Back in the blog

I have left this english blog alone, for too long. Now that I moved from North of Germany to North of France, I guess it is the right time to start again to talk to you here.

I promess I'll try to post as regularly as possible.

So let's start with our "road-trip" from Rostock to Lille:

After we changed our mind many times, we finally decided, early august, to do our moving-out ourselves and not with a professional company.

With our driving-licences we could drive a big car with a "trunk" of 14 meter cubique, with the moto "what does not fit in, stays in Rostock." Thus I have spent 1 month telling my self: "It won't all fit in ! What can I leave behind ?", especially when I was making stack of boxes in the coridor !

Our plan was the following:

Monday 30th, 8am we pick up the car.

9am, our 3 friends come to carry the furniture and boxes while I charge the car.

11am, Cheri's mum (Cheri being my boyfriend, of course ;) arrives to clean the flat, she wanted to help so here she goes !

13pm, lunch with friends and colleagues

15:30pm, check of the flat with the owner and we leave for Bremerhaven et spend a nice evening with cheri's boyfriend.

Tuesday 31st, back on the road, we arrive in Lille early afternoon, check the flat, move the furniture in the flat and bring back the car. EASY !

And it could have worked fine, but:

Monday 30th, 8:15am we arrive to pick up the car. They tell us that the person before us didn't bring the car back, they will call us at home and bring us the car at home.

hmm hard to stay cool, furthermore since I would have really needed at least 15 minutes more sleep.

8:30am, we take a coffee and finish to prepare the flat: to take the couch and bed to pieces, to clean the fridge.

9:10am, phone call, our car leaves Hambourg (200 kms away) and will come directly to our flat. I am clearly getting mad, and we keep ourselves busy to cool down.

11am, two of our friends are coming, ready to carry boxes into an absent car !

11:30am, after many trials to call the renting company, without success, we finally talk to someone saying that our car left Hambourg at 10:17am !! Enough is enough, we bring the boxes downstairs, in the corridor, as the morning rain soaked the walkside.

12am, Cheri's mum arrives to start cleaning: not a single room is empty !

12:45, our car finally arrives ! They made a 100 euro discount, not enough for me, and the driver won't even dare to do a U-turn to park in front of our building !!

Of course, we didn't have our lunch break, and I start to fit in the car the bed the couch and bags and boxes in the free space. 1h30 later, half of the trunk is empty and only a few things are left over...thus we even brought furnitures tha tI wanted to through away to make sure that the second half of the trunk was properly fixed and avoid the risk to have moving furniture while driving.

03:30pm, the guy from the estate agency arrives, with the new person who gonna move in. What an ass****, complaining about the painting of the wall behind the heater !! When he finally dared to look at me in the eyes, he understood that today was not the day to play that game with me !

05pm, we are leaving ! Finally ! Empty stomach, painfull arms and shoulders, but happy and relieved to LEAVE !

09pm, Bolognaise Spaghetti, salad, wine and red wines and ice-cream are waiting for us at Cheri's boyfriend place. Hot shower and cream against soremuscles.....Heaven.

Tuesday 31st, hard waking-up, headacke, sorethroat, snizing: I can not drive ! So it's Cheri who will drive the 900 kms in 2 days !!

Rhin river

9:30am we are leaving Bremerhaven. I've got my european road map (bought in  2005 for my road-trip Montpellier (France)-Aarhus(Denmark)) and a prinitng road plan, all good. But Cheri's dad wanted to give us his GPS, that he had set on "shortest trip" instead of "fastest". This blody GPS made us loosing quite some times around Bremen...

Arrival in Neetherland

2:00pm, At Burger King in Neetherland, they have "Twister" fries, not bad.

Yes the big car behind was our.

03:30pm, arrival in Belgium, around Antwerp it is as bad as around Paris with car !!

04h:30pm, already 2 hours late to what I told our flat owner and our friends who are helping to move in, and to help it, a 5 kms long traffic jam.

05:20pm, we cross the belgian border, stoped by the custom:

officer 1 to officer 2: Hey, which kind of plate is that ?

officer 2 and myself: German !

officer 1: Aaah ! but you speak french !?

myself: I do, I am french, and he does a bit as well, thus he is german

officer 1: Where you coming from ?

Myself: North of Germany, Rostock, moving in Lille

officer 1: ah yes ? and what are you carrying ?

Myself: (guess what idiot ?) well...our stuffs, furniture and so on..?!

officer 1: ah well...yes....ok you can go on.

Which such kind of control I wonder if they ever find anything. But luckly for us we didn't have to show them how well packed the car was.

6:00pm, we finally arrived. I go upstairs with the owner to check the flat, while Cheri and a Couchsurfer start to empty the truck. They will soon be joined by our friend with 2 of his colleagues and another Couchsurfer ! 5 persons to help, and only 1 we knew before, that's what they cold the "warmth of the nordich people" (la chaleur ds gens du nord).

View from the "bedroom" and from the "living-room"

8pm It is finished ! We have been super efficient, even me with my running nose.

"Allo Mum, everything is fine !"

When we brought back the truck on wednesday evening, we didn't tell the company about the scrached plastic at the back (well, in the Neetherland they hide big stones in the grass around the parking lot ! What kind of idea ?) since they were not loyal with us we decided to do the same, let see when the bill will come....

Now we just have to empty boxes, re-built furnitures and get used to our new home...

Comments

[livordk]

Hey Susi, I have been asking on the CS group "Lille", proposing to pay 20 euro for 2 hours help. 1 agreed and the second agreed but "kostenlos". All together was a good deal. CS people are usually ready to help.

[Susi]

So you really recruited couch surfing people to help you move into a city where you barely know anyone? What a great idea, I would never have come up with something like that!