*As for anonymity’s sake, I will be replacing the names of streets here with random names and post codes with random numbers, but anyways, let me tell you about my already so exciting day… So exciting that things have already happened and it’s barely 10 AM.
Let me just first explain some logistics. In Amsterdam, many street names either end in “straat” meaning street or “plein” meaning square. Also, in the Netherlands, post codes directly correlate to an exact street (it’s brilliant). We live on *Bakerstraat with post code *4812QR. When we first moved here, we believed, according to our lease, that we lived on *Bakerplein with post code *4812QT.
When we went to city hall to secure my BSN, in America, a BSN is like an SSN (Social Security Number), The woman asked us for our postal code and then our street. We told her, but she said that the information we gave her did not match the lease. The lease said we lived at Bakerstraat 4812QS. Also not correct. We ended up using Google Maps to figure out that we actually live at Bakerstraat 4812QR. We thought it was Bakerplein because of the bus stop that is near our house.
Anyways, we get a lot of mail that is neither ours, or Job’s brother’s/his brother’s family’s mail, as we are renting from them right now. We thought at first maybe it was the people who were here before them. Then recently, we received some mail for two little girls. The envelope was kind of squishy like some sort of fabric was inside. We knew it was probably something important and that we had to get the letter back to the people it was intended for.
A couple of weeks passed and it was now the night of my birthday. (You read all about that the other day.) Well the gift I received from Job’s parents was a MuseumKaart, a membership card to the majority of the museums here. Job’s dad informed us that we should have… or would within the next day receive it in the mail. Awesome!
Well, come February 18th, we still hadn’t received anything. Job was getting worried. He called his dad, just to double check and asked him what address he had sent the card to, and sure enough, he had sent it to Bakerplein 4812QT. (This of course was our fault because we had given him initially the incorrect address.) Well that was the reason as to why it hadn’t gotten here yet.
As Job was leaving this morning, he strongly advised that I go around the corner to Bakerplein and go to house number *25, the same as us and speak with the people who live there and let them know that we thought that we had their mail and they maybe had (HOPEFULLY) my museumkaart. Job left around 9AM for work. About thirty minutes later, I sent him a little message in my awful Dutch and asked if it would be okay to say this to the people who lived on Bakerplein, if it made sense. He made a few tweaks. I then rewrote all of the message down on paper and left my phone number in case they didn’t answer.
I then asked if it was too early to go over there. He told me I should be fine, so I went. I slowly walked over, mostly because I was rehearsing my Dutch and looked for number 25. There it was! I looked at the name on the mailbox and wrote it on the envelope. I also had in hand, the card for the two little girls, and that was their house! I rang the bell hesitantly and waited. I was really nervous that I was going to trip over all of the Dutch words, so I did what I always do when I get nervous. ”Hoi, uhhh… Ik spreek Engels…” “Oké,” the woman replied. I then went into English and told her how I lived at Bakerstraat at the same number and how I thought my boyfriend’s father sent me mail to their address accidentally and that we had some mail of theirs as well. The woman welcomed me inside, and I told her that in the card I had written was also my phone number in case it happened again and we needed to switch mail. She looked through her things and found my museumkaart!
(A little worse for wear, but hey, it happens)
Job and I had been so worried that his parents had spent money on something that might have accidentally gotten thrown away and then what! No museumkaart for me, but I was super lucky.
The woman was so nice and we decided that if accidentally we got the wrong mail again, it was just a quick walk around the corner to bring it to the correct place.
PHEW! Crisis averted!
Now! Time for some breakfast!
The Traveling Spoons 