Moving In with him

Usually you move in with someone because you've known them for a while, you are engaged, have been together for a while (months, years) or you want to take it to the next step. And then there's moving in with someone out of financial trouble, necessity or just because it seemed the logical thing to do.

Moving in with someone you only met the month before might seem a bit rash but to me it felt like moving in with someone I had known for a long time. After talking to each other for over a year we decided to take the risk. At least that's how it feels like in hindsight. At the time I had no idea what I was doing. Things really just happened. I was starting to run out of money and I had been trying to get a job. Staying with my newly acquired boyfriend seemed the logical thing to do. Suddenly months past and I was starting to get really desperate to find work. I quite literally - literally? Yes. Literally. - called up every café in Brisbane I could find online and asked if any of them were hiring. Then I would go to the ones that said they were and hand in my resume. None of them responded, sent me an email or called me. Eventually I ended up getting a job which I found through a recruitment website (seek.com.au) at a pawn shop in one of the dodgier areas of Brisbane. Or as the Australians would call it an area filled with bogans. It was great working there. Even though the hours were long and it was a 45 minute drive every morning and evening, the pay was good and the people were friendly. I didn't have that much trouble fitting in. I knew how most things worked and was actually the number two salesperson from when I started until I quit. 

My boyfriend had all the while started on his third job in Brisbane which was unfortunately only a contract job and had no possibility of growth within the company. Being quite young he had his university degree but barely any experience so he couldn't get a graduate role and no one would hire him for a senior position. So although the job wasn't stable he didn't complain.

When I left for Australia I had every intention of going back. I was always planning to go to University and even bought my ticket home before I left. My boyfriend lived a six hour flight from his family and didn't have many close friends in Brisbane and even his job was something he wouldn't be doing long term. Taking all this into consideration and the fact that we are madly in love with each other it didn't take him long to book a flight to Amsterdam with the intention of moving with me. Living together and having a job was so pleasant I nearly forgot that my reason for coming to Australia was to travel. So I housesat in Alice Springs for two weeks, I went to Cairns to dive in the Great Barrier Reef and went to Tasmania to visit a far removed family member that I'd never met before. As a final destination we went to Perth to meet my boyfriend's family and say his goodbyes before we left for Amsterdam. More than being sad at the idea of a family member moving to the other side of the planet my boyfriend's family was happy that he had found someone to be with.

The plan seemed simple enough. I would start studying Cultural Anthropology and my boyfriend would first have 3 months to find a job that would sponsor him and if that didn't work out he would apply for a working holiday visa so he could stay for a year longer while he continued to look for a job that was willing to sponsor him. We would be staying at my mother's place because I was still living with my parents and finding an affordable place to rent in Amsterdam is extremely difficult. 

In case you didn't know what Cultural Anthropology was.

The current (social) renting situation in The Netherlands is that in order to be allowed to rent in a certain city you must be in some way connected to the city or area by work or school. Then there is a priority system in place where the waiting time for an apartment in Amsterdam is at least nine to eleven years. There are possible emergency transfers possible for extreme cases like being pregnant and being kicked out of the house by your abusive drug using father. Anything less will not be seen as an emergency. There are of course student housing but they're mostly small rooms, with sharing bathrooms and legally only one person can live in such a room. 

Or rent privately but then the only thing we could afford was a parking space...

So we decided that staying with my mother - My parents got divorced when I was five. My father married my stepmother a few years ago and she brought her two children to the household. - was the most practical thing to do.