Our Adventure in Europe
Sorry about the delay, but a photo album of our new & improved apartment is now available. It’s not quite complete, but you’ll get the idea. Only thing we haven’t posted pics of is the bedroom, but that’s coming soon. No, they won’t be dirty pics, though they will feature a water bed. That’s right, a water bed.
For the first Trivia Time post, I thought it’d be good to cover some basic information about the area where we live.
Amstelveen (pronounced Am-stel-vein) is a suburb to the south of Amsterdam. It is the international headquarters for Team McLennan, as well as professional services firm KPMG and communications technology giant Cisco Systems.
It’s a small, quiet community, with just 79,000 inhabitants, but it’s close proximity to Amsterdam and Schipol airport, it’s an ideal location. We’re located ~2min (walking) to the nearest Metro line, which makes getting to and from the city relatively easy.
External Resources (all links open new windows):
http://www.amstelveen.nl/ Amstelveen’s Official Website (mostly Dutch, some English)
http://www.amstelveenweb.com/english An Amstelveen Website with more information in English
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amstelveen Amstelveen’s Wikipedia page
In an on-going effort to share our experiences in The Netherlands & Europe, Team McLennan will periodically be posting trivia tidbits about the city where we live (Amstelveen), the city where Staci goes to school (Amsterdam) and the country where those cities can be found.
That’s right, Team McLennan’s website is going to be educational as well as informative. There’s no time table as to how often these tidbits will be posted, but I’m hoping to make a regular feature. Look for trivia posts soon.
After 1 month in the new apartment, we finally have cable and an internet connection. This means no more trips to Brussels to get some work done, which is quite the stress relief for me. Having to travel just to get a stable internet connection isn’t exactly ideal. Now I only have to go to Brussels to drink and play golf, which is much better. 
This is part 3 of Team McLennan and the Journey to a New Land. If you’re just joining us, check out Part 1: This Isn’t Heaven, This Sucks and Part 2: Team McLennan Strikes Back.
So at this point in the story, we’ve been in The Netherlands 5 days. In that time, we’ve moved into and out of one apartment and moved into a second. We don’t have a bank account, cable or internet access. We do have a pre-paid mobile phone thanks to Jon, and there’s an open wireless internet connection in the neighborhood that we’ve been leeching from (thanks neighbor,) so we’re not totally out of contact, but it sure feels like it.
This is part 2 of Team McLennan and the Journey to a New Land. If you’re just joining us, check out Part 1: This Isn’t Heaven, This Sucks.
So after we took ~30min to let the shock of the university-supplied apartment wear off, then we decided to try and find a new apartment. The 5 of us (Staci, Christine, Marcus, Jon & I) went up to an internet cafe near an apartment Jon’s work had put him up at for a few weeks when he was working on a project in Amsterdam and began scouring the listings we could find online for anything that was available. We sent some emails and wrote down contact information so we could call the next morning.
So it’s been a while since Team McLennan last let the world know about their little adventure in Amsterdam. Well, I hope you’re comfortable, because this is going to be a long post. In fact, it’s going to be a few long posts. Today, we’ll start with a tour or the apartment the university assigned us.