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How easy/difficult is it to get to your place? What are the closest transportation points? I.e. airport, train station etc?
100% correct. I live in Amsterdam. The mentality of drivers unbelievable. Every day i would see kids, as young as 6 or 7 cycle on their own to school in the road, perfectly safe. Busses, cars, trucks will sit patiently behind them until it is safe to pass.Correct, London is very similar to SA when we look at cycling.
The main problem with people in SA is we do not know what it means to commute by bicycle. Most of our cycling commuters don't really commute, they happen to be training with their bicycles from home to work. And vice versa. I've seen numerous commuter cyclists riding in the road...right next to a perfect cycle lane. Why is this? Are the cycle lanes not good enough? Or is the road quicker? More suitable to someone training than someone commuting?
I've cycled in Amsterdam, it is complete bliss. I have never understood what people mean when they say "South Africans are aggressive drivers" until I rode a bike in Amsterdam. Cars are so chilled, no one is in a hurry, they give right of way to pedestrians and cyclists.
SA's or so obsessed with their cars...until that mentality changes, things wont change.
Good luck with the next week. We had the same juggling act with the clothing. To make things worse, we also decided to take a bike each with us on our flight. In the end it worked out well for us. We packed our clothes into our cycling panniers and when we arrived in Amsterdam we simply put our bikes together at the airport and cycled off to our new life. Liberating to say the least....What a weekend . . . .
Yesterday pretty much all the furniture that we are not taking with us to Spain was either taken by the buyers, or delivered by myself and a mate with a trailer. We also have friends that are storing some bits for us that haven't sold yet but that Wendy will sell before she leaves.
Today we have been emptying cupboards, sorting out all our things - what's going with us and what needs to be donated to the Salvation Army.
On top of that we've had to sort out our clothes - we both need things to wear while we're still here in the sun - 2 weeks for me, 6 weeks or so for Wendy, but also clothes to wear in the UK between arriving there, travelling to Spain and our container arriving. Everything we wear here and will need in the UK must also fit into a suitcase within the baggage allowance for when we fly. It's a juggling act of note!
Tomorrow the shipping company come and will spend two days wrapping our furniture in cardboard and paper and packing boxes with our smaller stuff ready to go into the container on Wednesday. I'll take some pics as we go . . . .
I hope all goes well with the packing.
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Long Mountain Brewery from Robertson does some excellent beers. Really enjoy the wheat and pale ale.
I know of a place where you can rent Giant Revel 0 bikes from. Very reasonable prices and definitely have the sizing you are looking for. Send me a pm.
We've had to get back into normal 3 times after trips of 2 years, 12 and 3 months. It is really hard, especially having 'normal' conversations with people. It changes you and most people don't get it because they haven't had the chance to experience it. To keep us going, we move to different countries and keep life excited. At the moment living in Amsterdam...I have been following Joubert De Bruin since beginning last year.... I’m so jealous of all the things he has seen and experienced!
The question is ased again, HOW DO YOU GOME BACK HOME TO A NORMAL LIFE AFTER THIS?
He has a website as well
http://www.around7continents.com/
Moving along nicely. Let the removal firm pack everything though. It saves sooooooooooo much time and effort.Today we used the renovation building plans to calculate which bits of our furniture will fit where. We now have a good idea of what to take with us - based on what will actually fit into our new house.
Next step will be to get our chosen shipping agent back to re-quote on what we've finally decided to take. Meanwhile Andrea is packing up ornaments and things . . . time is moving on!
We used Britannia, and the packers were excellent and certainly didn't skimp on the packing material Our 2 touring bikes (fully kitted Surly LHT) were bubble wrapped with about 10 layers before boxed in another 2 custom boxes they made on the spot. What would've taken us about 5 or 6 days took them just under one day.
I think it should be compulsory, especially for those who ride with white kit.......some things are best not seen!! ☺☺
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My home town ☺☺☺☺ Such an awesome place to live and cycle.
Generally very good. They gave us an idea of costs for individual items if we had to leave it behind. Was useful to work out what would be best left behind.Johan from Britannia came round on Thursday to talk to us and now he's preparing a "worst case scenario" quote for us. (ie worst case because it's the option to take most of our stuff with is) Once we see the quote I suspect we will whittle down our wish list a bit!
It was only after he'd been that I remembered you'd mentioned them specifically.
Nice guy and had some good tips for us :-)
Shipping is expensive! We decided on Britannia. On average, about 7% cheaper than the others we had. The fx rate will hammer you. Door to door including packing from cpt to amsterdam for about half a container is R60k.Last month we opened a joint bank account in Spain, yesterday I closed my SA bank account here. Wendy will keep hers until the house sale etc goes through. We may even keep hers open after we leave for a while - just in case we need it for anything.
We are arranging for furniture removal companies to come and quote us on shipping costs next week. Depending on the quotes, we might have to re-think how much stuff we take with us. . . .
Meanwhile I'm loving this heatwave and enjoying riding every day :-)
White goods are generally more pricey here in Europe than SA. Funnily enough, I find tye UK to have very competitive prices on household goods compared to the Netherlands. Not sure what it will be like with your destination.
Will winter weather not affect the structure if the roof comes off?
We've always like the Netherlands whenever we travelled through Europe. Having lived in London for many years and having had enough of the crowds made us decide to try it out here. We've tried a couple of times to settle back in SA, but there are unfortunately just to many things for us to ignore. It certainly isn't because we don't love SA, it is more about the mindset of the general public and goverment. That off course is a whole different debate.Why the interest in the lowlands? Grew up there and despite the problems in SA am rather here than there
Not critical, just interested as I am aware that one might be blind for the good stuff of the homeland (just that after 20 + years in SA I have not found it yet)
Just a quick example, the whole train debacle and PRASA compared to an article i just read about the train services here where the aim is to have all trains running on wind generated power by 2018. That sort of stuff and much more....
Anyway, dont want to hijack the thread
That is great news, you must be super excited. I hope for your sake that you sorted finances out before the Rand went for a ball of ****. Luckily we have a small amount in the UK, but most of our money is still tied up in SA.
On a side note, we just arrived in Amsterdam on Friday. Not as organised as you, but rather took a leap into the unknown and certainly the deepend. Testing times on our side....we will certainly come and visit when you are ready.
Definitely!!!!
All parts welcome
I'm in Cape town, is there a central place to drop off goodies? Left it a bit late, so really pushed for time...
I've got a few small things to donate, saddles, pedals, cantilever breaks etc. All brand new.
I'm in Cape Town, but leaving the country next week, so not a lot of time to sort things out.
Can you use this?
Any improvements on the parking offenders since the few R1000 fines a few weeks ago?
Impressed!
Watching live as I type this 
Watching LIVE and TdF Highlights!!
There is an app called FilmOnTV. I use a Samsung tablet and it works very well on there (I actually hook it up through the TV). You can stream live tv including UK tv and French tv.
I watch live TdF on the UK channel ITV4 and also the highlights in the evening on ITV4 or ITV4+1.
There are a few French channels and I'm sure there will be something on there too.
South Africans in Amsterdam
in The Bike Room
Posted
I'm in Amsterdam, but don't group rides. I do group drinking though.... ☺