We are officially homeless again - or well, we’re not, we have a house to move in to when we arrive back in Calgary. But all we own is once again on our backs.
The past week has been draining both physically and emotionally. There were work parties and band parties and then cleaning at an almost breakneck speed. But on Monday we finished everything up in the flat and then spent the rest of the day closing up shop in Edinburgh. We mailed two boxes home totaling just about 25kg and bought health insurance from the post office. Never had I thought you could spend over 200 Pounds in a post office! Then we bought Euros and some last minute stuff from the everything store on Easter Road before heading to the internet café to print and organize all of our travel documents. And then, the rest of the day was spent roaming. Brandon had to drop some stuff off where he worked so I had a cup of tea in my favourite coffee shop on the Royal Mile and then we wandered up to the castle, down to the Grassmarket, back up to Princes Street and we met Lachie for dinner at the Conan Doyle pub. Took pictures of things in the dark, tried to go to a movie but they’d all finished, and finally took a bus home to pack our back packs. It was a crazy busy day!
Tuesday dawned much too early but it had to come. We had bacon rolls and lattes from Greg’s and then did our walk through with Ed from the letting agency. He didn’t say anything about the spots on the walls or the chipped paint on the coffee table, but he did manage to find some dust that had settled over the week on the top of a picture frame. He commented on how much effort we’d put in though and gave us our full damage deposit back. We left just as we’d arrived, with just what we could carry.
We headed for Waverly station and jumped on a train to Dunkeld where Jesse picked us up for what would be an evening and morning of total relaxation. We played with Eccles the cat, made dinner in a proper sized kitchen, drank wine, played music and went for a muddy walk in the dark. But back into the city we had to go and when we arrived back at Waverly, we stored our back packs at the station and headed out for the last of our running around. Up to the Royal Mile for one more stop at The Clam Shell for chips, cheese and gravy, a quick stop in at Primark to buy me pajamas because apparently I’d forgotten to keep any for the trip, and then over to Lachie’s flat to pick up Brandon’s uniform pieces before returning to Waverly and hopping on a bus to Calvin and Kirsten’s flat. Pizza, visiting and a lot of laughs and we were in bed by 11 for our early alarm at 4:15.
We had a quick and easy check in at the airport, really smooth considering all the people in there and that it was 5:30am, and then had some breakfast before going through security. We didn’t wait too long and were on the not quite full plane with a seat between us in our row of three. I had held it all together the entire time - through cleaning and packing and closing out our life - but I bawled as the plane took off and I saw my last glimpse of the Forth bridges. I suddenly thought that we’d just begun living our life there. We’d just begun to forge relationships with all our friends there. But there’s a life ahead and relationships that we’ll return to so no need to be unhappy. We were soon half way through our hour long flight and we both read some of my new book until we were on the ground in Amsterdam.
It was raining. But not cold and we found our way through to our bags and then to the stop where the hotel shuttle would meet us. We were the first drop off and our hotel is kind of blah from the outside, but it’s roomy and clean and really quite nice. We’re about a half an hour’s ride into the city centre by tram and that’s fine by us. We’re in the middle of a residential area which feels a little odd, but there’s a bakery on the way to the tram stop and a grocery store for snacks too.
We couldn’t check into the hotel when we arrived so we stored our luggage and made our way to the Anne Frank House. The line was not too bad and aside from the German man and his grandson’s that kept pushing us and trying to get in front, it went rather smoothly. Inside, it was hard to understand exactly what we were seeing. The descriptions in the rooms were a little vague and most of them are totally empty, as requested by Otto Frank. But as we moved along with the crowd we were eventually behind the bookcase and up the stairs into the secret annex where eight people lived so cramped and silent. I had imagined the rooms smaller when I read the book but without furniture it was hard to picture what life was truly like for them. There were pictures that Anne had pasted on the wall still there and quotations from her diary were stenciled on the walls to emphasize events and feelings. Coming to a large room at the end of the museum Anne’s actual diaries were displayed in glass cases under low light so that they will be preserved. Her registration card, along with those of her family, were also on display and a short film of a transport of people being loaded up from Westerbork camp was being played. We visited that camp when we were on the trip with the Highlanders in 2010. It was a very somber place to visit but one that I’m so thankful we got to go.
Next we just kind of wandered about in the Westermarket area. We ate really expensive hotdogs on the canal side and wandered through tulip, delftware and cheese shops. We sampled 4 year old gouda and a number of other really good - and not so good - cheeses before we went back to wandering along the canal and finding a paddle boat rental company.
Now I should mention that I like to be in control. I don’t like it when I don’t know what’s going to happen next or where I’m supposed to be going. It doesn’t always happen and lately I’m getting better at deferring to Brandon, but not always. I gave in and we got into our little boat with no instruction of how to properly steer it or where we should go. We started off okay but turns out they aren’t the easiest of boats to operate. We just could not stay in a straight line for more than about 2 feet at a time. We spent more time going around in circles and hitting the walls of the bridges than anything else. I was stressed and kept trying to pedal backwards when I should’ve just let Brandon tell me what to do…it was hilarious. If anyone was watching from above I’m sure we were quite the amusement! We didn’t get hit by any of the big canal boats so I guess that’s one accomplishment and eventually we did get back into the dock and now I can laugh. But oh what a disaster!
After that we were both pretty tired and Brandon was really not feeling well so we headed for the tram and home. We stopped in at the grocery store for some snacks and got comfy with a wee bed picnic. Eventually Brandon went down to the bar here in the hotel and got us some dinner but we were both asleep by 8:30. How crazy are we?
No comments:
Post a Comment