The Apartment

I can almost hardly believe it, but finally we have found an apartment! The real estate agent rang this afternoon to confirm that it was ours and that we can move in August 15th. We couldn’t be happier to finally stop searching for a place to live. Christophe is getting foie gras on the way home to go with a bottle of champagne in order to celebrate! I know foie gras is unethical, but coupled with champagne it really is my idea of gastronomical bliss!

The apartment search had been getting us down. We spent every spare moment searching online for advertisements or looking through catalogs and classifieds, calling agencies and private parties, arranging appointments, visiting places. With only one of us being able to speak French it meant that Christophe had to do most of the work. It’s been a frustrating experience, but it’s part of life I suppose and I should be grateful Metz doesn’t have the kind of housing crisis thats strangling Melbourne and Sydney. Every time we became hopeful about a lead, we were crushed with disappointment when we would discover that it was taken weeks ago, the realtors were just too lazy to take down the ad. That scenario happened frequently.

There are so many available apartments in Metz (and even more vacant storefronts) but so many of them are terrible, or too expensive, or just plain bizarre. We saw an interesting place the other day, which would have been perfect (it was located next door to our favourite cafe and had a nice spatial arrangement) but the owner had decided to put purple suede carpet in the lounge room, pink suede carpet in the bedroom, purple pink plastic flooring in the hallway and installed a hot pink toilet!

The place that we have taken we saw only this morning. Going to the appointment I had no expectations at all considering the iffy places we’d seen. We weren’t thrilled either when another couple turned up at the same appointment to see the apartment with us. But they left before us so as soon as they did we told the estate agent that we wanted it and now we’re all set. The building is in a really nice neighbourhood, very leafy, a lot of old buildings and mansions, close to the old trainstation and just behind a lycee (which could be quite useful in procuring students for tutoring). The building is maybe circa 1930s or so. It has hardwood floors (real hardwood, none of that parquet stuff), a good bathroom and kitchen, and a lot of natural light. The only thing we didn’t like was the colour of the walls, but it’s not tragically bad, just that 1950s pale, pastel pink you see in a lot of old houses in Melbourne. We have the go ahead to paint it white however and that’s what we’ll do. We’re also going to be renting a garage at a great price, so parking is a non-issue.

Finally we can relax! Next step….buy paint.