Rianna puts down the last box on the ground and closes her bedroom door. The room becomes a bit darker, the only light source comes from the sunset ray through the only window across her which is not big enough for her to climb down if there is fire in the building. She wonders how smart it is to rent this room. It's located at Bijlmer, where the crime rates are pretty high, and drug dealers are easier to find than a decent dentist.
The room itself is located on the first floor, across another bedroom occupied by a guy in his thirties named Jasper, and by the smell of it, there's no question that he smokes a lot. And not cigarettes, to make it worse. In fact the whole house smells like "Dutch Greens". The living room, the kitchen, the bathroom, the toilet, even the back garden, where the supply of fresh air is abundant. Everywhere reeks of weed, she is now 100% sure that he is in a state of constant high.
Her room fortunately doesn't smell so bad. If she could believe what Jasper said, he never smoked in this room. The previous tenant of this room is a female refugee from Iran who always kept her door closed and locked. And as soon as she left, Rianna rented this room immediately, leaving him no chance to enjoy his joints in this room.
There is another problem, though. The corner of her left eye catches some dark spots that look like mold. She is now wondering if she should complain to the owner or not. She checks the spots, it's not that bad yet, and doesn't smell bad. In the end, with her budget she practically has no choice but to rent this room.
House market in Amsterdam is crazy. There are many foreign and dutch students looking for rooms before the new school year starts. Many refugees from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Eritrea, and Ukraine are also looking for places to stay. Unfortunately there are only so many rooms available in Amsterdam. Even universities have to reject some foreign students to come here if they don't have any place to stay. Rianna has to compete with those desperate students, and refugees, and people who want to work in Amsterdam to find a decent room. Unfortunately there are not so many choices to choose from if your budget is 500 euro per month. This room costs 475 euro per month, unfurnished, but all inclusive. So she decides herself that she should stop complaining and start counting her blessings.
The rest of the house is quite okay (if she can ignore the smell). The living room on the ground floor is spacious, or maybe it looks spacious because there's only one couch fit for 2 people there and a small coffee table. No TV, no cabinet, no rugs, nothing. Just a leather couch and a coffee table. Rianna makes a mental note to wipe the couch first with disinfectant before she can sit on it.
The kitchen - also on the ground floor - is rather nice. Probably the best space in this house. There is a 4 burners stove, with an oven underneath. They both look sparkly clean. The counter tops are from decent black composite, also look like nobody ever uses it.
Probably no one cooks in this house.
Her suspicion is confirmed by the look of a microwave on the corner of the counter top. The only smelly, stinky, dirty, and nasty thing in this gleaming kitchen. It looks like Jasper and the other housemate only bother to eat microwave meals instead of cooking. Lucky her, she loves cooking. But she needs to buy some pots, pans, and spices first. Until then, she is probably better off cleaning that microwave.
There is a toilet on the ground floor, near the stairs. But the ventilation fan is not working, so the smell of weeds, urine, sweaty feet, and mold are mixing together. She decides (while gagging and gasping for fresh air) she would only use the toilet on the first floor.
On the first floor, there is Jasper's room, her own room, and a bathroom. The bathroom is almost as clean as the kitchen, except that there are some traces of hard water on the tap. The mirror is a bit splattered, but not that bad. It seems that the tenants of this house don't like to cook and to shower. That explains the smell in the house for sure.
There is another bedroom in the attic, occupied by a guy named James, or Jim, or something like that. Jasper didn't give her a lot of information about that other guy, except that he is the first tenant here and he occupied the largest room in this house. The whole attic belongs to him, and he has his own toilet and shower too up there. Jasper doesn't know (or maybe too stoned to care about) what he does for a living. He barely steps out of the attic (or Jasper is again probably too stoned to realize that), and he never talks to the other guy. He only sees him once in a while, and he has lived here for 5 years..
Again, she can't complain. She is lucky to be able to find a room, she is lucky to be able to start a complete new life even when she is already 36 years old. She is sometimes wondering while she packed her boxes in her grandiose bedroom with an ensuite bathroom, if she was making the right decision to leave, to give up. But the more she packed up her things, the less doubt she had. She might have a massive home, an expensive Mercedes with a private driver, and a wide range of designer bags, shoes, and dresses, but she had no life. So she left them all behind and only packed her jeans, shirts, and sneakers. The same items she had when she just came to the Netherlands 17 years ago. And when she put a picture of her and Cathy on the last box and sealed it with duct tape, her doubt was completely gone.
Her old life ended when Cathy died. So she left, and that was it. She left to start a new life, in a new city. And her new life starts by unpacking those boxes in this dingy, smelly, bedroom.