Why moving out of Amsterdam feels like heartbreak
Look, when you break up, you do it because you're fed up with that person. You don't feel much for them anymore. The love is over. But I have to break up while I'm still very, very much in love.
As I putter along on my rusty bike (because it won't get stolen) over the canals and know every little street left and right by heart and have kissed at every corner at least once, drunk, laughed, had hangovers or cried, it grips me by the throat. Soon Amsterdam will no longer be mine. I have to move. In about seven months, I'm getting two kids. That doesn't fit in our house in the Pijp. No matter how much I want it, it's absolutely not an option. And buying bigger in the city is impossible to find and unaffordable. So we're leaving, babies still in the belly, with screeching tires no less, so saying goodbye is hardly possible.
I can't get used to it for a year. I can't bike through the streets for years and think: ‘Soon I'll come here with the tram, as a day-tripper.’ I hate day-trippers in my city. My city, which I am still so crazy about. About every dirty coffee shop, about every dark pub that is called ‘Café Tjonge Jonge’, about every trendy coffee place filled with plants and wood. About grumpy Amsterdammers with Nikes on their feet, the craziness on the streets, the frat boys, the hipsters, the festival-goers, the students, the cargo bikes full of kids, the yuppie mothers, the countless little restaurants and then just those three I always go to, the regular pub around the corner, the old pub from my bachelor years, the beloved Sarphatipark and then especially... The whole Pijp. I used to always joke that Amsterdam is actually just the Pijp. And okay, a piece of Jordaan, that's where the heart of the city lies. But it all happens in the Pijp, I think, because I've lived there for at least 11 years.
There is nothing harder than having to break up while you are still very much in love with someone. While you still get happy from someone. It will be a different life outside the Ring and that is hard to imagine right now. I always find outside the Ring stuffy, boring, stupid. Now I'm becoming that myself. That's scary. That's hard. That causes heartbreak. Sorry, Amsterdam, I really don't mean it that way. And it's definitely my fault, not yours.
