Packing, packing and packing!

We’ve known about our posting to Helsinki for the past seven months and have been preparing for it since then, very eagerly! From making inventories, organising shipment and storage, Visa’s, passports, driver’s licenses, hotel’s, renovations on the house for renting it out ect, ect, ect. The inventories (one for Helsinki and one for Storage) took three weeks of full time work to complete. The end result is 75 printed pages in spread sheet format … eina. Every item had to be described in detail, measured and tagged. See an example of our handy work below.

Here are three examples of items that were marvellously irritating to put on the inventory:

ITEM 35: Garfield mug. Made of ceramic, white glaze in colour. Garfield picture on one side and "Happy Birthday" enscription on other side. Size: 12 x 7.5 x 12.5 cm
ITEM 39: Small Stone Turtle. Grey in colour, made of stone. Size: 2 x 3 x 2 cm
ITEM 40: Small Ceramic Turtle. Beige cermic bottom with shiny brown top. Loose / moving head and limbs. Size: 7 x 5 x 6 cm


The past month and a half was spent on organisation, working on the house, oiling of wooden furniture and packing. No, not packing as in packing your groceries but packing for international shipment. It’s actually a very simple procedure: bubble wrap, cello tape, paper wrap, cello tape and pack into box. Except, one needs to repeat the process about…ehhrm…how can one put it…the equivalent amount of repetitions needed to pack items listed on 75 printed pages….*faint / dizzy feeling in head*. Poor Alex, he stood too close to Dirkie and almost got himself bubble wrapped too. Below are the fruits of our labour. It’s hard to believe that the boxes and its contents are held together by 2,5 km of broad band cello tape (yes, we kept track).

The moving company arrived on 27 November, an event which slapped reality right into our faces: We are actually about to go away for four years to a place we’ve never been to before. It’s odd to see one’s personal belongings being handled by strangers, put into a 20 foot metal box, sealed and then one's entire life driven away on the back of a truck. A collage below illustrates the process.

So the adventure has started! We are staying at the Lynnwood City Lodge Hotel until 05 December. Then it’s off to Istanbul for a few days to rest our tired bodies, aching backs and paper cut fingers. Then it's off to Helsinki where the minimum temperature this week reached -16 °C and the maximum -4 °C … brrrr, maybe some bubble wrap will keep us warm…not…