International Nesties
IHaveAGroomzilla
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
New to Amsterdam from the US
Hi All, I just moved here from Boston a few days ago, and am in the process of apartment finding with my fiance.
Can anyone recommend a good neighborhood to look at? We liked the Pijp because it's not so touristy, but my fiance will be commuting to Hoofddorp everyday for work. We won't have a car, so we'd like to be able to walk/bike places, and we're both into food fashion and the arts.
Also, we're looking for a cell provider and a bank, basically everything.
Wish me luck, I'll need it. Thanks!
Jen
Re: New to Amsterdam from the US
Hi and welcome!
I live in Amsterdam and would encourage you to look at the area of Slotervaart close to Lelylaan Station (but on the South side of Lelylaan). The whole of Slotervaart still has a bad rep, but the area in the neighborhood of the World Fashion Center really is fine. There are 3 trams you can take to the center from there, the Vondelpark is a 5 minute bike ride away and you'll be walking distance to a trains station. There are a number of grocery stores in that area, a weekly market, stuff like that.
We used to live in that area (we lived in a condo in a building looking out over Wilhelminapark) and before I started visiting DH there I'd NEVER given that area a chance, but when I started visiting him there and eventually moved in, the area really grew on me. So much that we even bought our big house even further out West.
PM me if you have any more questions :-)
My food blog
What I'm looking forward to in 2012:
Eating our way through (northern) Italy on vacation
<a href="http://www.thenest.com/?utm_source=ticker&utm_medium=HTML&utm_campaign=tickers" title="Home DThe Old South (Oud Zuid)! We lived in post code 1077 which was the Beethoveenstraat/Stationweg area.
http://www.funda.nl/huur/amsterdam/1077/
It is very close to the Oud Zuid train station which will get your fiance to Hoofdorp easily. There were trains that ran on the :11 and :31 of each hour. Plus it is a pretty neighborhood with shops, an expat community, and still has good restaurants. It is a little more expensive than living outside the ring but in my opinion totally worth it.
I know other people who lived in the areas NLFoodie is speaking of and they felt isolated because most of the people they met were in the Oud Zuid, Jordan, or De Pijp areas. It isn't a very American ex-pat area. In the Oud Zuid, I felt safe at all hours of the day/night. BUT your budget matters a ton. If you want to spend 800E a month, you're going to have to live outside the ring road. If the budget is higher, you'll probably be able to find something closer in. I'm assuming your budget is a little higher than 800E if you're living in the pijp though.
Also, get a bike right away! They are so awesome and help you get around the city quickly.
We used ABN Amro for our banking because they do everything in English. Rabobank does NOT. My old boss (not dutch) had Rabo and it was really hard as non-Dutch speakers to follow the banking statements and all the correspondence that came in for him in Dutch.
It is going to take a small act of god to get a cell phone. You need to have an established bank account for a few months to get one so you might have to go the pre-paid route for now.
What brought you to Amsterdam? If it is your fiancee's job, aren't they providing a real estate agent to help you out?
These are the maakelaars we used and I would not recommend them http://www.jlgrealestate.com/ They pretty much tried to force us into apartments that were completely wrong for us (we had two dogs with us and the maakelar kept taking us to apartments that didn't allow dogs....it wasn't like he didn't know either, we were carrying the damn things with us in his car to look at apartments). He took us to three apartments and said, "OK which one do you want?" Um, no, keep showing us apartments dude!
These are the people we're renting from and we had a horrible experience with them. HORRIBLE. I wouldn't recommend using them either http://www.dutchhousing.nl/nl. We moved out in July and we still are fighting over our security deposit.
That wasn't very helpful was it? Sorry but if you do decide the maakelaar route I can ask a few friends for recommendations.
I also highly recommend going to an American Women's Club meeting. Even if the club isn't for you, you'll meet people to make friends with. They also events you can make friends at. http://www.awca.nl/joomla15/
Also, just for clarification of what NLFoodie is saying - the World Fashion Center isn't a place to shop. It is where all the fashion companies have headquarters! It is a very businessy are. One of the other nesties lived there for a bit while trying to find an apartment and could probably give you better opinion than me but I think the whole place shuts down at 6PM when the offices close.
Good luck! Amsterdam is awesome. You're going to have an amazing time.
Thanks so much everyone!
We were around Beethovenstraat today and loved the area, despite the fact everything was closed. The company my fiance took a job with us actually is having JLG take us around, which they did show us apartments that were a tad higher than our budget, but I think we should be able to stick around Oud Zuid or De Pijp... love love that area. Will definitely stay away from dutchhousing.nl, my fiance has actually emailed them regarding rentals and never heard anything back... but definitely good to know- good luck with that. We didn't want to go the housing agent route but I'm dying to get out of this hotel with 2 people and a dog!
We're staying in a hotel in Hoofddorp until we get an apartment (wah!), but will definitely be getting bikes asap.
Thank you, will definitely be checking back in soon im sure!
Just to be confusing this log in is the same as obsession. I lost my password so can't log in on computer with this one
I feel your pain. I had an infant and two dogs in a hotel room for two weeks. I was about to die.
Positive thing is - most cares let you bring dogs in with you. I was just too scared to bring two dogs and an infant into a cafe
Hope your able to find an apartment soon!
We are now living in Chicago after living in Zurich for a year.
2012 Reading Challenge
Now Nesting from Chicago, IL My nail blog:
Quick recap. We are FINALLY settled in with cable and internet and everything fancy! We decided to move just south of the pijp, to rivierienbuurt near victorieplein, its a little less crazy in this area, and our place is 2x bigger than the places in downtown.
I'm going to check out an American womens club soon, i have found a few upcoming events on meetup.com too. Thanks much everyone!