Verhuurd

Rented...finally the house next to us. The party is over for the cats and the quiet we've been able to experience up here. The good news is the renters are Turkish. Two Turks women entered the apartment this afternoon and opened up all the windows. It sounds as if they are friends with our neighbors below us, which they probably are from the moskee (mosque). With all to be done in the house to make it ready to live in it may be another 2 weeks or so before they move in. That should give us plenty of time to make the barrier so the cats can't get over there.

Update on The House Next Door

It has been a while...over 3 months to be exact since I wrote about the place next door, which remains vacant. I figured I better write before I have to write about the new neighbors.

Here is what transpired since the huis uitzetten on Feb 27th:

The following week two containers appeared on the sidewalk in front of our house. Workers followed who cleaned the place and their storage out. Everything was put into the containers... a broken chair, papers, used cans of paint...everything present in the house and storage. Arjan said it will be taken someplace where the owner can pay to get it back. If not, it will be gone through to see if there is anything worth selling and sorted to go to in the right refuse.

Next a man who inspects places after people move out came to see what repairs were needed in the house and removed the toilet and water fixtures. Within a few days a carpenter showed up and used our electricity to do something over there. Then the tile/bath/kitchen guys came, who also used our electricity and paid Arjan 10 Euros. They worked for a good week removing the tile from the kitchen wall and toilet and shower/laundry room walls and floor. (This is the exact tile we have which when were told we could pick new cabinets and a counter a few years ago, we were told our tile was still good so couldn't be changed--URGH!) Then they put the new in and it looks so much better. They used a natural, cream/white colored bigger tile on the walls and a light gray bigger tile on the floor--our floor is brick red. It lightened the toilet and shower room and kitchen up and looks so much better. Then with a new white toilet and new piping and fixtures, it really looks good. The house is at least double the size of ours with a nice living room that goes all the way through to the kitchen and there are 3 bedrooms, 2 small ones that are bigger than this little room--consider a 3/4 room, and one as big as our biggest.

Arjan and I dreamed of just being able to move over there. The one small room still has Winnie the Pooh paper on it from when the people before lived there who moved 5 years ago and opens to the balcony. That would be my computer room, and I think I could actually set up my card table in there as well to scrapbook. Then the other room would be for guests so they wouldn't have to sleep in the living room. We dreamed.

The what's for rent this 2 weeks paper/online came out, which I'll write about in another post, and the house appeared in it. That was the 3rd-4th week of March. The problem with what was advertised for the place showed a picture that was not it...from a much nicer neighborhood and a town house, Arjan says there is a street with this name in one of the neighboring suburbs advertising in this area and they picked the wrong picture. It also said that this place is from 1990. No way...these were built around 1911 and the last renovation was in 1986. I responded, which is the way it works here, and by the end of the two week period we were down to #123. The top 5, which they show, were all Urgent, which goes above everything else. We figure the false advertising led to so many responses. Around 400 for something like was presented is a steal in the Rotterdam area.

Plenty of people have come to see it, two just last week, but so far no takers. I think they see it and know they can find something a bit nicer without climbing so many stairs for around the same price or a bit more. We'll see if they make it to our number or readvertise it, not sure what happens after a certain amount of time. We do know that some places are quickly rented...just happened with a place across the street but they're newer, bigger, and this one is on the ground and has a back yard.

Of course, one look out on the balcony and people may decide this isn't for them when this is what they see:



That is a bucket left by the tile workers, who were very friendly young men. It is unbelievable to me that with all the people there after the work was done, including the man that comes to let the people in to see the place, that no one has picked this bucket up and taken out to the trash. Who knows, maybe they haven't even looked out onto the balcony, let alone stepped out there.

I'll tell you...the cats are sure enjoying having so much space and we're enjoying not having to worry if they're wandering into that house and it is just overall nice not to have someone next door, much quieter.

Huis Uitzetten

This is the Nederlands word for what happens when you don't pay your rent and/or taxes, here you pay property tax even when you rent a place...house eviction/throw out. It finally happened to our next door neighbor, that shares our landing, yesterday.

About 5 years ago an Antillian man moved into the place. Arjan knew he had a lot of children, speculating they were probably from different women. I only saw the man a few times because after I moved here the man didn't live here...he had other people living in the place. The one living there the most was a son going to a nearby college who told us he was the only son and there were 12 daughters!, some still in the Antilles. There have been all sorts of people coming and going including an Australian, a German, and most recently a woman with a little boy. We have reported the barrage of strange people coming in and out, especially when they do things like ring our bell at all hours to be let in the building, those keys cannot be copied and we have found the back door left with something in it so people can get in that way, which they have to climb over a fence to do or luckily arrive at the time a person with a key to access that alleyish way comes along. We don't answer it at night at all, unless we're expecting someone, and a few times Arjan wouldn't even let them in because he said he didn't know them, I got to tell them that one time. People from the city did come to check it out but when they came only the son was in the house.

It was almost 3 years ago when the first note was put on the door that there would be a sale of goods in the house to pay off taxes, Arjan said there was one before that also. That was the first of 3 since I've lived here, the latest was for a sale Feb 17th. Each time the sign was torn off the door and no sale happened. Arjan was home when people came to do things like cut off their satellite dish and take items from the home like guitars, last year. The past two weeks have been very quiet over there, no one has been living there and the middle of the week things started being removed from the house and we just thought they were finally giving up the place and moving everything out. I was most bothered when the cats came jumping on the bed with me at 12:40 a.m. yesterday, I could hear something and realized they were still moving stuff out. No one had been there all day and then they come particularly in the middle of the night to take stuff. Arjan was fast asleep snoring and they didn't wake him up or I'm sure he'd be out in the hall yelling at them about the noise they were making at that time of night.

When I got up around 8:30 I heard a big truck and it was delivering 2 empty containers in empty parking places. We knew this was probably a house uitzetten because it had just happened to someone on the other side, though it worked out so they weren't thrown out, nothing happened. Next the van with the people who pick out the things that can be sold arrived and the next thing we knew the entourage was knocking on their door. The entourage consists of a police officer, a neighborhood "agent" that carries the order of what is to take place, 3 men from the resale place that will take the items, and a lock smith. If the people can make a plan of payment or some such thing, it's different based on what it is, then they can stay with possibly nothing taken. We opened the door and Arjan was glad to let me tell them the story of how no one was there and how they had been taking things out since Wed and were doing it during the night. The lock smith got in and all they took from in the house were a couple ornate chandeliers. They hit a semi-jackpot in their storage beneath that had exercise equipment, what anyone would do with that in these little places I have no idea, a wall unit, a table and a couple other things. They only used one of the containers and left the empty one. I hope that means a cleaning agency will arrive next week to take everything else out. The balcony has a rusting weight bench and weights, a rolled up old carpet, a broken plastic pot, and a few other misc. items.

Arjan is praying that a nice Turkish family or couple will move in, while I'm praying for some Dutchies, which he believes and probably is impossible in this neighborhood. I told him in these times you never know, some Dutchie may need to trim their costs. It will probably be a couple months before we have new neighbors.

Just another adventurous day living in this neighborhood.

Now it's off to make American cheeseburgers for dinner...