Arriving in Amsterdam - Moving companies and beyond

Arrived @ Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, The Netherlands  October 15, 2014

Crazy amounts of luggage at Schipol Airport

We arrived in Amsterdam the morning of October 15th. It was the girls first time seeing their new city which they were very excited about. When we chose our new home on Willemsparkweg, we were told that the construction was supposed to be completed prior to our moving to Amsterdam. When we arrived, the road in front of our home was completely torn up- no sidewalks, no road, no bike path. There was dirt EVERYWHERE, big trucks and heavy machinery blocking both ends, and no parking allowed. We were supposed to stay one night in the hotel, but ended up having to stay an extra night, because the rental furniture company that was supposed to be dropping our furniture off Wednesday morning, could not figure out how to get the furniture down our street and into the house. Though our relocation company had sent them pictures of the construction and given them warning, they acted like they had no idea it was going on, and did not come prepared with the proper equipment or crew.

Willemsparkweg Construction

We finally got into our new home on Friday and the girls were thrilled. Maya's room is equivalent to a postage stamp.and Hanna's is gigantic. Maya has been a very good sport about it, and actually seems to love her tiny little space. Hanna wishes she had a smaller room, but she is stuck (poor girl) with a large room for the next few years.

Moving, Air Shipments, Sea Shipments...mass confusion

Our Air shipment made it here to the Netherlands within 2 weeks and our sea shipment just over a month (much better than the 2 months to Japan!). Once again, the construction threw a wrench in everything- out home was FILTHY after the rental furniture company came in. We had several issues with out moving company out of Michigan. Scott and I had a feeling things were going to get messed up right off the get go. The contact person who came to our home to do the initial walk through hardly paid attention to anything, didn't write anything down, etc. She sent people to crate our TVs, only to find out they couldn't crate them (they have to be a certain size as well as type of TV to crate), they sent a different crew everyday...it was a mess. When our items got here we had quite a bit of damage (still working through that with the insurance company), as well as several missing boxes- pantry stuff, all of Scott's work stuff, a bunch of kitchen items and an entire closet full of winter gear, shoes, sunglasses, etc. To make this story shorter, they ended up hiring another moving company to go get our things, re-inventory it all and look for our missing stuff, and move all of our items to the new companies storage facilities. What a mess! The new company did not find our things, which mean they are either stored in someone else's storage facility, got shipped with someone else's sea or air shipment,  or got stolen. We are in the process of settling the lost items claim, as well as figuring out how to replace it all over here. What a pain!