Furniture catastrophe

We kicked off the weekend with heading to a friend's house for dinner and a little Bourne Identity! We had dinner with a friend who is American and her husband, who is Dutch. We also met a few others from church at this dinner, all American's(2) and one from Cyprus! We enjoyed yummy American style lasagna and wine and had a good time discussing crazy Dutch customs.Since our feet are our car here, we walked home in the rain. Netherlands weather is a little like Missouri weather. It can be clear right one minute and then raining the next.

The next day, Dan went to Den Haag to look at a sofa bed couch and I stayed home to wait for the delivery of our wardrobe, nightstand, and chair from the Kringkloop (Dutch word for 2nd hand store). When they finally came, 2 men, who didn't appear to speak a lick of English tried to gesture to me to tell me that they would not bring it up our stairs. I tried to tell them that the people at the shop told us that they would deliver and bring it up one flight of stairs. They kept shaking their head no. So finally I told them to just deposit it on the sidewalk, which they did before they zoomed off, leaving me standing alone with a bunch of furniture on the sidewalk as it started to rain. One of my neighbors came out and looked wide-eyed at my wardrobe, asking if I needed help. We decided we would try to get the chair up into the apartment before Dan got home so two of my neighbors managed to push and pull this chair

into our apartment. They both agreed that there was no way our wardrobe was going to go up the stairs and around the corner into our apartment. So now I waited for Dan to come home to see what our next plan of action would be. He arrived home like a knight in shining armour, riding on his horse(bike), holding a bunch of flowers he had bought on the market on the way home. I'm pretty sure he about fell off his bike when he glanced over and saw this wardrobe that was allegedly going into our apartment.

After much deliberating, measuring, going up and down the stairs, checking out the window to see if it would fit, we decided our only option was to take the whole wardrobe apart and take it up piece by piece. sigh. So, in the rain, on the sidewalk, we disassembled our entire wardrobe and carried it up piece by piece. And here are the pics to show it. . .

Yep! Those are my wardrobe doors. In pieces, in my apartment. Key words..."in my apartment"! Now I will be fixing up a few of the scratches and we will be putting it back together so our clothes never have to be folded up on the floor again.

Tomorrow starts my Dutch language courses!eeek!!