Moving out
Posted: October 12th, 2009 | Author: Bart Claeys | Filed under: Moving to the States | 1 Comment »
When I returned from my two weeks trip to Seattle one of the first things I did was booking a ticket back. I spent half a day looking for cheap tickets but it was my my friend Gunther who found the best deal: a round-trip ticket for only 395 euros! For some weird reason one-way tickets are extremely expensive and cost up to $3000. I’m supposed to leave at October 14th, but I can also simply forget about it.
At the end of August I was planning to leave my apartment but my contract said I had to stay another month. This gave a little more time to sort through my belongings. It wasn’t easy to decide what I would and wouldn’t take with me. Some of the furniture I could just leave in the appartment. I happen to know the new tenants, Carmen and her boyfriend, and they were more than happy to relieve me of my furniture. This saved me a lot of trouble. I wasn’t really looking forward to disassembling cupboards and tables and dragging all the pieces down three stages (there is no elevator).
There are very few things I’m attached to but for some of the stuff I have it didn’t feel right to just sell it. I could have stored all these at my parents’ but I didn’t want to bother them too much. I’ve checked Shurgard and other storage services but they were all quite expensive so I decided to lend my belongings to my best friends with the agreement that I can claim my stuff back whenever I want.
I’m not shipping anything because that costs an awful lot of money (about the same as the value of the shipped items). Instead I decided to bring one extra piece of luggage with me for an extra $50. My snowboard and foldable bike remain in Belgium for now because shipping these ’special’ items is also pretty expensive.
The last days of September I stayed with my friend Inge until my Going Away drink on October 2nd. I was very happy to see so many people and to be hugged so many times! Unfortunately I couldn’t talk to everyone in person, but I really appreciated everyone’s presence!
Thank you Alain, Alan, An (2x), Andrea & Diego, Anne (2x), Bram, Bram, Caroline, Cathy, Dirk, Elli, Emma, Frederik, Helena, Lien & Gunther, Inge, Johan, Koen & Tara, Julie (2x), Lisa, Lode, Marinus, Marleen, Marte & Bjorn, Nick, Patrick, Roosje, Sabine & Roel, Sara & Filip, Saskia & Sander, Sebastiaan, Sofie, Stefan, Steven, Stijn, Tine & Willem, Valerie, Veerle, Vincent & Leen and last but not least Wendy for your many hugs and presents!
Also thanks for the many kind text messages, tweets, comments and even post cards from so many other people!
You made it.
I’ll see you in a few years in the US