Goedemorgen, Jacob Burggraafstraat!

We've moved!

This is what a fine Shiraz looks like in Amsterdam.

No, not really.  Don't think about that glass of gunk in my hand.  Think about the awesome view over Wittenburgervaart... "white citizen's channel"... um... well, just think about the view.

Since the last apartment is a company apartment destined for new tenants in November, we moved last weekend with the help of our friends Mark and Kate.  We miss the murmur and bustle surrounding the Utrechtsestraat apartment, and the people-watching was second-to-none.  I also miss having Marqt five blocks away.  It's more like twenty blocks away now.  No distance is too great for Marqt, though, and in a pinch, Albert Heijn is around the corner.

Aside from being a bit more removed from the touristy Grachtengordel area, the new place has many perks.  It's still very close to the city center (we are technically still in the "Centruum" neighborhood).  There is a great brewery, Browerij 't IJ, just down the street.  It has a storage room downstairs, so we don't have to hoof the bikes up and down any treacherous stairwells.  It has a bigger kitchen, a better dishwasher and refrigerator/freezer, a guest bedroom and bathroom, a desk, and lots of natural light.  It has a great stereo system, and we've been listening to a lot of 3FM.

We didn't think to check under the covers of the bed when viewing the apartment.  If we had, we might have requested a new mattress:

In the spirit of tutoring for the TOEFL exam (did I mention that I am gainfully employed for a sum total of 16 hours?), I will outline the hypothetical and actual advantages and disadvantages of such a set-up.

 Two-Mattress Pros:

• Person 1 remains undisturbed when Person 2 gets up to use the bathroom in the dead of night.
• When Person 1 asks Person 2 to "change the sheets," Person 2 can feign that they understood Person 1 to mean "change the sheets on your half of the bed only."  Advantage only for Person 2.
• No ambiguity about where the "your half of the bed" starts, e.g. "Your wet towel is on my side of the bed again."

Two-Mattress Cons:

• Dreams about falling into deep mountain crevasses; wake up startled.  Dreams about hand clamped between two cows; wake up startled with hand numb.  Dreams about leg slipping off log raft into anaconda-infested waters; wake up startled and with leg cold and sweaty.
• When you awake in a sodden patch of your own back sweat because the temperature in the apartment doesn't dip below 21 deg C (70 deg F) and your metabolism goes into overnight overdrive, you can't move to a dry, cool patch of bed.
• Twice as many sheets to change (if you are Person 1).

In conclusion, we are looking for a mattress pad, topsheets, and new pillows.  Stay tuned!