Settling In

I am in Paris, I have a job and I have found a place to live. It is a particularly AWFUL place to live, but at least I am not in a hotel or on the street. I have been here now for 6 days and I am already planning my escape. I was desperate and took this apartment because I HAD to have something. I moved in on Saturday afternoon and half the living room (sale de séjour) still had the landlord's stuff in boxes. He told me he would be back on Sunday to pick it up. There was no refrigerator, although when I saw the apartment on Thursday night, he told me it would be here on Saturday. On Saturday he said it had to wait until Monday. On Monday (March 3rd) I got a call from the landlord’s wife saying they couldn’t bring the fridge until the 10th and asked if that was a problem. I said it was and on Thursday afternoon, they brought over the refrigerator that is shown in the photo.

The worst thing about the apartment is that it was absolutely filthy. Black mildew covered the bathroom tiles. Dirt and spilled food on the “kitchen” floor. Walls and doorways that haven’t seen a scrubbing, or paint, in a decade. I’ve been cleaning constantly. Two Mexican style blankets covered the couch (really four seats pushed together) and were so dirty I didn’t want to sit on them. I replaced them with a couple of light turquoise throws, which brightens up the place a bit. The floor is covered with some kind of straw-like square matting, and, of course, is dirty. There is no vacuum or broom, so I have to get a broom.

The bedroom has a wooden floor, and like most of the old buildings here, slants and gives way a bit when you walk on it. There is a double bed, which sags right smack in the middle! But, two good-sized rooms is fairly rare in my price range. As bad as this place is, I actually saw some that were worse. I also saw many that were better, but because of the requirements and documentation required to rent an apartment, I wasn’t able to compete for the place. And it generally is a competition to rent a place. Many times I was one of several people vying for the same apartment. At one place, another woman said she had been looking for 3 months!

So, this place can be cleaned up (which I have been doing) and the walls can be repaired (which the landlord has said will be done – we’ll see…). The really bad thing is that next door is a restaurant. Not so bad, really, until you see the set-up here. There are two buildings and I am in the second one. You walk through the main door into a corridor and across a small courtyard. My apartment is on the first floor (that is one floor up here) and overlooks the courtyard. Directly below me is the restaurant's kitchen. Also, the trash cans are all lined up right below the windows. The banging starts about 7:30 in the morning and continues all day and into the night. At 12:30 Wednesday night I was awakened when the kitchen workers were dumping the trash. In the morning they throw away all the bottles, one at a time, crashing on top of each other in the bin. Then, to keep the area clean, the whole shebang is strongly doused with vinegar, and the smell permeates everything.

I’ve been here less than a week and I am ready to move. I’ll see how it goes this month but I may be looking for another place in April. I’m not so keen on the neighborhood, either. It’s alright and certainly safe, but there’s not a lot of life around here. And, it is a very brisk 10 – 12 minute walk to the closest metro, which always requires at least one transfer.
OK, enough of the grousing. What is good about this place? Well, it IS in Paris!!! Isn’t that enough? And when I come out of the métro station, there is the Eiffel Tower looming in the distance. I am only 3 blocks from the Seine. And I do have two rooms… Oh – and I have REALLY hot water!

It’s the end of the week and I have a miserable cold, so I am staying in tonight. I want to get over this quickly. I am off to a party tomorrow night. Through the wonders of the Internet, a friend from Grad School who is now in Geneva contacted me. She was then talking to another classmate, who lives in Paris. He is having people over, including a couple of others from our school. So I will go and renew old acquaintances and, hopefully, make some new friends.