I was showing people my room pretty much from when I arrived back 3 weeks ago, and this didn't only given me the opportunity to gain lots of Facebook friends in a bid to avoid the charges spare room websites try and put on you if you want to reply to your emails, but also to be emotionally traumatised.
Finding someone to take my room has just been filled with rejection, criticism, and people who never call back; just when I think I've finally found someone they tell me they're 'seeing other places' and I never hear from them again. And whilst this is obviously not a reflection on me at all (since they don't have to like me, because I won't be there), I found myself feeling genuinely hurt every time someone didn't want to rent the room.
Some people even said it was too expensive, which isn't a complaint I've had before.
That definitely made that worse rather than better.
One girl was actually mortified that the toilet wasn't in the bathroom, and yeah okay, so that's maybe a little less convenient than you would like (you could actually argue that it's more convenient, but whatever), but I'm not sure it would shock me as much as it appalled her. It's not like the toilet is that far from everything else, it's on the same floor as the bathroom and kitchen, it's not even a yard from them in fact, it's literally the other side of the stairs. It's not like it's in a separate building, you don't have to walk for a mile through a forest to get there, you just make a decision to go right at the bottom of the stairs rather than left. Quite frankly I think that if you can't deal with that situation then you should seriously consider if you deserve to live in a house at all.
That was probably a bit too angry, so you can see what I mean, I became pretty emotionally invested.
But the most important thing is that I now have somewhere to go when the time comes for me to end my contract on Friday, well sort of, I intend to have somewhere to go and I should be going there. Although given my success so far the house will probably burn down between my visit tomorrow and my being made homeless on Friday. Or they'll find asbestos in it, or it will be the only house in Brussels to flood. Something.
So I can say goodbye to Rue de Chambery with it's far too numerous stairs and dingy kitchen and shower that won't stay hot for more than 20 minutes and weird serial killer-esque extra rooms that we weren't allowed in and door that I couldn't open with just one hand free. I can say hello to somewhere with probably just as many flaws and annoyances but with the bonus of not spending my time avoiding the owner of the house because most of what she says makes me want to be fluent in French just so she would understand how angry I am. So that will be nice at least.
And I think it's a good indicator of what the current owner of my house is like that how nice and relaxed about my signing/deposit paying the owner of my new place is being is causing me a great deal of suspicion.
Maybe the house is filled with asbestos.
Merde.
xx
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