An Angry Dutchman

Mon, 23 May 2005 12:15:56 +0200

April 30th 2005
The church bells chimed early as we opened our eyes in the little boarding house we had managed to find late the night before. Our new home was completely uninhabitable.

My husband, Robbie, is a Dutchman of the 'Boer' variety and if it is one thing he does well it is complaining. On that sunny May morning I am so glad I was not the poor site manager (Frau Schmidt (all names have been changed to keep us from a law suit and protect the not so innocent)) as my husband poured a tirade at her. He made it clear in no uncertain terms that the site had to get going as we would be moving into the place in 2 days.

She assured us that the flooring would be in by the end of the day so that it could be cleaned and sealed on Monday. She assured us that all the painting work had already been finished. She assured us that the bathroom tiling and appliances would be completed on Monday. We should not worry we would be able to move in on Monday. Frankly neither of us were convinced. We had to hope - we had a kitchen, a fridge, a washing machine, a bed, a desk, the man for telecoms all arriving on Monday and Tuesday! What we were supposed to do with that lot if there were no floors, no plumbing, no electrics. What good was whitewashed walls without the basics!

My husband once bitten turns into a rabid dog. The next on the angry Dutch man's list was the Real Estate Agent. Herr Schulze was read the riot act and told to start making the calls as well and to make sure that things were moving. Robbie hinted at what would happen if we got over to site and there were no builders working on the apartment.

When we got on site at lunchtime, noone was there!!!!!! However there were definite signs of activity. The flooring had gone down in the living room and hallway! The wall tiles and floor tiles were down in the main bedroom and the gap between our apartment and the neighbouring apartment had at least been walled up!

We went home. The next day was Sunday so we knew nothing would happen until Monday.

We extended our stay at the boarding house until the Thursday.

Comments

Moving into a building site

Mon, 23 May 2005 11:36:01 +0200

This is the story of our move from the UK to a building site in Germany. The move to a building site was not intentional - the apartment was supposed to have been finished by the time we moved in.
As we only now have access let me bring you up to date with events so far:

April 29th 2005 - today is the official moving day. All our bags are packed and we are ready to board the plane to Stuttgart.

This is moving light. We haven't sold our house yet in England so all the furniture is going to have to stay where it is for the time being. We were prepared for this so we ordered a fridge, a kitchen, a few chairs, a bed and a washing machine, to arrive out our new address on May 2nd.

We hadn't seen the apartment we were moving to since we signed the contracts back in late March. At the time, the building wasn't habitable. It had 4 structurally sound walls, electrics and plumbing were in place but there was no heating, no taps, no plug sockets, no WC, no shower, no flooring. All painting work had already been completed, where possible. We had been reassured by the Project Manager in charge of the site and the Real Estate Agent that there was a whole team of builders beavering away and that the apartment would be finished (at least internally) by May 1st. We were relatively hopeful that this would be the case as most of the remaining work seemed to be fairly cosmetic!

So when we arrived at Stuttgart airport, we were both really excited about getting into the apartment and turning a shell into our new home. When we arrived at our home, we were in for a very very very nasty shock.

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Moving to Germany

An Angry Dutchman

Moving into a building site