Then it was home for lunch, and my favorite... grocery shopping! Grocery shopping is quite a different experience without a car. During checkout, your items are bagged and placed in the "exterior" shopping cart (vs. the "interior" one I just filled inside the store). Then, the person who just bagged all your goods pushes your cart down an escalator/ ramp (at this particular 2-story location) and calls you a taxi. Your groceries are loaded in the trunk of the cab and, upon arriving home, the taxi helps you unload all of your groceries onto the sidewalk. My friend and I take turns, one of us standing with the groceries on the sidewalk, while the other takes a few bags through the gate and down the driveway to the apartment. And since we have to buy all of our drinking water, it equals many trips.
I spent the rest of the evening scouring the internet for apartments and my roommate helped me by making calls and setting up appointments for the following day.
Monday: Apartment shopping! I had four appointments set up for the day. My first was at 10:00am. It was an utter disappointment. As soon as my current roommate and I walked in the strange aroma of lacquer or some other chemical smacked us in the face - bam! The rooms were rather small, but that didn't bother me too much. When I spotted the washing stone, I started having reservations. The showers were both electric (scary!) and the "kitchen" was a converted room about the size of a closet that had a shelf and a cabinet in it. Many of the places do not come "furnished", that is to say, with appliances, but this one didn't even have a sink. The nice lady, however, showed me where I could wash dishes - a recessed area in the corner which I am certain was at one time a shower! Well, at least I got that one out of the way. I still had three more in the afternoon.
3:00pm - A new friend from the Hall was nice enough to meet me for my afternoon appointments. The first two were identical layouts in the same complex of towers/ buildings. Unfortunately, the exterior and common areas were far better than the actual apartments themselves. They were small (which I did know ahead of time), but they were not that well taken care of and had no appliances or any other element of furniture either. One of the apartments didn't even have light sockets - only exposed, hot wires hanging from a hole in the ceiling. For the premium price they were asking for rent, and no "furnishings", it just wasn't an option. Scratch off #2 & #3 from the list.
4:30pm - Ah, my last, and most promising appointment yet. A large, furnished 1/1. As I had been able to quickly dismiss the previous two options, I arrived early to the final appointment (and thankfully, I was able to communicate with the guy showing the apartment because he also spoke English). So I called to see if he could meet us any earlier. No answer. A few minutes later, he called me to tell me he couldn't come until 5:30pm. So we walked down the street to get something to drink and wait for him to arrive.
The apartment was nice, the bedroom was large (came with a bed and a desk), had a huge window and a nice view, a small but acceptable bathroom (with optional electric shower, but hooked up to gas) a small living area with a two seat sofa and a matching chair and a small glass table with two chairs. And then the kitchen (cue music). It was a nice size, had a stove/ oven with 6 burners, a refrigerator, microwave, dishes, silverware and misc. pots and pans. On one side, tucked in a recess/ closet were a full size washer and dryer (old, but functional). The apartment was in a nice and safe area. Its all sounding great at this point.
Well, while I was there, he told me that no "services" were included and would be in addition to the rent. I couldn't recall how the ad had read while I was on the spot. But I looked it up when I got home. Sure enough, the ad read "all services included". This means electric and water, it sometimes means apartment/ maintenance fees (if applicable), sometimes a telephone land line, sometimes cable tv and once in a great while, internet. Suddenly, it wasn't such a good deal. Here is the ad translated into English:
Grrrrr... I thought about calling him back to dispute the subject, but then decided that its probably not in my best interest to rent from someone who tried to take advantage of me right off the bat. Back to the drawing board...
Hummmm No Bueno! Sometimes what appears to be a really great gig on the outside, turns out to not be good once you get into it. Its probably best to keep looking. And give yourself time, dont just pounce ;-) Keep it up girl!
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