Moving Troubles

So without a partner, living in Dordrecht isn’t much fun. Therefore, I decided to move to the Hague. Bigger, nicer town and I know people there and I know they have good Indian food.

The good news is there’s a huge amount of supply of available apartments. The bad news is, supply equals demand. I have only been looking for a few days and already I have had two of the places I wanted to look at taken the day before I go to look at them.

My current dilemna is location. Here is a neighborhood map of the Hague. Originally I thought I would look exclusively in the Centrum. But yesterday I took a look at an apartment that is in a section off to the right, under the big park, called Mariehoeve. The place is very green and leafy and the apartment was bigger than what you would get in the center and has a brand new kitchen and bathroom. Here is the listing for it and here are some pictures I took from my visit. The floor has not yet been carpeted, so keep that in mind.

The issue here is: what kind of a lifestyle would living 15 minutes to the east of the center mean for me? It’s a very nice quiet green neighborhood and there is space for me to park (which is a concern but only a minor one). What I would gain here is space and comfort (the places in the Centrum tend to be dumps because landlords know people want to live there). What I would lose is the lifestyle of being right in the middle of town. Effectively, every time I wanted to go out to do something, it would be a fifteen minute bike ride or a twenty minute tram/bus ride.

So what kind of lifestyle do I want? I mean, it’s not like I’m thinking about going out and partying every night, so living in the center for that reason isn’t an argument. But living in the center affords a lot of convenience: everything is just right there around you.

Anyone care to comment?