Guus Bosman

My commute to work usually takes about 25 minutes.

From home it's a few minutes to the Durham freeway (the 147). I take this for some 10 miles, and then the I-40 Interstate to Raleigh.

It had been raining this morning, and it was still drizzling when I left. When I arrived at the point where I'd leave the 147 and go onto the I-40, there was a huge traffic jam caused by a traffic accident on the I-40. Because this ramp is a single lane, it took a long time before we passed it, and I waited almost 45 minutes there. To make matters worse there was a second incident on the I-40, which made me another half hour late. I arrived at the office around 10.00 am.

Tuesday afternoon Sasha left for Bulgaria. She's visiting her parents in the period between her job at the bank and before the study year starts.

Yesterday evening I went to the library in Durham. Getting there took me a while. Although I was on the right road I missed the library building and I couldn't turn around easily as it was a one way street. Anyway, I found it and registered as a new member. It's not as nice as the library in Arlington and quite a bit smaller, but a library is a library and I enjoyed browsing the books.

After the movers delivered our things on Monday (7/24) I slept one more night in the hotel in Cary , a place near Raleigh.

On Tuesday I worked till late. After work I did shopping for the first time in the Kroger supermarket near our house and came home around 9.00 pm. I spend the evening searching for the essential items such as pillows and bed covers, and a plate for breakfast.

The next day I made more progress and I assembled the bed by the light of one of the lamps that I had found in the boxes. On Friday Sasha arrived and we had our first weekend in Durham together. We bought a shower curtain and small items for in the house.

On Monday we were invited for dinner at Bonnie and Nunik's place where I met Sasha's colleagues for the first time. Bonnie and Nunik also live in the Belmost. During the week we had guests a few times, and spend our our time on unpacking boxes and assembling the rest of the furniture.

We wanted the movers to deliver our belongings on a weekend. I didn't want to take time off in my first week at work, and a delivery on Saturday or Sunday would be the easiest.

We spoke with quite a few moving companies, but most could not garantuee delivery on the weekend. However, a sales person at Nationwide Relocation Services said this would not be a problem. We spend a lot of time on the phone to make sure they could garantuee it, and they confirmed: "not a problem, it will be either Saturday or Sunday".

A long story short: when the movers came on Friday to pick up our things they told us that it would be impossible to deliver the next day or Sunday, and they wondered why the sales department had told us otherwise? When we called Nationwide, they said that the delivery would probably be Wednesday or Thursday.

On Monday I received a phone call around 1.00 pm from an unknown number: "hi -- we're your movers, and we're on the highway on our way from Virginia now". I asked them to give me a call 30 minutes before they arrived in Durham, so I could leave work and meet them. They didn't, so a few hours later they called me and asked me where I was: the truck had arrived and they wanted to unload it. Luckily, the apartment manager let them in, and I had to leave early, at 4 pm on my first working day.

When I came home there was a huge truck parked in the street at our apartment. The movers, a sub contractor to Nation Wide unloaded the truck in a few hours and brought everything up the stairs. They were on their way to Georgia with the rest of the load.

There was some significant inconvenience when the movers wanted to have the remaining balance paid in cash -- no checks or credit cards. This would be hard because all banks were already closed. I c called Nation Wide if they couldn't help me by performing a credit card transaction instead but they said there was nothing they could do. A couple of phone calls later I managed to get the money, and I decided never to do business with Nationwide Relocation Services ever again.

The actual move itself was executed well. We did have a little bit of damage, and 1 broken lamp, but over-all our stuff was in good shape and nothing was missing. I'm glad I didn't have to carry everything up the stairs to our new house.