It seemed like a simple plan. We only needed to get a traveler's check at the American Express office for our security deposit. But somehow, two American Express offices and a half dozen ATMs later we were still short 1,000 Euros and out of time. So, Geoff and I had to split up - me to meet Sylvia for our noon meeting and Geoff to check out of the hotel.Sylvia readied the paperwork as she chewed on a cigarette. Meanwhile, we wrestled our enormous luggage up the stairs. Although the lease measured a single page, the entire packet included about 50 pages. There were photos of everything in the apartment - from the furniture to the inside of the closets (and contents) to the tops and bottoms of every pot in the apartment. She also created handmade manuals for every appliance and utility including the single unit washer/dryer and the stove/dishwasher (believe it or not, also one unit) and left detailed instructions on how to shut off the water and gas for the apartment if we were to leave for more than three days.After she double-kissed us good-bye, we were left alone in the apartment. And that's when it set...
Recently in Apartment Hunting Category
It seemed like a simple plan. We only needed to get a traveler's check at the American Express office for our security deposit. But somehow, two American Express offices and a half dozen ATMs later we were still short 1,000 Euros and out of time. So, Geoff and I had to split up - me to meet Sylvia for our noon meeting and Geoff to check out of the hotel.Sylvia readied the paperwork as she chewed on a cigarette. Meanwhile, we wrestled our enormous luggage up the stairs. Although the lease measured a single page, the entire packet included about 50 pages. There were photos of everything in the apartment - from the furniture to the inside of the closets (and contents) to the tops and bottoms of every pot in the apartment. She also created handmade manuals for every appliance and utility including the single unit washer/dryer and the stove/dishwasher (believe it or not, also one unit) and left detailed instructions on how to shut off the water and gas for the apartment if we were to leave for more than three days.After she double-kissed us good-bye, we were left alone in the apartment. And that's when it set...
A stream of apartments blurred by today. Upon waking, I forced myself to pick up the phone. Each conversation started with me saying, "J'ai vu votre annonce à FUSAC," meaning (hopefully) I saw your ad in FUSAC. Then, "Parlez-vous anglais?" Twice the answer returned a firm "non." Luckily, they seemed to understand me better than I had expected. Perhaps when you're a potential customer worth thousands of euros, bad French is worth stomaching. One man I called, who probably could hear my heart pounding through the line, kept saying "Je vous écoute" ("I'm listening"). Ironically, even the English conversations seemed a bit strange. One woman warned us about the tricky stairs to her apartment and bluntly added that if we weren't interested in walking up two steep flights of stairs then please don't come. Quite a sales pitch. Another man asked my nationality and age. Apparently my bust size he could deduce in person.Somehow I arranged four appointments. Our first stop was rue de la Grande-Chaumière. The owner had given me the code to the outside door. Once inside, there was another door in the courtyard to buzz the apartment. In fact, it seems most Paris apartments use this system....
Ok, it's true that I still haven't actually seen any apartments yet, but I do feel like I made progress today. I spent the first few hours this morning in the hotel room looking through online listings. This isn't only because I'm afraid of calling people. But even if it was - how many fears can I tackle in a week? Anyway, I got an email response from a woman to my post on craigslist and it was a listing I had passed over since the rent was listed as 3,000 euros/month. Apparently she now offered it at 2,000. This got me thinking that maybe more people were negotiable than I thought. So I scoured the online listings - paris.craigslist.org and vrbo.com - and emailed basically anyone with a listing in the 5th or 6th Arrondisement. Not much has come of that. Tomorrow I will actually have to use the telephone. There also seem to be several promising listings in the site FUSAC (recommended by one of Geoff's colleagues) which list only phone numbers.Telephone calls are definitely the scariest since there's no pointing involved and you can't ask someone to "écrivez." I remember on one of our first trips to...
