The Beginning of the Adventures in the Netherlands - a new little home!

We arrived in Schipol Airport in The Netherlands at 8:15 in the morning, which, is actually not a bad thing in that you have the whole day to sort out what's going on.  On the flip side though, you're exhausted because it's just after midnight according to you're circadian rhythms.  I'm not sure if there's really a better option. Whenever I fly east the first few days are always a little rough.

We dragged our multiple pieces of luggage onto the train (after some difficulty in buying tickets) and went directly south to The Hague (or Den Haag as they call it here).  Den Haag is a lovely city, it doesn't have as many canals as the many other cities in the Netherlands but it has lovely architecture and beautiful parks.  It is very international because of the many international tribunals and NGOs.  Here's a picture of Kyle in front of the International Peace palace (where the international court is):

We are very excited to be here though.  We stashed our luggage and went right over to the university to get Kyle going.  It was chaotic at first but things are working out and he's absolutely LOVING his courses here.  He's taking a bunch of international relations and international law courses.  I made him stop so I could take a picture of him in front of his new school: (He's the guy in the grey coat)

We spent the first week in a hotel, not loving that, then moved to a temporary apartment (Airbnb - love it, likely going to use it more as we travel throughout Europe) for a week until we found our own place.  The first week was pretty depressing because of the way the system works here.  You're supposed to register with some kind of realtor/rental company (with an exorbitant fee), then you look at apartments with them until you find one you like and then you pay equivalent to one month's rent "finder's fee" to the realtor (which is lame since you're doing at least half of the work, looking up places on line that you're interested in) in addition to the deposit and first month's rent to the landlord.  In addition a lot of places with a different realtor want you to register with them (paying ANOTHER fee) in order to just see a place that they have listed with their company.   SUPER LAME!!!  and a way to totally rip off people, which seems kind of odd since the rest of the businesses (like the banks, restaurants, stores etc are not at all like that).

Being the thrifty people we are (I prefer "thrifty" to "cheapskates"), we did not buy into all of this. We had the friend of our friends helping us, he is a realtor and graciously was not charging any fees (and in fact commented that he thought some of those fees were outright illegal) but he lives way up north in another city so couldn't really be as involved.  So, we went an alternate route and started looking up other options:  we ended up finding a great place on Marktplaats (the Netherlands equivalent of Kijiji/Craigslist) but did look at a couple places on some expat websites.

I should comment that another of the depressing things here is that a lot of the rentals are basically a bare shell.  No flooring - just concrete, nothing on the windows, no light fixtures, almost no appliances, and the walls are in whatever state the previous tenants decided to leave them. (Here is a picture of one room in one I went to see before we started looking for ourselves): 

All in all we have done very well, here is a mini tour of our new home:

Here is the little passageway from the street, you can see the little courtyard at the end.

Here's the front of our little cottage

Looking in from the front entrance

The little bathroom off the main room

With laundry in the same room

The kitchen area

The steep stairs upstairs (for all of those who are coming to see us, be mindful that most stairs in the Netherlands are VERY steep!

Bathroom at the top of the stairs

Little study/bedroom to the right of the bathroom

Our bedroom to the right of the bathroom

We are very happy in our new little house and are excited for people to start coming to visit us!  More next week!