Moving to a new country is so hard...yet so easy?

Hallo! It is now my third day in Nederland, and I'm already feeling more at home! Let me tell you, I should get an award for how productive I have been. It's because I'm barely sleeping, but hey! Whatever gets the job done!

So the first day was kind of my disorientation day, Leon and Inge-Britt, my parents good friends, picked me up from the airport, bedraggled and sleep-deprived, and took me back to their house in Leiden. The weather was AMAZING, 75 and sunny! Not normal weather for Holland, but I'm not complaining. They loaned me one of their bikes, and off we went to see the city! Look at how the restaurants put their tables on a barge in the canal when it's nice weather!

I also had some errands I wanted to take care of ASAP, such as the fact that I felt like a drug mule because I was carrying every penny I had to my name on my body. However, we soon realized that getting things such as a bank account were not so easy. Ok, try to follow along.

-To get a cell phone, I needed a bank account
-To get a bank account (which takes 4 days processing), I needed a BSN (SSN) number.
-To get a BSN number, I needed to register myself as a resident of Leiden at Town Hall.
-To register myself as a resident, I needed to show my Dutch passport and my Rent Contract.

SO: I got my rent contract yesterday when I met with the landlord. I signed, we shook hands, and I am now officially a resident of Nieuwe Beestenmarkt, Leiden.
Then today I went to town hall, contract and passport in hand, "Are you married?...do you have kids?....where were you born?.... how long are you planning on staying?...."You know what we found out!? I had left the country for America on June 28, 1995. Yes, I came back to Holland EXACTLY 17 years later!! How weird is that? That wasn't even planned, it's destiny! But anyway, before I knew it, I was "ingeschrijven" in Leiden. She wrote down my BSN number for me on a piece of paper, but the official resident card would take a week to come in the mail.

But luckily, the number was enough for the bank! The lady at the bank put in my number, and lo and behold! I exist! In the Dutch system! Yay! So I got a student checking account. And I learned lots of fun new words, such as: kaartbijdrage (card fee) and spaarrekening (savings account). And yay! I got a bank account... which also takes a few days until it all comes in the mail.

But I couldn't help mentioning to Leon how easy all this was! I mean, on one hand, is it a lot. Moving to a new country is exhausting work. But on the other hand, things were happening quickly, boom boom boom! All I could think about was when I was trying to do this in Spain. HAH! Going to the ayuntamineto para apuntarme como residente en España was a pain in my culo. The line was long, the people unhelpful, and in the end I got nothing done. So I was quite impressed with the organized Dutch system. Yay for Northern Europeans and their no-nonsense, logical approach to life! I've spent the rest of the afternoon assembling Ikea furniture (boo for the Swedish), but I'm going to save everything pertaining to my new house for a new blog post, because that deserves its own space. But in terms of becoming a legal, functioning citizen of Holland... I'm well on my way! And soon I'll even have a cell phone! Things are looking up.... :)