When we bought our house on the Dennenstraat more than 6 years ago, it was in a quiet little corner of North Haarlem. On our left was an older couple with two teenage boys who's worst offense was the occasional cigarette butt which they hastily threw from the third story window, landing in our front garden so their parents didn't see it. On the right was a pot-smoking politician/writer and his extremely timid wife. They had two adorable little girls who would sweetly knock on our door to ask us to throw their ball back over the fence. It was just like Mayberry. But then the politician and his wife moved out. It was 4 months of bliss before the quiet was shattered when the new family moved in. He is a blackjack dealer at the local casino and works many late nights and she is an extremely loud talker...and she talks a LOT. They had a baby girl who screamed the nights away, constantly demonstrating the power of her lungs. Their 3 year old son was nothing short of a terrorist. It's been a struggle to say the least.
Now the little girl is 5 and not screaming quite as much and she actually likes our dog. The boy is finally out of the back yard and running around the streets...which keeps our back yard blessedly quiet. He's turning out to be not so bad of a kid and even speaks politely to us now. He's also becoming quite the entrepreneur. His latest venture is collecting the spent Christmas trees to haul down to the city wood chipper. He gets 50 Euro cents a pop. I'm predicting that he'll make a good mafia boss some day.
