We have moved! Now the real work begins!

The moment that we had been anticipating for so long has now finally happened. We have moved! A short look-back on what was a very long and tiresome weekend.

Friday – Pick up the van at the airport.

René took on that job while I stayed home packing. He took the taxi as to keep our car in front of the door in the hope it would provide us with, worst case, a free passage through the other side of the street if we had to park the van there, or, in the best-case scenario, be moveable if a car behind or in front would leave. We were in luck, and the best-case scenario played out. For the third time in a row, we could park the van straight in front of our door making loading a lot less painful.

Saturday – Load up the van with the big hitters

A day that I have been dreading since we made the offer, to be fair. As the living space is on the first floor, everything needs to be brought up a not too shabby flight of stairs. Bit of a workout for boxes and other things, but quite the challenge when it comes to big fridges, washing machines, and, as it turned out, a 100kg wood burner…

The loading did take quite a bit of time, but we managed to get going at 12.00 on the dot. With a pit stop to pick up the wood burner in Aveiro we got to the house around 15.00… A bit late, but it would have to do. The next three hours can only be described as ‘perseverance’. Hauling up the fridge especially took a lot of time, with the very heavy wood burner a very close second. The washing machine, by comparison, was a breeze. We barely had time to rest after we were done, as there was still a lot to do and pack at home, so as soon as everything was up, we closed the doors and went on our way back again. At least we could look back to something huge accomplished here by two mere mortals. Remind me again why we didn’t hire a removal company with some strong trained people?

Once home, we were proper dead, took a shower, ordered sushi (the last time we could order sushi!), watched one episode and then retired to bed completely exhausted. At least we hit 100% van-in-front-of-door parking rate for this house move.

Sunday – Part 1: The last bits always take the most time

Even though we have moved so many times, it’s one of those repressed memories. Those ‘last few bits that need to go in a box’ take HOURS. We also made the rookie mistake of not bringing our battery drill. Stupidly, we forgot about the 16 screws in our hard wooden self-built table. Because of this it took AGES to take apart with a screwdriver, something that we could have done in mere minutes with the drill. Ah well, maybe for the next move we’ll remember.

Much later than anticipated we set off for the one but last time to the new home. Even though the packing did take a bit longer, the unloading took a lot less time as there was only one big hitter in this load. Our impossible 140×200 boxspring mattress. All in all, despite lots of swear words and ‘when we’re done with the mattress, we’ll throw it off the balcony and burn it’, in 1.5hrs everything was in. Again, no time to rest… Unfortunately, we couldn’t stay long, as we needed to return the rental van, clean up the apartment, shower, eat something, pick up the cat and then drive back again. At least we set off in daylight.

Sunday – Part 2: Return the van and pick up the cat

At least we set off in daylight. Straight to the airport, and thank goodness the van was all OK. Really good service from Sixt at the Porto airport branch, no fuss! Taxi to what we had decided was going to be the McDonalds in Espinho where we’d have our final quick meal. Two Big Mac Menus later we made our way back to the appartement. There we spent about an hour in a cleaning frenzy to get our MVP-level of cleaning in the hope we would get our full deposit back.

Quick shower (as we did not have a working boiler yet…) and trying to catch a cat, and then back to the new home for good. The owner’s estate agents were brilliant. They had picked up the spare key earlier last week, so that we could leave the other keys inside the house and close the door behind us. Always a stressful moment… But everything was empty, a book closed, and the first chapter of our new book could now really start… Almost, that is, because we were now going to spend nearly 2 hours in a car with a screaming cat. Lovely.

We got there at just after 23.00. Once there, we needed to let the cat roam round a bit. So, we settled on the very cold sofa for a bit with a celebratory beer. In our coats and under blankets. I didn’t sleep at all as it was absolutely FREEZING, with the temps having dropped to near freezing, and without heating… it was dire. I layered up but could never really recover it seemed. Good thing we took the day off on Monday so we could at least spend some more time in bed, and then get to work to make our lives a bit less cold… But I’ll describe all of that in the next blog, as we are still, writing this on Tuesday afternoon, working on some of these things!

Until next time, when we’ll share with you our heating shenanigans! Now that we have moved, the ‘when we’ve moved’ has finally started!