London 2.0

Viv & Rob Kleinjan
Jan 18, 2023
9 min read

Mid October we got the keys of our new house. Viv’s extremely happy with our new home. It was back to the good old days when we moved into our house in Lagos. We bought a bed, a dining table and a sleeping couch and a ‘smiley’ lamp. Reason for the latter was that we discovered after day 1, that the living room does not have any build in lamps. It felt great having our own place again and cooking our own meals. We started discovering our new surroundings and Viv and Ayo discovered walking in Hyde Park. Coming to realise how many people daily are running, cycling, walking, training, walking their dogs, and also horse riding in Hyde Park.

We found a very nice Malaysian Satay House around the corner. In the weekend we moved in the house we got the first visitor, Alex Lawal, from Nigerian Breweries, who was visiting his family here. We met at the Victoria, which is a beautiful authentic pub (also around the corner) and it was also great to see him again.

Yes, we live in paradise, restaurants and pubs everywhere! Maybe good to mention we also have at the estate 2 porters or concierges. I guess you can say ‘estate’ when you are living directly at Hyde Park. Our porters are Harry and Vlad, 2 very relaxed and authentic English men who look after the property and are by that also responsible for safety. I can go through every visitor in detail, but also Hinne and Cora (uncle and aunt) visited us during their city trip.

Hugo had asked Viv to help him move into his temporary apartment in Luxembourg. She went for a long weekend to Luxembourg and helped him to explore Luxembourg more because he was already unpacked. He managed to get an internship at the European Parliament. He skips one semester from his Master at St Gallen. Getting the experience at the European Parliament is a great opportunity, which he’s thoroughly enjoying.

But back to London… Every country has these peculiar things that sometimes makes you think; "Am I crazy or…." But over our many moves we have learned that we must adapt and accept that things go sometimes differently than we expect. Late October our furniture was finally released by British Customs, we could move our stuff into our home. We got very clear communication by the moving company. They had planned 3 days for this, which we considered long. But we thought if they are ready early, they will leave earlier. The moving company arrived and the 4 man in the truck turned out to be Polish. We started with our basic polish; dzien dobre, jak się masz? wszystko w pozundku and we made new friends. They started moving our furniture and boxes from the truck into the house. We had this issue that when you move from a house with 550m2 in Lagos to a house in London of which you do not know the size and the number of rooms. It turned out that we based on budget and our desire to live close to the office and city centre, needed to downsize and so we ended up with ‘only 170m2’ 😊. The Nigerian moving company had cleverly labelled almost everything with name of the room and description ‘others’, so we needed to unpack everything and repack when it was for storage. In the morning our own ‘one-woman’ moving company from the Netherlands arrived. Tineke is our dear friend that during our last 3 moves always came over to help. She was joined on Monday by Pieter who helped us as well. Again a big big thank you to both of them, since after the dust settled we managed to be totally unpacked in 6 days. A new record. We also learned that it is very helpful if you take really good care of the movers since they can make it for you much easier. Can you move the table here? No maybe better to put the closet there, or the bar. Can we see how it looks like? No, please maybe the couch and then end up with ….. no, probably the table is best here (the original position). At a certain moment the house was so full of boxes that we could not move around anymore. We pampered them with drinks, cookies, chocolate and for lunch pizza delivery. And after lunch they said: we are leaving, everything is out of the truck. I will not soon forget the surprised look on Viv’s face; "leaving? But you must put our bed and sofas together." The answer was “that is not our job Ma”.” We are hired to move everything from the truck to the house. Tomorrow another team will come to unpack and put everything together”. The next day a new team came in who unpacked everything and put a lot together. But also, they left around 2pm. Final things were done on Monday but in the meantime, we had finished everything over the weekend.

The last thing that still needed to be done to make the house perfect was internet. We ordered weeks before, but an appointment took 2 weeks. I stayed at home for the technician and waited while Tineke and Viv went shopping. After waiting a few hours and getting bored, what can you do nowadays without internet. I checked for the phone number for the provider, and I found the message from the provider that they cancelled. I contacted the provider and they said, yeah, we needed to change, so we will make a new appointment. We can come in 2 weeks. Since other providers would take at least the same time, we decided to wait. 2 weeks later came the big moment, finally internet. But no, the technician could not find the cable. It was probably somewhere behind a wall. No issue that could be fixed, they would send the A team…… in 2 weeks. Here we gave up and moved to another provider and 1 week later we were set, 2 months after we moved in in our house. Watching Netflix, Apple TV, Disney, Prime is much more fun on a big television screen.

One of the great things of living in London is the opportunity to go to the theatre and shows. With Tineke and Pieter we went to see the Lion King. This was impressive, fantastic attributes, beautiful costumes for the whole cast and Elephants all over the theatre!

Jo visited us as well, she is a friend from Poland years (2001-2005). We met with Lindsey and yes you can guess it, friends from our Poland years as well. Jo and Bruno’s daughter Kaat studies in London so she was here. Kaat is a great theatre fan and gave us a fantastic website with last minute tickets at low prices. She also advised on some shows to go to, and we selected ‘Come from Away’. This is based on a true story when a small-town Gander with 10.000 inhabitants at the coast of Canada (Newfoundland) at the occurrence of 9/11 took care of 38 planes and nearly 7000 passengers that could not enter US airspace anymore and stranded there. From setting the opposite of the Lion King, an empty stage with about 15 chairs and a table where the whole story was told by 12 people, 6 men and 6 women. Brilliant in simplicity and a fantastic story and songs. We can really recommend it. Also Jack came by for a speedy visit. He went out at night with Sully and his girlfriend at a nearby pub. Around midnight they came together to our house for a last drink. First Jack tried the wrong door, all neighbour doors look similar and then the great search for alcohol started, he could only find his own limoncello bottle he gave us that afternoon. When you move from Nigeria with a container you can not bring any alcohol. In the meantime we've solved this little hick up. The bar is open!

Viv joins me about once every 6 weeks roughly when I travel to Edinburgh. She and Ayo will come by train since Ayo is not allowed to fly with most local airlines. The last time she joined me the Christmas fair had already started in Edinburgh. The fair is in front of Edinburgh Castle. We also took a trip to the House of Bruar. This is a great store for Scottish Clothes. We thought that we did not know the place. It is something like 1,5 hours outside the city, but when we arrived, we realised we have been there about 10 years ago with our children when we spend 1 week travelling through Scotland. Jack and Robin went to summer school at St. Andrews in 2011.

Noa was during the World Cup football still in Qatar, working for Hilton. In her hotel the national team of Belgium took residence. Although she only met them a few times (unfortunately they did not get far in the tournament, they had a short stay) it was an impressive experience. Everyday performances by international stars like Robbie Williams, DJ Timmy Trumpet, Calvin Harris, Tiesto, Big fireworks, were organised. There were fan zones. She even went to the match The Netherlands – USA, which we won with 3 -1. At the end of the tournament, she resigned from her position. She will now do a few months all the things she really wanted to do for a long time and then start looking for a new job again.

Next to meeting some of our old friends from Poland, we also reconnected to Andrew and Helen Sloane, friends from Helsinki. We had a very nice dinner with them downtown and it was very good to see them again. Before we met the Sloans we saw Lindsey and John, who got married at the very end of 2022. Moving from Finland to Germany we went for Rachel Brays 60th birthday which was a great garden party at their home with Great Gatsby theme, and I met with Gary and Shelley. They took me to a fantastic bar close to Covent Garden called The Lady Of The Grapes. As you can deduct from the name, specialised in very nice affordable wines with good basic bites. A real recommendation.

I also did a short business trip to Krakow in Poland. To my big surprise I ran into my old Finance Team from Austria, with Kurt, Gabi, Herta and all the others. You can imagine we were all very happy to meet again.

Reading the story, it feels like we are spending our days on memory lane. Seeing and reconnecting with all our friends and having a great time. In the new year we will start by joining some new activities. Viv's planning a photography course and wants to go back to painting classes. We both want to go back to doing sports, also this needs to be sorted out.

And then we entered the December month. Since early November the Christmas lights were switched on everywhere in the streets of London. Oxford Street and Regent Street were very romantic.

In November there is a huge fancy fair in Hyde Park, called Winter Wonderland. We went there and it is huge, and we recognised a lot of attractions that are also always at the Octoberfest in Munich. The Olympic Rings rollercoaster was there, which we tried after the beer tents had closed at the Octoberfest once. Recommendation for all is not to do a rollercoaster after you've consumed a lot of alcohol.

Viv left early December to Austria to our house, Don Papa. I stayed for another 2 weeks. Vivienne called when she arrived that there was a lot of snow around the house already. But in the 2nd week of December, we got snow in London as well and the whole city turned white with powder.

The night before Viv left London for Austria, I started to get sick. Last time I was sick was similar. Vivienne was in Europe, and I got Covid in Lagos. This time it was luckily only some sort of flu sponsored by Weight Watchers. I lost about 4 kg in 5 days and achieved after trying for almost 10 years my target weight. So timing was perfect, just before Xmas for losing weight. But I also decided that Viv can not travel again alone since it correlates with me getting ill. Mid December Noa arrived from Qatar. I arrived late afternoon from Edinburgh, and we had a nice dinner in Happy in Soho. Next morning, we flew with Ryan Air directly from London Stansted to Klagenfurt, which is 45 minutes from our home Don Papa, where Viv and Ayo picked us up. It felt great to come home again. Being in the snow, in the mountains and gazing at the stars.

A little note from me, Viv. The first days when I was in Austria, I spent with Robin in her new home. I arrived on a Monday and left on Thursday. Wednesday Armin arrived and his parents popped in. Robin and Armin have a lovely dog, her name is Daisy and she’s 6-month-old now. Ayo wasn’t that thrilled about the new family member. We read that snow would come our way; therefore, I left on Thursday instead of Friday. In our house, Don Papa, I slowly prepped the house for Christmas, made all the beds ready and just enjoyed my time being there with Ayo.