It has been quiet for a while, as we have been swamped with many things. The most important one was the arrival of our sea freight, about 2 weeks ago. We are slowly working our way through the boxes, trying to fit all our furniture and possessions in a much smaller house. We’re getting there!
For his job Piet went to London three times last month, to look at data of a number of business opportunities. He learned the route from our house to The Hague Central Station to Schiphol Airport and London City Airport by heart. These were busy days, just work-eat-sleep and no sightseeing.
However, all the stress during this period came from a completely different angle. A few years ago we bought an apartment (“bovenhuis”) in Piet’s hometown Utrecht, with the plan to use it as a home base for future postings, or possibly as a place for the girls if they would study at university there. In the mean time we have rented it out. On the ground floor apartment a notorious complainer is living, permanently living on health benefit and a real “pain in the ass” according to the previous owner. A few months ago he started to communicate to us via his lawyer, demanding that we remove the existing roof terrace, which is on top of his kitchen / garden parlour. According to him it is illegal and causing severe leakage during rain. Anyway we have been politely answering him with counter arguments and, as he was getting nowhere, he dismissed the lawyer and got a new one.
The new lawyer sent us a similar letter, which we received during our last week in Egypt. We replied that our files were packed and in transit from Egypt to The Netherlands, so any detailed answers would have to wait a while. This was an obvious mistake! Suddenly all was accelerated, and before we knew it we received a short note that a trial (“kort geding”) was set for the 1st of June. Three days after receiving our container we got a very thick file, the input to the court case from our neighbour with an outrageous claim of 40.000 EUR. Mary dropped everything, and spent the next 6 days putting our defence together; luckily we found the box with all the files quickly. She spent at least 12 hours a day going though these files, finding counterarguments to almost everything in the trial document. We talked to the previous owner, and the owner before him; both helped us a lot and were ready to testify at any moment. She also spoke to a lawyer in The Hague, who helped her with suggestions on how to construct our defence. On Friday Mary handed in our documents to the court in Utrecht, and a copy to the neighbour’s lawyer. On Tuesday morning we were sitting outside the courtroom, as nervous as for our first ever job interview. The session took more than 3 hours in the end. In short the arguments of the neighbour were almost all invalidated and the judge directed us to a compromise, which was our position from the beginning. Our proposal was basically to get a contractor in as quickly as possible and get the leakage problem fixed, with both parties paying half of the costs. All other issues would be dealt with at a later stage. This was verbally agreed by us and the neighbour’s lawyer and turned into a final statement by the judge, to be signed by both parties. At that moment our opponent (conveniently?) fainted, and had to be wheeled out of the session. The judge left the statement, signed by us, with his lawyer, and gave him a few days to get it signed as well. In case it wasn’t signed all his claims would be dismissed. There are many more details to be told, but we better do that over a beer!
In any case this was a very stressful week, with little sleep and lot’s of worries. The main issue we have is how someone without an income, who is taking no responsibility for his own living conditions, can go from lawyer to lawyer to harass honest, hardworking people to fix and pay his problems for him, over a period of nearly 20 years. And we are pretty sure this is not the end of it.
Luckily there were some good things as well, Mary’s mom helped the first few days with unpacking, Piet’s mother, sister and family visited on the best day yet; we went to the beach without swimming gear, which was a mistake. Wet clothes galore.... The following weekend Piet’s best friend and family came to check out the house and beach, and then the weather was already much cooler, but not stopping a 5 and 2 year old to get soaking wet!
Paula's sunset photography
Mary and Britt enjoying the beach
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