Many of you have asked for our address. A simple enough request, except that we didn't have one till this week. We arrived one week before school and got settled in to our cute temporary apartment (#1) across from the Boulangerie/Patisserie in the 4th arrondissement. Once school started, we went on a one-day tour of apartments with a mobility agent provided by Anthony's company, which was very nice except that there was nothing to show us. We were done before lunch, having seen one that was liveable and three that were not. Even the agents told us that there was unusually little to show right now -- at any price, for any size, in any neighborhood, to rent or to buy. We couldn't hunt in August, after we got our visas and before school started, because Paris basically shuts down for the month.
So, I worked at apartment-hunting like it was a full-time job, checking seloger.com, explorimmo.com, agency window displays, for-rent signs hanging on buildings, and asking everybody I knew (which is not so many people yet, granted...). Chasing down appointments here is an extreme sport, one that takes both endurance and adrenaline. Several times, I called promising apartments the moment the ad appeared only to be told they had already been rented. Other times, I called and called and left message after message for days on end, with nobody calling me back. Once I was told I absolutely would not be allowed to visit until the following Monday, and was also not allowed to rent it without seeing it first, only to call back on Monday morning and be told that it had been rented on Friday. Some apartments would only be rented short term, others just would never permit me to get in and see them. Once, I got to the building but the agent couldn't get in because the keys had been placed unreachably in a locked mailbox. Another time, I went and saw an apartment that I had heard over the cell phone to be "Cent-dix metres carrés" (106 sq. meters, about 1200 sq. ft) only to discover that I hadn't heard the whole word: "Soixant-dix metres carrés" being 70 sq. meters, or about 750 sq. feet. You get the picture -- and I'm giving you the SHORTENED version.
Well, not only were we not able to find a place, especially not one starting in October, but it turned out that by the time we realized this and went to renew the rental on the temporary apartment, it had already been rented out to somebody else as of Oct 3. I spent a fully panicked week trying to concurrently look for permanent apartments and also try to find another temporary rental. You'd think that the temporary apartment, at least, would be easy, but it turned out be Fashion Week in Paris, and I am not exaggerating when I say that I put in inquiries for about 100 VRBO (vacation rental by owners), Paris vacation rentals on numerous sites, corporate housing spots, and even hotels rooms. In the end, I found just one apartment, available for October 3-16 only. It was 2 metro lines away from work for Anthony and from school for me and the girls, in the 11th arrondissement, and it was 40 sq. meters (430 sq. ft) with just one bedroom. Anthony and I slept on the fold-out double couch at night, which was at least mercifully comfortable, and the apartment was clean, cute, quiet, and safe.
It reminded me of when we were renovating our SF house and had to find, at the last minute, an apartment. The 4 of us lived for 6 months in a one-bedroom 600 sq. ft apartment that had no oven, just one hotplate, and a mini-fridge. Even then, I remember how many people said, "you must be miserable!," but I honestly just felt really lucky. First of all, we were living there so we could end up with our dream SF house. Secondly, at the same time we were there, Anthony's mother was dying of ovarian cancer (and did, in fact, pass away while we were living there), and another good friend of mine had been diagnosed with a very serious, long-term, potentially life-threatening (or at least life-altering) disease. I was there with my handsome husband, my beautiful and healthy two girls, and nobody was going to make me feel bad about my life just then!
Well, I tried to pull on those same reserves of gratitude this time, but I must admit it was tougher when we had been living out of suitcases for almost 4 months and didn't necessarily see the light at the end of the tunnel.
We hoped that #2 would be our last temporary apartment and, thankfully, it turned out to be near-perfect timing. We found an apartment and were able to move in about 4 hours after we had to move out the little place in the 11th. By the time we moved in to our apartment, we had luggage stored in 4 different places, including the boat coming over from SF.
And how did we find our apartment ? In the end, it wasn't through an agency or an ad but rather through my big mouth. I heard an American accent (turned out to be Canadian...) coming out of my girls' school and went up and introduced myself. She lived nearby and invited me over for tea. When I admired her lovely apartment and told her I wished I could find something like it, she thought of a downstairs neighbor who has just moved to Spain for a couple years. She made the introduction, and it's a been a whirlwind for that family, who had to come back and ready their apartment for rental, and for us, trying to do anything possible to help move it along including writing up legal documents like inventories and bending our schedules to meet whenever they could. And voila!, it's Oct 16, and we are finally vagabonds no more!
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