Hesel
As with the previous move, we have bought a tandem trailer for the part we will do ourselves.
Our move takes place at the time of the European Football Championship in Germany. For fear of terrorists, the German authorities have set up a check at the border; all cars are directed through a car park and inspected there. We haven't been used to that for a long time (since Schengen).
Is it the hair colour or our friendly, open glance? We are allowed to pass through.
This is our new house (estate agent's photo). It contains of living quarters, plus a former hairdressing salon.The spacious garden also contains a pond with fish and a swimming pool. We hadn't counted on fish and swimming pool. Fortunately, via the web we find someone from the next village who has a much larger pond and no fish. He catches all the big fish and some of the smaller ones. Now our pond is not so overcrowded anymore.
The pool is covered with a tarpaulin. When all the other work is done, we'll have a look…..
From upstairs, the garden looks like this.
Upstairs is a large room, set up as a party room, complete with bar.
Opposite the bar, we have set up two low beds, where we sleep during the period until the truck with our bed arrives. The two beds can be combined into one couch.
The movers from Eemsdelta (six burly young men) loaded everything that was prepared in 2½ hours in the morning, drove 90 minutes and two hours after that everything was roughly in its eventual place.
The front half of the former hairdressing salon became our office, where, among other things, we manufacture these web pages.
In the back half, we set up our music system.
The wall decoration consists of all our paintings, which we have temporarily hung from the screws present in the wall so that they will not be damaged. Once upon a time, posters with hair lotions and colour washes hung there…
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In the living room, I am in the process of preliminarily adjusting the television to the available (Astra-1) satellite dish and to the Internet.
The living room after we have put back the books in the bookcase.
For the connection to the worldwide web, we chose a Starlink. The speed is better than VDSL, the price barely higher and... you're not tied to a contract of 12 or 24 months.
The kitchen is mostly very red. But of German solidity and of modern design. And big enough to serve as a dining room too.
The natural stone staircase takes you upstairs.
On the landing again... books!
Sylvia's hobby room contains cupboards with wool and other craft materials. And... books!
In Ernst's hobby room - AKA shack - there are several radios and computers.
Recently, the call PA0EWS has been succeeded by DL1EWS.
Another floor up are racks with archives and supplies.
Moving to another country also involves registering the vehicles in that country. For the Outlander and the van, this went off without a hitch (pun intended).
The only other building in our cul-de-sac is a nursery and kindergarten, which provide cosy background noise Monday to Friday in the morning hours. The leaders (m/f) had the children neatly lined up in rows and made them sing a welcome song for us. Heartwarming! The head leader also gave us a home-baked bread and a portion of salt, time-honoured symbols of welcome.
In order not to let the hobby fall completely into the background, I set up a small mast, with Sylvia's help, with a Yagi for 70 cm and an endfed for HF.
Despite the limited length, on HF I was able to make QSOs with no problem with a number of countries in Europe, Asia and North America. For UHF, the antenna will have to be raised, but we lack the physical strength for that at the moment. To be continued.
Attached to the former hair salon was a small kitchenette in deplorable condition. We want to use this room as a pantry to our main kitchen. To do this, a passage needs to be cut in one of the walls.
After cutting the passageway, we furnished the new pantry with components from the Ikea range ‘Metod’.
This side-by-side fridge/freezer will soon have a place in the pantry. Moving it 3 m (10') will require taking a path of about 30 m (30 yds). The 125 kg (276 lbs) heavy fridge won't fit through the doorways in between.