Preparing myelf for a disappointment... or between glorious self justification and the purgatory of homelessness

Today, we finally found a flat... or maybe we didn't. It seems that the fates intend to keep us swinging between glorious self-justification and the purgatory of homelessness for a time longer...

Maria was contacted today by sms, a rare response to our long running ad on the internet, about a flat that was available in the centre of the oberstadt. Not only was it a 2 room kitchen bathroom with balcony in such a location as to raise eyebrows, but from their method of contacting us we could safely assume that this was a private deal... without the kind of competition that we have found so... inconvenient.

Being a hardened old Wohnung-nik of three months service, I could not be moved by these details and read her email of our imminent viewing with forced detachment, focussing instead on the three lessons that I still had to plan... but it looked good and I did allow myself a brief recon. of the apartment block on the way back up the road from work, learning thus that it was indeed a location worthy of fantasies of self-justification.

Maria and I met outside the flat at 1 pm and went for the viewing and, from the moment they opened the door, it went exceedingly well. If we can be said to have a secret weapon as a couple, something so heart-warmingly charming that even the most stoney faced German has to yield, it must be Maria when confronted with a particularly cute young puppy... and this couple had a really, really cute young husky pup type thing with a full-on tilting head and waggling gait.

From thence on, as we intermittently broke off our viewing to pet and coo over this plasmataki (I feel the Greek word best here), things went well, so well in fact that we were offered the apartment there and then... and we took it.

Walking out into the sunshine again, it felt almost too normal, as if nothing had really happened, as if our nightmare was not yet over...

On parting from Maria I headed homeward for to waste my vacant afternoon sleeping, dreaming and reading. As for Maria, she headed back to work where she would receive confirmation from the landlord. It was somewhere in the middle of ceiling gazing whilst contemplating the fate of Chris McCandless that I got a terse sms from Maria stating only that you should "Read your email". The message I read as follows:

Fuck it! The owner wants to meet us and she is not giving the appartment until 15th of April for some reason. It was too easy to be true. And I've already cancelled Max, that house is gone. Hope she will like us.

I hope so too...

And who is Max?

Max is the owner of a cute little sunny apartment in the Sudviertel which we had good chance of getting if it weren't for the fact that we told him definitively that we were no longer interested in it on account of finding this other one.

FXXX !!!

I take that back... competition is no longer welcome

So a week on and we are still looking for a flat. Maria viewed two at the beginning of the week but was unimpressed with the fact that they "looked like apartment blocks in Athens". I for one wouldn't mind living in an apartment block in Athens... but therein lies another story. At the moment, these two will suffice.

Wednesday and during dinner with a visting American guest, Maria mentions that she had been called during the day by an old lady who had seen our ad in the local paper and that she was offering us a 3 room flat in the oberstatd for 45o euros. More than this, we had an appointment the next day to view a flat in the river side area of Weidenhausen. All this, you must understand, was told to me over candlelight in a lively student bistro with much food, drink and high spirits to set the tone. We both agreed that we had turned a corner and would find something soon.

Morning brought the first viewing: a 2 room river-side flat, 1 floor up, in a old timbered building facing a central courtyard. Despite the timbered exterior, the flat was modern in appearance with a real cosy feel. I wanted it immediately.

But when the time came to talk business the owner revealed that he had already promised the flat to someone else. But if, for some reason, the other interested party should fail to sign the papers (if his hand fell off for example) he would definitely give us a call. (??!!)

Now I can see his side: he wanted to cover his back. But what about us? To drag someone away from their work and show them round a flat that they want only to tell them that they can most probably never have it seems a little off. Perhaps we wouldn't have minded so much if it weren't for the fact that we had made the appointment some days before. If he knew he had others coming to see the flat, why break our hearts by giving it already?

Bu that is not all: from the description of the landlord, we strongly suspect that the successful tenant is none other than he who beat us to the oberstadt flat.

That would make sense in world which, at the moment, seems divest of justice.

Then there was the old lady... with the old flat.

To be fair, she was very nice... in fact, she reminded me of my grandmother... but the problem was her flat was very old too... as was everything in it... and it smelled like a hospital...

... and it felt more like a tombstone in a graveyard that a charming timbered flat in the lively Marburg oberstadt.

Which is why I wouldn't mind living in Athens at all.

Flathunting in Marburg is a thankless task

So we decided about a month or so ago, in a flurry of hope and expectation, to move out of our shoe-box of an apartment... blissfully unaware of the nightmare that was about to unfold.

Being a student town, Marburg has A LOT of competition for apartments. In fact, it would be no exaggeration to say that a flat can be advertised and gone all within a matter of a few hours. So you gotta move fast if you want to get the opportunity even for a viewing.

Also, it seems that many landlords actively favour a student tennant, for reasons perhaps of the reduced rates that they might have to pay. So straight from the off, a fair number of decent places are unavailable to hard working tax payers like ourselves.

As if this weren't bad enough, it would seem that the student population have a system whereby they can preclude the possibility that anyone bar another student can move into a soon to be vacated flat. The devilry works like this:

1. Student couple want to move out
2. Student couple contact landlord who asks them to advertise the flat, attract a fistful of potential tenants and inform him of their intimate private details (professions, back account details, bra sizes, immunizations pending, etc.)
3. Student couple do as he says thus raising the hope of innocent lambs such as ourselves that they might just be able 'get the cute little house with the apple tree on the corner for their very own'
4. Student couple invite said lambs to their place and earnestly extol the virtues of the plumbing in great German detail whist assuring them also that they would get on very well with the landlord.
5. Student couple wave goodbye to lambs who now face an agonising week long wait where they dare not hope for fear that they will be disappointed... but what if...
6. Student couple close door and heartily recommend a student buddy of theirs as next tenant... as was their plan since before they decided to move out.

In short, the student population of this town has something of a monopoly on the housing situation, but fortunately there is the odd place that favours professional couples... it's just that the landlords here, paradoxically I would conjecture, wish to have one of your vital organs on ice as a deposit.

Enter Herr Miser... (the name has been changed to protect him from the shame that he would otherwise endure).

It was the first flat we saw, a turret tucked up on an old tiled sandstone building surrounded by a rose garden in an impossibly cute position on the corner of two Oberstadt alleyways. Temporarily agog at its niceness (and proximity to our current place; we can see it from the window) and naive at this apartment hunting business, we tripped in to chat with the current tenant all stupid grins and ignorant hope.

Our first disappointment soon brought us back down to earth: the owner, we were informed, wished at least a 2 year lease, which for a couple of foreigners bound to work for the moment in a small German town on variable salaries was not ideal. So we hesitated, held out for a less than 2 year lease, asked the current tenant to suggest this to the owner, and left... only to return ten minutes later with the news that we liked the flat so much that we would accept the two year minimum lease after all.

Maria had a good feeling about it from the off, and was even on the point of bringing me round when we received the news that we should write a letter to the owner, a fella by the name of Miser, in order that the parties should 'get to know each other'.

This caused a little stress on our part as it handicapped our chances by reason of the sole emphasis on the written word as medium of contact: neither of us are native speakers of a language renowned for its (unnecessary) complexity. Also, their were question marks too over the appropriacy of this request: none of our German friends had heard of such a procedure; but write it we did...

... not that it made a blind bit of difference. The very next day after we mailed it, Maria got a phone call from the current tenant informing her that Miser had made a spontaneous visit to Marburg and would appreciate the opportunity of meeting with all interested parties at the flat in question.

Maria was thrown. For her, it was a matter of pride, and this character appeared to be taking the piss. She got in touch with me to ask what we should do. As it turned out, I couldn't attend as I had an evening lesson, but I also thought that Maria should give him the benefit of the doubt and head along to the flat to meet up. Besides, she was more than capable of giving him a hefty tongue thrashing should he reveal himself to be... the arrogant c*** that he actually was.

So go she did, and indeed she came back with a positive feeling: the other interested parties didn't really amount to much and perhaps, just maybe...

He was to let us know by the end of the week.

The week past with an occasional 'what if' moment... but mostly I tried not to let myself get carried away. It was difficult though, and soon it came to the point where I just wanted to know one way or the other. After all, we had other places to see and to have this decision that we could not influence about where we might live for the next 2 years hanging over our heads was, to say the least, unsettling. Maria in particular had made up her mind that 'Herr Scheise' was playing silly buggers. She wouldn't live in his flat even if he paid her.

The 2 weeks passed with no news, not even when we re-contacted the current tenant and she regretfully announced that she had heard nothing. Then finally, on Monday afternoon of the next week, when we had alternately fretted and hoped ourselves worn for more than 2 weeks, when we were so poisoned against him and his fucking flat that it didn't matter a damn anyway, the shameless one phoned to let us down gently.

It was a low, low moment; not, in the end, because we didn't get it, but because of the journey from sugar coated hope for dream home to the grim reality of being played by a c***.

But there may just be some justice in this world...

... yesterday we went to look at a non-descript place down by the Elisabeth Church and who did we meet but one of the interested parties for the flat. In fact, it was the successful new tenant as we found out; but he wasn't happy. It seems Herr Scheise wants all but one of his vital organs on ice as a deposit before handing over the keys. It has, he said, become a matter of pride. He was once again on the look out for a flat.

Even the prospect of increased competition cannot make up for the satisfaction of knowing that someone bad has got their comeuppance.