MeghanIsMe

I've mentioned the waste bins we take our garbage and recycling to. Here's what they look like! Restafval (garbage) in the left foreground. Plastics and metals in the right foreground. The midground bins are for cardboard and paper and often fill up even though there are two. The furthest set are of bins are are for textiles (left) and glass (right).

The green and gray metal structure behind the bins is the flower-stand I've mentioned (closed up for the day in this picture). And all the way across the street, there's a white sign with a blue circle: that's the sign for StevaB electronics, the shop that our apartment is above. If the white folding canopy the flower shop puts out wasn't there, you could see our windows above the sign.

The bins have sensors in them that detect when they are full. That triggers a truck to come out and empty the contents. The trucks have a hydraulically actuated boom with a business end that grabs those square metal columns with disks that stick out the top of the bin. It lifts the whole thing up out of the ground and over the truck. The bins are quite large: four or five foot deep rectangular boxes whose tops are formed by those corrugated metal sheets around the receptacles. A mechanism on the boom makes the bottom of those bins drop open, emptying their contents into the truck. Then the driver sets the bin back in the ground and drives away. It's a nifty system!

Just out of frame is the card-reader on the restafval bin. In retrospect, I should have made sure to include it. Those planters around some bins are relatively new. We got something in the mail about them, saying that they were intended to beautify the area and encourage people not to leave trash that doesn't fit in the bins sitting next to them. That plan has met with mixed success, as you can see from the garbage bag sitting next to the plastics and metals bin.

I learned important things like "Is het een leuke hond" (is it a nice dog) and "je bent interessant net zoals een goed boek" (you are interesting just like a good book) from Duolingo today. Good stuff! I especially need a diverse vocabulary for approaching people with dogs so I can pet them...

I realized, as I cooked a pizza I assembled for dinner earlier this week, that we have a stove with gas burners and an electric oven. I didn't know that was a thing.

As I read arguments recently about the appropriateness of Nancy Pelosi tearing up her copy of the SotU address, I merely admire her restraint at not braining him with a gavel.

To the kringloopwinkel today!

It took some exploring to find a way around the construction blocking bicycle traffic on both Straat van Messina and Rembrandtweg where they go over the Beneluxbaan on bridges. I managed to find a bike tunnel to the south after trying north first. And after the tunnel, I overshot the store going north and had to turn around. The way home was much more direct!

I've been in grungier thrift stores than Kringloopwinkel Amstelveen. It was fairly clean and free of dirt and grime. What was amazing was the clutter. With the exception of a tiny little 'store' (actually a garage filled to the rafters with junk) run by a little old lady in Baraga, MI, it was the most cluttered thrift store I've ever been in! There was a whole room-sized portion of the first floor that was basically inaccessible. I had to look across the top, or climb up to the stair landing and look down, to see what was in it.

Off the top of my head, I'm not quite sure how long I've been in Amstelween now, but I am at last in a state where I can start keeping days straight!

It's about five-thirty in the morning here. I just got my first shower since before leaving the US. My options for water temperature seemed to range from 'alarmingly hot' to 'lava', but it felt wonderful regardless, once I acclimated. Shaving was a really good thing as well.

I don't have a computer monitor here, but the TV has an HDMI port (I was tickled to see that the TV also has SCART connectors; I've never seen one of those in the wild before!), so I'm set up in the corner of the room on the floor in front of the TV stand. Seregil is curled up in a ball to my right and has been his typical cuddly self since getting out of the pet carrier he was in for twelve hours or so. He was having some tummy issues after not peeing or pooping that whole time, but my innards haven't been terribly happy either. Things have mostly settled down now. We have a large (maybe 12 feet wide) window overlooking the street a floor below that Seregil just adores, and it's good to see him happy.

We are living directly upstairs from an electronics shop that makes me dearly wish I had my gear here. They sell components and tools, as well as the power cable and HDMI cable I went over and bought today to make the PC work. Looking at the shelves behind the counter, I saw that they also do repair on AV gear. I want to be friends! As have all of the handful of people I've interacted with here, the salesman (maybe owner; it's a small place) spoke English. Like a dork, when he asked how long a cable I wanted I said "Six feet?"

"I don't know feet," he said. Oops! I said that I'm so embarrassed that my country still uses imperial and that three meters would do.

The trees along the block my building is on do not look at all familiar to me. I will post a pictures some time when it's light out. I walked to Albert Hein, one of the nearby grocery stores, for some supplies for us while Danae was working. Folks were wearing coats and scarves, but I made the walk in a t-shirt; it's pretty pleasant weather to me. The grocery store is different enough that it will take some experience with it to feel comfortable. I'll probably write about that too.

I don't have a bank account or in-country debit card yet, but Danae gave me some euros in cash and I have my Transferwise card that I can put a balance in euros on. I also used that card to buy some hot chocolate at a vending machine in the Copenhagen airport. I wasn't sure if I could use it to pay in kroner, but it worked fine. (I'd thought the whole EU except England was on the euro, but obviously that is not the case.)

I did some cleaning and organizing this past day. I have emptied three of the six large pieces of luggage I traveled with and made inroads on the others. I've started washing all my clothes too, since I'm not really sure what's clean and what isn't after packing everything in a hurry. We have an in-unit machine that's a combination washer/dryer. I like the ease of use, but running both cycles takes quite a while and it's not very large, so getting through everything is going to take a while.

After reading up on how to deal with refuse in Amstelween (https://www.amstelveen.nl/at-home-in-amstelveen/publicatie/waste_waste-collection) I took some of our trash and recycling out. The collection area is right across the street from our apartment, and I was lucky enough to see a collection happen today. Refuse is dumped in above-ground receptacles that empty into underground bins. A sensor detects when the bin is full and a truck comes to empty it. The truck has a crane that picks up the entire bin (they look to be a few feet square by maybe eight feet tall) and lifts it out of the ground, dumping it into the truck through a flap at the bottom. So cool!

Best for last, it's just wonderful to be with Danae again. It will be a while before I get past all the mental distress of the past month or so, but a couple days spent with my partner here without having to worry about cleaning out a condo or packing all my things away is really the best start at it. Here I am with her, looking rather bedraggled but happy I think...



Hopefully I'll be around here more again as I settle in and I can keep my future self, as well as my readers, apprised of how it's going.