5 New house, new job, new life together

Here is my first blog written in our new house, with my husband sitting next to me, knowing that tomorrow will be my first day working at Jamie Oliver!

Together again

‘Here I am! No return ticket!’ were the first words that came out of Andrew’s mouth when I saw him again after more than three months. I saw a big smile on his face at Schiphol airport. No more smiles over Skype, but real ones again. And indeed, only a single ticket. No turning back, but moving forward. How great it was to spend a couple of days together, just before our new chapter called LONDON would start!

The best trip of my life: traveling to London together

We spent a couple of days in the Netherlands and Belgium. Selling our apartment in South Africa took a bit longer than expected. From the minute everything was sorted from that side of the world, we started booking a last minute flight to get Andrew this side. We discovered that 

flying straight into London was 3 times more expensive than flying into Amsterdam. A couple of days before it was still the same price. Hmm, let’s be creative and look for other options. And on top of that, with this massive change in our lives, we believed it was good to spend a couple of days together in a ‘neutral place’. Why not traveling to London via Amsterdam, Belgium and France? We did not care how we had to travel back to our final destination. By plane, train, metro, bus, boat, bicycle or by even our own feet, the fact that we were together was more important to us! So after a couple of days in the Netherlands we traveled by train to Belgium. From there we took a coach to London, via the Eurotunnel. We enjoyed that bus trip so much! It was very special when were driving into London, watching a perfect sunset as we were chatting along about all our dreams and plans for our future together. The final destination was in the heart of London, Victoria station. The bus was driving past all the famous squares, buildings and beautiful sites along the Thames. We were sitting in the front row of the bus, the best seats. It was as if we had a sightseeing tour. Welcome to your new home town! I have traveled in a lot of buses in South America, Africa, Europe and Asia, but this was the best bus trip ever! At Victoria station one of my friends picked us up by car. She drove us to ‘our new apartment’, to have a little stop. We stepped out of the car, had a look at our new apartment and we walked a little bit along the ‘waterfront’ of the Thames opposite the blocks of flats. We could only move in the next week so we had to stay somewhere else for a while. A lovely family from my church had offered us to stay with them until we would move into our own home. How special!

Tulips, clocks and cheese from Holland

I could not think of any better time of the year to go to Holland than April. There were many tulips blossoming in the fields, the weather was very nice that time of the year and it was our king’s birthday that weekend. But even if it was pooring with rain, the fact that I could hold Andrew’s hand again, made me as happy as can be.

Kings day is a public holiday. It used to be Queens day back in those days when  I  lived in Holland. On that day we celebrate her birthday. Our queen stepped down last year. From now on we have a king. How special that we could spend my king’s first and our first Kings day in Amsterdam! Normally on that day everybody dresses up in our national colour orange as well as the colours of the flag: blue white and red. And whether Andrew liked it or not… our sister in law organised us some orange outfits we had to wear that day. Luckily everybody, babies till grannies and yes even dogs had their special orange costumes on so we weren’t the only ones! The Dutch king always visits one city of Holland on his birthday.  I remember watching that birthday celebration on tv last year very well. We invited South African and a Dutch friend around to our house in Port Elizabeth, to watch the last Queens day and the coronation live, via our tv. Last  year was the last Queens day, from this year it is Kings day. Little did we know that the next year we would be able to see our king live, via our own eyes! We traveled to city Amstelveen where king Willem Alexander, his wife Maxima and their three gorgeous daughters were walking around the streets. We waited at a big square along with millions of people to wave back at them! After singing our national anthem and listening to Willem Alexander’s speech, we quickly went ahead to take a bus to Amsterdam before the whole crowd would move. We went to see a big market at Vondelpark and walked around the famous squares, streets and canals of Amsterdam. We even ended up on a boat dancing along with other people. It was amazing, I enjoyed all Andrew’s comments, haha. For me it is a tradition: Queens day has always been a day when everyone dresses up and celebrates on the street and at big free festivals in different cities, or celebrates with loud music on boats through the canals in the cities. For Andrew it was all new: Kings day is a day with ‘too many impressions to take in’. He enjoyed seeing the unity of people no matter what age, the joy, the fun and the party atmosphere.

During our trip we also went to visit my brother and his wife in Rotterdam. They introduced their cute little daughter to Andrew. It was a very special moment, as uncle and aunt, to meet our first niece. I have only seen her at the hospital when I went to surprise my brother. He had no idea that I came all the way from London to be there with my family to meet his brand new daughter for the first time. Back then she was a couple of hours old and I could not believe how much she has grown since then.  We spent the afternoon and evening with them and they made us some lovely andijvie pasta. This is a typical Dutch vegetable. It was lovely to catch up with my brother and sister in law.

From our last couple of times in the Netherlands, I remembered Andrew loving  all the billions of bicycles. Upon his request and no -I did not force him- we have been cycling like crazy again. He enjoyed the trip Den Haag -past the government buildings and the old city centre- to the beach at Scheveningen -and back via the dunes- the most.

Of course we had to take a silly picture of the two of us in ‘traditional costumes’ in Volendam, shortly before we would visit the clocks museum in Marken.  I made sure that those couple of days of being together again would have been full of silly things, so we wouldn’t have any time to start serious conversations about the future in London. We live in the present moment and life is what happens when you are busy making other plans anyway.

We met Andrew’s brother and his wife last January in South Africa. He went ahead a couple of years ago when he moved to London as well. They now live in Singapore. He gave us good advice: don’t plan things with too many details while you are in South Africa. Because then you will have a specific picture of London in your mind along with high expectations. You have to be prepared for an adventure. Life is a journey, not a destination. So we took his advice. And often we were laughing during this trip. Because on our way to every next city we found ourselves carrying Andrew’s whole life just squeezed in a couple of bags.  The only moment we allowed ourselves to think of London was while we were in Delft. Simply because when we were enjoying our amazing salmon lunch at Ikea we got lots of inspiration for our new apartment in London.

Chocolates, waffles, fries and beer from Belgium

After meeting my parents at Amsterdam Central Station, we lifted all Andrew’s belongings into the train to Antwerp. Andrew has never been there so on our way to the Eurotunnel we thought we might as well have a little stop in Belgium. Antwerp is a beautiful city, we spend lots of time walking around the streets, checking out the amazing and well known fries. When our feet needed a little rest and our mouths needed some refreshments, we had some stops at waffle bars and pubs. We tried different local waffles and beers. And last but not least, on our way to London by bus, we tried some of the famous chocolates. What a pity that we didn’t buy any more in Antwerp because they were de-li-ci-ous!

Looking back

What an amazing way to start our new lives in London. I can definitely see the fruit of all my labour when I was in London by myself. It has been such a challenge the last three months, to arrive with a blank page, to begin writing the first chapter of our London adventure. I was very fortunate with amazing support from Andrew, my uncle and aunt, my own family in Holland, Andrew’s family, my Dutch and South African friends, my South African friends who live here in London and my new church-family. They all encouraged me a lot. I don’t know where I would have been without all this support. Now when I look back, I can see it was all worth it. I started off at my uncle and aunt’s house to put ‘factors’ in their place. Factors such as work, a home and all practical stuff. Finding out how things work and don’t work. What to do and what not to do. Most importantly: where will we be living? Because your flat, the area where your flat is and your job, those are the places where you’ll spend most of your life.

So, where on earth do you start? What comes first? A job or a flat? First, you need to get a job in order to pay the rent and utility bills, but where in London do you look for a job? Because you don’t know what areas are nice and affordable to rent a flat. And on top of that, which are safe areas? After applying for hundreds of jobs in education and registering with an Education Recruitment Agency who never got back to me with work, I decided to change  my job search strategy. One thing I did not decide. That was to give up, as discouraging as it sometimes felt. I got myself together after so many ‘sorry your application has been unsuccessful’ emails and broadened my job search field. There are so many jobs out there… So soon I started working at and an exclusive cheese shop as well as another exclusive bakery/cooking course restaurant. Selling cheese platters for over 50 pounds as a cheese girl during the weekend and selling birthday cakes for over 750 pounds as a cake girl during the week. Quite interesting, because often I just simply thought, I think I used one zero too much when it came to adding up the products together and telling the customer the amount of pounds they owed me! Let alone to check what that amount of money in Rand or Euros is! I had to swallow my pride, but to be honest with you, it was quite fun doing those jobs. On top of that, I never knew who I was serving. For example, I met this Dutch lady at the cheese shop who put me in contact with a Dutch primary school. I had a job interview last week. From September on I will be a primary school teacher on Sunday mornings! How great is that! You never know who walks into the cheese shop. This Dutch lady knows many Dutch people here and will put me in contact with them. I kept phoning the Education Recruitment Agency who kept telling me ‘be ready at 7am in the morning because we will phone you for supply work’. I never got calls or emails. I emailed back last week again, only to find out that my contact person’s email address didn’t exist anymore. So when I phoned her branch I found out that she got fired. She apparently did not do her job properly. Her colleague told me that my details weren’t on the system at all. That is why I have been sitting and waiting for a couple of months without any result! Last week I started working for them, it was quite fun. And I have still been applying at distance learning universities in the Netherlands. I just got an email back with a job interview invitation for the position of freelance thesis tutor in Pedagogy. I used to work as a lecturer in Pedagogy so it would be great if I could get that job. But most importantly, just before picking Andrew up from Schiphol airport, I had a job interview at Jamie Oliver. They wanted me to go for another interview the day after we got back in London… and guess what: tomorrow I can start as a supervisor at Recipease, one of his restaurants! How grateful I am!

So factor number one was the job. Then secondly, where will you be living? You don’t know until you know where you’ll be working. You don’t want to spend 3 hours per day commuting. And on top of that, are you willing to live in a dodgy area with a nice flat, a nice area with a dodgy flat, or in a nice area with a nice flat but far out from the underground or train station and far out from work so you end up paying a lot of transport costs? My strategy has been: checking the internet for hours and hours a day, phoning estate agents, making appointments, bringing my list of questions, viewing the property, asking open questions to the estate agent, taking pictures with my camera, go to a coffee shop in the area, whatsapp all pictures to Andrew, have a skype call to discuss, chat to the waitress at the coffee place to find out if she enjoys her job and the area. Maybe that last one was the best way to find out whether the area was a nice one. For example I found this amazing, brand new and very affordable flat close to London centre. It all looked to good to be true, but when I walked around the area and when I googled the area whilst chatted to the waitress at Starbucks, I immediately found out that it was one of the most dangerous areas of London… the waitress told me she wasn’t enjoying her job either. She did not like the aggressive behavior of her customers and definitely discouraged me to live in that area. Ok, that was another ‘NO’ out of the way, as disappointing as it was because the apartment was amazing and so reasonable in rent. Luckily after two months non stop house hunting, I found this amazing place in South West London, next to the river Thames and in the area where Andrews’ brother used to live. Last time we were in London together, we explored that area and really felt comfortable. Andrew has often visited his brother and is quite familiar with the area. And most people of my ‘network’ live in that area, which is great! Hooray! ,after three months I could tick that one off my list as well!

And then thirdly, only when those two factors were falling into their place, we planned for Andrew to come over.  When I did not know where we were going to live and where I was going to work, it was quite hard to live day by day. I could only do so much: look for houses and jobs, but it is like wanting to meet your future boyfriend, when you try to hard to meet someone, it never works. You always meet someone when you expect it the least. So it also worked out with the jobs and the apartment.

So tomorrow is the big day. After four months, I will wake up next to Andrew as my alarm will go off early in the morning. I will make my own breakfast a la British style, hop on my own bicycle on my way on the London roads to my new fulltime job. Most puzzle pieces are falling into their places. How exciting! We have all hope and faith that Andrew will get a job soon as well!