It all began when my current landlord decided to sell his house. That meant that me and Marilia needed to find a new place to live again.After a couple of weeks looking for a new place (visiting apartments, dealing with not so polite real estate agents, and spending more time than what we wanted) we were told, by one of her colleagues, that there were probably some apartments available in the same buildings this friend was living in. The agency in charge of the building compound is called Vesteda and this compound is comprised of a series of apartment buildings resembling something like an American style (the buildings are named Detroit, Boston, etc.) and are industrial-ish in appearance. After a visit to Marilia's colleague's apartment, I was amazed. A nice price for the following:- Completely (almost) new apartment;- Great location (Zeeburg);- Close to a shopping mall;- Great view and sunlight exposure; - 100 m2;- 2 bedrooms;- A lot of storage space;- 1 parking spot in underground garage;- (Free) access to the following facilities:    - Swimming pool;    - Gym;    - Sauna;Needless to say that we got all excited about this apartment. 1. Signing a fast contractAnd so the epic day begins: We were supposed to sign the contract early in the morning (8.30am) at the site so we thought it would be best to take the day off from our jobs, rent a van, buy the furniture from IKEA & MediaMarkt (oh, yeah, I forgot to mention it was unfurnished ;)), and move all the stuff from the old apartment into the new one. And that's how our assumption of easiness began. We arrived at the contract signing on time and, having reserved the van for 9.00am, we knew we had to be fast with the contract bureaucracy. But then, when paying the deposit and first month of rent, we found out that there is a limit to the amount of money you can pay with a debit card in the ABNAMRO bank, in the Netherlands. The good news was that the limit could be changed. Since we had to go to the bank we decided to make the most out of the trip and get the rental van in the meantime also. Bank, car, and back was around 1h30, so we arrived with our bikes in the back of the van at Vesteda's office at around 11.00am. We arrived, payed, got the usual apartment tour, and finally got the keys to the apartment. Then we pulled out our GPS software from Marilia's PDA and made our way into the preferred store to the apartment moving people. 2. IKEASo we had a zillion things to buy: Floor (yes, it is normal in the Netherlands for people to take the floor with them when they leave an apartment, go figure), bed, closet, desk, kitchen table, living room chairs, lamps, TV table, book stand, and a bunch of smaller stuff (kitchen stuff and such). We split the shopping into 3 runs: In the first one we got the heavy furniture (all of the above, except smaller stuff, bed, and floor). After reaching the cash registers I was amazed at the amount of weight an IKEA cart can hold and thought that one more box and it would die on me (we filled two carts in this run). Turns out I was wrong. In the second run the carts were twice as heavy and it took an amazing effort just to put some momentum into them, to get them moving. They contained by now two 90x200 beds, 80 m2 of laminated floor, and one 180x200 bed mattress. Needless to say that we were already tired from putting all that stuff, first in the carts and later into the van. All of this without having lunch, with the time of day being around 14.30 by now. Before the third run we decided to go near the Ajax stadium (to burger king) and get some lunch. In the meantime we could check MediaMarkt for the TV and washing machine. Turns out there was no real good place to park the van near the shop, so we ended up deciding that we should order the TV and washing machine and have it delivered to the new apartment later. Back to IKEA and the third and final run was, obviously, minor and much faster. This one was about buying all the smaller stuff so it went smoothly. 3. Assumptions, assumptions, assumptionsSo, after being very tired we made our way into the new apartment, with all our new stuff in the back of the van, hoping that the day was almost over. It was only just beginning! As it turns out, taking everything out of the van and into a 6th floor apartment wasn't as easy as one would expect. Especially moving 450 Kg of laminated floor, and one brutally heavy bedroom closet, across 50m. Go figure. We started moving stuff from the van into the apartment at around 17.30 and 3 hours later everything was up there. The exhaustion levels were now very very high. Muscles sore, back pain, dehydration, and other symptoms were already starting to take their toll on us. There was, however, still a lot to do. We needed to move all the heavy stuff from the old apartment into the new one. And it was a lot of stuff! Two runs back and forth and we gave in to starvation. We bought a couple of pizzas from Albert Hijn and spent one extra hour having dinner at the new place. Finally, after one more run, we managed to get all the stuff that is not bicycle transportable into the van, and then into the new apartment. Back to the old one, and after a shower (did I mention we sweated like 2 pigs during this day?), the bed time was around 2.30am. Since we needed to return the van to Europcar before 8.am, the wake up time was around 6.45am. Do I need to mention that 4h15 is not enough sleep for anyone not to be grumpy in the morning? :)Posted by email from nocivus (posterous)