled to the brim with 4 suitcases, 3 boxes, a tool box, a violin, two duvets, a few planks of wood, an air mattress, a bag with dirty laundry and a bag with garbage (just the standard things you take with you as a homeless person, really).

I could only use the side mirrors, and the car was so heavily loaded that it was rocking to and fro. Emma was sitting on a duvet while she had one on her lap as well, because they would not fit anywhere else if our life depended on it.

After we arrived in Wijchen, we unloaded the lot, dragged it all upstairs to the attic and now Emma is living with her folks again.

Eindhoven, a city full of surprises...

After the container had gone we crashed down on a borrowed air mattress and we just laid there knock-out for the better part of the day. Tuesday we have begun with filling the holes in the wall, cleaning up the house, and preparing the last stuff for the dump and the pawnshop. Today (Wednesday) Cor, the drummer of our church band, came around with his small van to drive our stuff to the pawnshop and the dump. The load for the pawn shop filled up the van completely, and the load for the dump was so large that it didn’t fit inside completely. At the time we arrived at the dump with the van filled up, we learned that the dump of Eindhoven is closed on Wednesday. They must be joking, right? Afraid not. I didn’t bother to check beforehand…

Oh well, there we were, with a van all filled up with garbage. In New Zealand they know how to deal with that, there you can burn your garbage in your own backyard. I always thought of that as stupid and polluting, however right now I would have wanted that that would have been allowed here in Holland as well. Cor started to threaten me that he would return all the garbage to sender, but I was able to bribe him with two bikes and a bag of grass seed. Now he has a van filled with garbage sitting on his driveway, instead of ours.

At night we started with packing our suitcases and preparing all the stuff we want to take with us in the car. That is a lot of stuff, BTW… I wonder if it is all going to fit.

The adventure has begun!

After weeks of sifting through our stuff, packing, dragging boxes downstairs, bickering about what to keep and what to throw away, disassembling cupboards, selling or giving away stuff on Ebay, a lot of trips to the dump and the local pawn shop, canned meals and a chronic sleep deficit it has finally happened: the 20 ft. container is on its way!

This morning at 8:00 AM, no, eeer… 9:00 AM due to the traffic jam, the four movers arrived at our doorstep. Four busy and funny hours later it was all done. The tiding of doom that the assessor told us (it would never fit... no way) did not come true… in spite of our 192 “items” there was room to spare in the container! Or, as one of the movers put it when he saw all the stuff piled up: “if this doesn’t fit I’m going back to school!” :-)

Now the living room is totally empty. The reverb in the house sounds very nice! I could do great audio recordings now, if all my gear hadn’t been in the container. A bit strange though, this empty house. The adventure really has begun now!

First things first though: I’ll have to catch up with some sleep big time before I will be able to think about any adventure…