(Having a place to live is a privilege. Being able to buy a home, even more so. Owning one as nice as this, ten times more than that. Everything that I describe below, especially the parts that sound like complaints, I do with the understanding that we are astonishingly fortunate people.)

Let’s start with the names, cause they’ll certainly be the first thing you notice. The row houses along Reinwardtstraat in east Amsterdam were built in 2003 (practically yesterday, in European time) and are architecturally unremarkable. But some Y2K-era architect decided they could heighten the street’s curb appeal with… names, installed in different fonts and colors, one per building. It’s super corny, and it limited my enthusiasm for the Reinwardtstraat apartment when we first saw it.

Still, once we got past the front door, we warmed to the place almost immediately. It’s over 100 square meters¹, compared to the 58² we’ve been working and living in for the last two years. It’s in the Dapperbuurt neighborhood, half a block from an outdoor market à la “Notting Hill,” and only one block further from a gorgeous park. It’s half the distance to my work and a three-minute walk to train and tram stops, effectively making most places in the city much more accessible.

We’d barely begun our home-browsing process when our realtor sent this listing. It checked all of our boxes, but we kept our expectations realistic: in this crazy market, stories of placing dozens of unsuccessful offers over many months are routine. “We’ll find the perfect place,” I had assured Kiki, “and then somebody will buy it before us. Then we’ll find another perfect place, and we’ll lose that one too. But at SOME point, we’ll find the perfect place and get it.”

Yeah, no. This was the second house we visited, the first offer we placed, and after two days of roller-coaster haggling, it was ours. Imagine waking up early one morning, packing your lunch, applying sunscreen, and setting out for a long, zen day of fishing… only to pull a giant flopping marlin into the boat on your first cast. You’d probably scream like we did.

We got the flat called “Sophie,” which happens to be the name of one of our nieces, making the house-sized name tag much more tolerable. From the door you walk straight up the stairs to what Europeans would call the “second floor” and Americans the “third floor.” Here you find the bathroom and three (three!!) bedrooms.

The living room and kitchen are on the top floor, so keep heading up the stairs, and help me with these groceries while you’re at it. That’s admittedly an odd arrangement, but it allows for an amaaaaazing south-facing terrace off the kitchen that’s big enough for a half-dozen guests. And since we’re on the top floor, we’ll get loads of sunlight—yes, the sun does shine here occasionally, and we absorb every ounce gram of it we can get.

Another perk of the extra space: a second toilet! This sounds hilariously basic to Americans, and ridiculously extravagant to Europeans, but it was basically the first thing we checked for on real-estate listings.

As a tiny-house fan, I’m already mourning the advantages of our small apartment. Bringing Kiki tea in bed from the kitchen is currently a five-step walk; soon it’ll involve a flight of stairs. Still, the good far outweighs the bad. I will NOT miss the one-step commute from my bed to my desk for work every morning. 

And now the bittersweet news: such an upgrade will require us to sell both of our places—the flat here and the house in Austin—essentially combining two houses into one. Needless to say, buying one home while planning to sell two others (one of them overseas) is an overwhelming triple-project with a terrifying number of unknowns that will occupy our waking moments for the next six months.

And on a personal note, I love my Austin house—we’ve been through fire and flood together (especially flood!), not to mention dozens of chickens, and I’ll genuinely miss losing that connection to Austin. (If you’re reading this and are interested, slide into my DMs.)

Today we sign our official paperwork. We get the keys on November 14. Replacing the flooring is first on our list, and we expect to move in soon afterwards. It’ll be almost as big a project as moving to Amsterdam, but just as exciting. Multiple times a day, Kiki or I will tell the other: “We got Sophie.”

1. 1,076 square feet, a bit more than my house in Austin.
2. 624 ft².