Two Locks
Apartment Hunting and Week Two in Amsterdam
I decided to lie on the floor for a bit. I could hear my heartbeat racing its own sprint while my brain was travelling through a tunnel filled with mad panic.
It was loud.
Amsterdam decided to hit thirty something yesterday. There were Twitter posts from residents in Berlin explaining why 27 degrees in Europe felt much worse than 40 degrees in Asian countries, mostly about the fact that Europe had no aircon. I happened to have four rental inspections lined up throughout the day. They somehow were all reasonably spaced out, like the agents had a meeting prior to sending me four separate emails.
I made a very solid plan, looking up the commute routes first thing in the morning, and slotted two coffees and a lunch in between. I have been watching myself gradually turn into a two-coffee person since arrival, maybe to match what Steven told me:
“This city also requires two locks for any bike.”
People with their laptops feel less welcome by most of the cafes I have visited, so I felt relief after securing a table in a sandwich shop between rental number 3 and number 4 for the day. I spotted two young guys studying with their computers open. Claude was active on one of their screens.
The woman two tables down showed up at two of my viewings. The fierce rental competition in Amsterdam suddenly had a face. She was calm, collected, and efficient, checking her email like a soldier. With her presence, I kept typing and deleting my jammed thoughts on my MacBook.
After rushing downstairs from the fourth rental and finding shade, I quickly pulled out my phone and started editing a draft offer letter. I changed “Cheers” to “Warm regards” to follow how everyone had been finishing their emails here.
I hit the “send” button while feeling very uncertain about the possibility of another month staying in limbo if the offer was accepted. This particular lease wouldn’t start till July.
After the tram ride back, I told David I was going to lie on his floor for a bit. He turned the fan on for me.
A rental agent, who was simultaneously asking about my job and the type of company I was about to work for while answering questions from another viewer in Dutch, delivered her judgement of me.
“I thought Australia was a country with perfect weather and beaches.”
She was visibly amused by my decision to move from the southern hemisphere.
The guy standing next to her with shiny light hair fully tamed by hair gel became quite defensive when asked about the extra fee they were charging for connecting the renter and the landlord. According to Claude and Dutch consumer law, the fee was illegal, but I applied regardless.
Other than the awkward edge of the floorboards from an obviously rushed job, it was a very decent place and earned a spot at the top of my list.
I signed up for a subscription service which essentially acted as a crawling bot sourcing new listings and sending me an email the second it found a new match. The constant email checking reminded me of the period I was waiting for an interview result from a company that ghosted me, sometimes at 3am.
Eventually, HR came back with “oh we never had a headcount in the first place anyway” after five rounds of interviews. Although this time it’s more about being able to keep up with the notifications instead of gradually losing my patience during radio silence.
The game rule of checking out rental properties has seemingly changed based on what Kuangyi and Steven described. When they moved from the south of the Netherlands to Amsterdam last year, they found a viewing would only be scheduled when you had been fully vetted plus you were at the top of the queue. This meant a viewing was almost one foot in already, and you wanted to express your interest in a property as soon as possible.
The second rule definitely still applies.
In the span of a week including a 3-day weekend, I applied to inspect 25 places, went to 9, and applied for 4. But most of them had more than 5 groups of people showed up.
I wondered if it meant people were just expected to be organised in this city, because I still felt very frantic with a Notion database and four different views set up to record and track different properties.
The street names in Dutch weren’t helping me remember any of them either. I had to ask an agent to repeat the name of a property three times over the phone while locating the link in my never-ending list in Notion.
Catching myself sending strangers a copy of my passport and work contract over email brought me a ridiculous feeling. It was obvious that my information was already exchanged between platforms because one of the viewing invites was sent from an unknown email address.
It was legit, but it came with judgemental agents and illegal fees.
There were a few things circling around my mind while my body was in full contact with David’s floor.
What would I do if I couldn’t move into the new place till July? Suddenly every property on my list had a start date too far from where I was now. Two weeks of Airbnb cost double the monthly rent; the hotels nearby were booked out.
Then there was the practical absurdity of moving in. How easy was it to hire an outdoor elevator to lift furniture into an old apartment with a narrow and steep staircase? By this point, I’d learned it was common practice to do big deliveries through the window of old Dutch buildings. The scheduling and the cost were piling up onto my anxiety.
I wasn’t sure if Kuangyi and Steven would still be okay with housing me longer. We had agreed on the end of May, and they were already way beyond generous. Also, moving while starting a new job in the same week also sounded like a terrible idea.
The thought of needing to settle into yet another temporary place and rebuild a routine opened the door for me to spiral. I felt someone had pulled everything that could make me feel safe away, piece by piece.
My heart started sinking towards my stomach, slowly and excruciatingly.
And there it was:
“Should I call it quits and buy a ticket back to Melbourne?”
I tried to conjure what I’d felt stopping by a book fair full of cool cover designs, tearing into the ridiculously big naan I’d unknowingly ordered with Kuangyi, walking through Oost with Steven as they spotted every bird they wanted to find, the carb crash after a grilled salmon with finely-chopped daikon, the bowl of rice David made for me.
I craved an adventure.
Bizarrely, I saw Harry Styles ordering a coffee in front of me along with Zoe Kravitz two days ago. Between us was a table with a couple of empty coffee mugs.
I paused mid-conversation and just started blatantly staring at him while the caffeine was conveniently hitting my brain. I have never seen a celebrity in close proximity.
I don’t qualify as a fan. In fact I probably knew Zoe better. I liked her version of Selina Kyle in The Batman with Robert Pattinson. But I failed to recognise her; she was tiny and looked more like FK Twigs, maybe.
Harry Styles smiled back, and I don’t think it was personal at all. I assumed it was more of a nod to the fact that he appreciated that nobody around him was interrupting a normal coffee run. The waitress taking their order was excited and much more animated.
I wondered if I would be judged by everyone if I had asked for a signature, something I probably still wouldn’t do even if it’s someone I am a massive fan of.
I also learned that a coffee shop is where you get weed in Amsterdam. A cafe typically serves food and beer. The only thing left to claim is perhaps a “coffee bar”.
The first viewing yesterday was in Centrum. The space was at the top of a building with tastefully rebuilt wooden staircases. There were exposed beams across the ceiling, and an outdoor garden above the floor surrounded by other rooftops of old European buildings and a church.
I didn’t think it belonged to me. It was perfect for an “it” couple who would effortlessly throw wine parties and probably offer edibles, or whatever is considered cool in this city. The other couple guided by a different agent fit the profile: low-waist jeans, white T-shirts, gold hair. They looked so casual.
Me, on the other hand, saw a kid in the bathroom mirror surrounded by newly done tiles in a mellow colour, an imposter trying to be an adult.
David and I had joked about a universal law for me, or for both of us: everything tends to sort itself out the day after a huge and complete freak-out.
Today was exactly one of those days. Except that the anxiety followed me through my dreams and into the morning. I had to force myself to get out of bed and then the door. I deliberately went a few hours early for my biometrics appointment, which would help me get a physical resident card in the Netherlands.
I had just sat down at a so-called coffee bar, pondering how I could capture the feeling of uncertainty, when a (1) popped up on my Gmail tab in Chrome.
An official rental offer landed.
In the split second of checking the email, I could feel the heaviness in my body had suddenly disappeared. It made me judge myself for how I had been acting under pressure, and the greed in me immediately started assessing whether I should take the offer.
I felt like a hypocrite.
At the bouldering gym later that night, I learned how crazy it was to actually land a rental within the first two weeks. Amar, a new friend I’d made last week at my first bouldering session, told me they weren’t expecting a result for months. That’s how little research I’d done coming into the city.
Kuangyi said I had my job to thank, which was pointed and accurate.
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I kept bumping into inspirational quotes wherever I went this past week.
On the glass window of a women’s clothing shop, it said:
“What if it all works out.”
