Thursday, June 11, 2009

sleepless in Bruxelles

It's late and I can't sleep. Tomorrow morning 2 (possibly more) apartment visits, so I'll have to wake up. I think I'm too excited to sleep. Under my skin I feel we're close to making a decision on the apartment. Just thinking that maybe we'll know soon where we'll live makes me too happy to sleep I guess.
The last apartment we lived in wasn't perfect, although it seemed so when we decided on it. Same story with the preceding one. This is what makes me worried and what perhaps contributes to insomnia more then excitement. I guess judgement on rented places is always weak... you can only notice so many things during a visit or two. The rest of the character of the apartment you can only discover living in it. Some later-discovered are just worse than others. For instance, the 2 last places had mice. Yes, I'm not kidding, real grey mice. Not every day, of course, but for me once in a lifetime of an apartment is enough... So I'll already be happy if our new Brussels home is a mice-free environment.
Many other things bothered us in the last 2 places, too many to waste time writing about them, but through these experiences a list got created, with all the apartment no-nos:) Things we in essence could have avoided had we known they'd cause trouble, or had we known they existed. 2 bad apartment experiences smarter than before, we approached this search with an extensive list of criteria. So demanding turned out to be our requirements, that many agencies remained silent after receiving the list haha. Whereas for me, those were just the basics that needed be satisfied for me to at all consider visiting the place. The very subjective do I like it, or do I see my things arranged here, or is it my style obviously could only be considered in the case an apartment met all the 'basic' demands.
I have seen very many places; most not satisfying the basic. But not satisfying 1 or 2 of them was good enough for me to contemplate it. All depended on which criteria was not met and how overachieving were the satisfied ones. Regardless my flexibility, all runner ups stayed as runner ups just for a short time. Whatever they failed in was usually just the beginning of other major drawbacks, often realized with a delay.
I have lived in very many rented places, well to me 7 is many, especially if I consider it was just during the last 8 years. Most places were found relatively quickly. I often found them towards the beginning of the search, continued to look some more and than realised the others were worse. A common mistake often made, I let charming places fool me, Charming is great, for a neighbour's dog, a postcard, or a weekend hotel. Your home, should be most of all safe and practical. The current narrowed down of runner ups is obviously full of charming places haha. I guess that's what charming is all about, fogging up your vision, keeping you hooked on something without letting you focus on the objective aspects. Keep your fingers crossed for a quick resolution; I've gotta move on to gym and job hunt.

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