Final Day in Amsterdam...

The next morning, Slippery’s family scattered off for various hockey games and we headed to De Pijp to go to our favorite omelet restaurant and then to see some art in the Stedelijk, Amsterdam’s modern art museum. 

Afterwards, we grabbed our stuff and headed to Rotterdam to catch the Eurostar back to London. Luckily this time when we were pulled into secondary at passport control, we were better prepared. I had returned our visas a few days earlier and had documentation from the national immigration office of the return. Strangely the very kind officer said that in Dutch the document said our visas had been revoked and it English that they had been returned. She promised to get the matter sorted when she released us to catch our train. Jimmy would have already travelled to Brussels, which would have tested the system, but the UK government held onto our passports for nearly two months while awaiting our residence stamps. The same day that this will be posted, we will arrive back to Holland for the first time since. It’ll be interesting to see if they just welcome us or kick us out. 
 

Amsterdam Light Festival...

The next morning we did our final run over to storage to clean up the wine-soaked floor and happily close that long unexpected phase of our lives. 

I had a few errands to run, so Jimmy dropped me off in the city center and I walked back to Terri’s. Along the way I spotted this Dutch family cycling near the Noordeinde Palace.

We then packed up our stuff and headed to Amsterdam. We enjoyed Kompaan’s Willy Washington Barley Wine on the train. We dropped our stuff off at Slippery’s and made ourselves scarce so not to interrupt a family dinner.

There was no ice skating rink at the Rijksmuseum this year, but there was a giant tree...

...an interesting rainbow on top of the building...

…and a hologram tree in the gift shop.

Atlas

We were thrilled that our timing was perfect and Mother Nature cooperated for us to go to the Amsterdam Light Festival, one of our favorite events of the year.

Waves

The Jump

The Golden Bend

It’s also really nice to see Amsterdam Centraal lit up at night.

Modern Guru...

Our favorite installation was by far Modern Guru and the Path to Artificial Happiness. 

In fact we liked it so much that we circled back to visit it a second time. 

This was the Guru. When you stood in front and took a photo, a ticker tape spit out of his mouth. The warnings or fortunes were entirely created by AI. 

Here’s Jimmy with two quite appropriate statements for him: Don’t question your heart’s originality.

The only way to find true happiness is to give it to others.

 

Moving Day...

The main reason we had come to The Hague was that January 5 was moving day! After Jimmy secured a permanent three-year contract starting on November 1, I started a serious search for a rental in London. A few weeks later, we found our dream flat, but it wouldn’t be available until January 26. So after some negotiating with the moving company, we settled on the 5th as the day they would pick up our belongings from storage to deliver sometime the week of January 29. We were fortunate to be able to borrow Terri’s car so that we could do one last run to the Kringloop to drop off some things we realized we wouldn’t need in our new place. 

The three movers were very efficient with minimal repacking of our belongings. I must confess that I was nervous that they’d end up delivering a bunch of broken stuff since I used clothing as packing material for much of our kitchenware, but amazingly we had only one broken shot glass and one chipped plate. 

Less than five hours after they arrived, the movers were ready to pull out with all of our belongings, which would be stored in the Netherlands until later in the month. 

We had one loss at the storage when a box of wine fell (luckily not the good stuff, which we then located and repacked) and shattered on one of our single mattresses. Jimmy thought we might be able to still use it, but the movers agreed with me that it was a total write-off so they wrapped it up for disposal. By good fortune, they had started chatting with an American woman at her storage unit and she loaned us a card to be able to use the local dump to drop off the stinky mattress. 

Like we did so many times that we dropped stuff off at storage, Jimmy and I stopped by our favorite Dutch microbrewery, Kompaan, for a drink and snack before returning to Terri’s to take her out for an amazing seafood dinner. 
 

Art with Terri...

While on the train from Berlin to The Hague on January 3, I got a message from Sally that we couldn’t stay with her because she had just tested positive for COVID. It was fortunate that she had no symptoms, but we couldn’t take any chances with our upcoming trip to visit Jimmy’s dad. Luckily Terri came to our rescue and offered us a place to stay. The following day, while Jimmy worked from her guest suite, she and I went for a 10K walk to Scheveningen Beach for lunch and some culture at Museum Beelden aan Zee.

We both loved the special exhibit by Dutch sculptor Tom Claassen. 

 

Wandering Around Berlin...

Jimmy had the following day off work, so we went for a long wander across the city while Jim worked. 

We came across another Christmas market, mostly full of tacky decorations and food stalls.

However, it led us to two incredible churches. This modern one, Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church was opened in 1961, as a memorial to peace and reconciliation. The octagonal building contains 21,292 stained glass inlays.

The old one opened in 1895, built in a neo-Romanesque style. It was heavily bombed in 1943 and instead of rebuilding it, the new church was constructed. 

The surviving mosaics were really impressive.

We also saw some cool street art.

We met up with Jim that evening for dinner at Arminius Market Hall. We were especially impressed with this enormous table, although we ate at a normal one. If you look closely, you’ll spot Jimmy at the other end of the uncomfortable log bench. 

We finished off the night at Solar, a rooftop bar on the 17th floor of an apartment building where we enjoyed excellent views and cocktails.