Escape from chez shitty.
Mar 1st, 2006 by B.
The past few days have been busy. As we quickly discovered, renting a flat in Dresden is a sellers market. We were given about 40 listings less than a week ago, and by monday all but 4 were rented. By yesterday morning we’d been able to look at 3 flats, and all three had multiple couples interested in them. Damn.
We ended up putting an offer on one of the flats.. and no sooner had the ink dried, I was hit with a crippling case of buyer’s remorse. The flat we put the offer on was by far the nicest of the 3, but also the smallest. It’s 118m² (about 1250 sq. ft) while the other two are 140m² (1475 sq. ft)… it’s also the roof-top flat and there’s no lift (elevator) in the building. You have to climb 7 floors of stairs daily to get in & out. I can only imagine how much the movers who deliver our things from america will hate us when they have to lug our heavy furniture up 7 flights of stairs. Oh, and it’s downtown, so parking is almost non-existent. I’ll need to park blocks over and hoof it to the flat.
So, that’s the bad… smaller, top floor, no lift, no parking. The ‘good’ is that it’s in really great condition. It used to be a corp. rental, so it’s got pristine hard-wood floors, a kitchen already built in, windows/walls/bathrooms/everything in great shape. The others were provided by the housing administration (government issue), with cheap, crappy carpet… mold on the walls, holes in doors, thin walls. Still, I can’t help but thinking for the extra 225 square feet I could have fixed them up.
Oh well, what’s done is done. And we still need to be ‘approved’ for the flat. We actually have to meet with the a board of people who live in the building so they can decide if they like us and want us living there… meaning, there’s still plenty of time to screw things up. I’m assuming they’ll be expecting me to wear a bra and shoes when walking downstairs to check the mail… that alone could be a deal-breaker. lol
But, honestly, above all we just want to escape chez shitty (term of endearment for our temp-housing flat). We have a theory that Infineon keeps these flats intentionally crappy so you don’t want to stay here long. When they dumped us here two weeks ago there wasn’t a single clock, two of the burners on the stove-top didn’t work, the dishes were all put away in cabinets dirty (literally with chunks of food still on them)… there were cracks in the walls, stains on the yucky carpet (carpet here is like felt, without any sort of carpet pad under them… very gross), and mold growing on 2 of the 3 bedroom walls AND a fridge that only works half the time. (and don’t even get me started on how small fridges are here).
Bottom line… I want my own place with my own stuff. But me being me, I’m always going to wonder about the path not taken.
And thus ends my most boring entry to date. lol… hopefully my mojo will return soon. We’ve been stuck inside for the past day and a half while Dresden’s been pounded with snow… we’re talking white-out conditions here… and I hate being cooped up : (
On this day..
- So not good... - 2007
Uggg, sounds aweful about the temporary place, but B, you’re braver than me, I would’ve been crying in my socks over it…..It sounds like a struggle but at least you’ve been muddling thru okay…….As far as the new place, doesn’t sound completely perfect with the 7 story walk up (aaaack!) and parking away from your actual home seems like a horses’ ass, but maybe you’ll be able to figure out a better solution later…….Greatful for the update, hang tough
i would definitely sacrifice space for the better quality… just less room to accumulate crap for the next move… heh, don’t you like that i already bring up the next move and you haven’t even officially done this one yet.
I would think that you wouldn’t need a car if you live in Central Dresden. A friend of mine lives in Central Frankfurt and only uses her car two or three times a month when she leaves the city. She forgets where she parks it and has to walk around and look for it when she needs it.
Also, if you want to be completely socially unacceptable, go out in sweat pants. I do it just because I like to watch Germans give me the ‘oh my god, he actually left the house in those’ look.
I realize we probably won’t use the car all the time. Still, it’ll come in handy when we want to travel AND it’s warm & cozy when the sky is vomiting snow every other day.