Shipping has arrived!

Back in June, and written about on the other blog, a huge pile of our belongings were packed into boxes ready to be 'shipped' (but actually flown) to Bucharest.  20 boxes of things were duly carted away by United Sons and held in storage until Bucharest was ready to receive them.  You may recall that the boxes, piled up outside our apartment in Cairo, looked something like this:

Getting ready to receive them in Bucharest took a while.  I needed to provide some notarised documents to allow the company at this end to clear our boxes through customs, but could only obtain them once I was in Romania.  It took me a week to get this done, and another few days before I found a way to get the documents to the shipping company's office.  After this it was over to Cairo to send the shipment, but they were on the Eid holiday and so we had a week's delay before they could start to move our things through customs.

Once things got moving, though, they really got moving.  We were told that the shipping was estimated to be with us this Sunday (24th August), but I received an email yesterday saying that it had already arrived in Bucharest and that they'd manage to clear it through customs without us needing to pay an duty.  Hooray!

Just 24 hours after it landed, it was delivered to our house.  This was all a bit of a whirlwind, and quite an 'experience' since we currently don't have direct access to the house as a result of the trench that has been dug for the water pipe.  The delivery guys did a sterling job bringing our boxes over 'the moat', and within an hour everything was in the house.

Removal firm crossing the ditch!

A Leila-shot of one of the boxes coming in!

A pile of our stuff

Picture frames!

Sadly we needed to photograph and make note of two damaged items - the glass in two of our picture frames had smashed in transit due to being badly packed.  However, we can claim that on insurance and at least the glass is easily replaced.  I was convinced that I'd open my soft guitar bag to find the neck of my acoustic guitar in two pieces, but I'm delighted to say it survived - so my 'Egypt guitar' that became my One For The Road workhorse can now continue its life in Romania.

Unpacking was great fun.  Alice and I both really enjoyed seeing what was in each box, and Leila was delighted to find lots of 'new' toys and books to play with.  For some reason she was particularly excited to see our keyboard doormat and was determined to lie down on it!

After the excitement of the mat we decided to open the box of Leila's toys.  I spent a few minutes filming her as she started to delve in...