Now at this point in the story, you should know that our three main requirements were: an elevator or ground floor, a small amount of grass in the area so the dog can go to the bathroom, and a tram and commodities nearby as I will not have a car. We made it very clear in the form that we filled out and in the e-mails that we sent that these were necessary. We listed other things as well but clarified that they were wanted but not needed (for example a fully equipped kitchen, and a balcony).
So we start driving to the first apartment and she’s talking about it and she mentions it’s on the 3rd floor with no elevator (keep in mind their 3rd floor is the equivalent to our 4th floor). I stop her and say “We asked for an elevator.” S says “Yes, but it’s really not that bad a walk.” I’m thinking, “Um, excuse me?” but just say, “No, we need an elevator. Our dog can’t climb up steps.” At this, S’s eyes go wide and she babbles “Oh, um, well, I wish you would have told us that!” Jeremy steps in to say, “We did, it’s in our form under ‘necessary’”. “Well, yes,” S says, “but you didn’t give a reason! You just said you wanted an elevator but didn’t say why so we figured you are both young people and can climb the stairs and the elevator was just something you wanted, but wasn’t necessary!” Once again, um, excuse me?! By this point we have parked and are walking towards the apartment. “No,” I say, “it’s absolutely necessary unless we are on the ground floor.” At this she just keeps mumbling various forms of “You should have told us.”
As we walk up to the apartment I also note that there is no grass for Kisa to go to the bathroom and try to explain “She is not a city dog, she will not go to the bathroom on concrete.” So we look at this apartment that we have absolutely no interest in and start heading to the next one, which we are informed also does not have an elevator but is only on the 1st floor (remember, that’s 2nd floor for us Americans) so "it should be no problem" according to S. I have my doubts about this but if it’s only a few stairs up Kisa might climb them. Sometimes if there’s a few stairs, a large plateau, and then a few more stairs she will climb them. She’s weird. We get there and once again there is no grass in the vicinity and the staircase is a very steep spiral staircase that would be difficult for any dog to climb let alone my dog so once again we look through an apartment we have no interest in renting.
The third apartment had an elevator (hallelujah!) and is actually very nice. It had multiple patches of yard, a garage, a storage room, a very big (for an apartment) kitchen, a small balcony, a large living/dining room, and two average-to-small bedrooms. The bathroom and toilet had an air vent which was the first I saw of that. We may go with it but there were a few things that concerned us. One, it is at the top of our budget. Two, while the garage and storage room offer plenty of storage space, they are underground and in the apartment itself there is very little closet and storage space.
What concerned us the most, however, was water stains on the walls of the living room. It looks like the outer wall was being repaired so while there will be no more water damage, we are concerned about what damage may have happened and if mold had taken a hold. Not only that, but it is not aesthetically pleasing to the eye and we don’t want to have to pay to fix it up. When we asked S about it she said “Oh, it looks like old stains, it’s probably been fixed already.” For the third time: um, excuse me? Isn’t it your job to find these things out for us and not just shake it off?
The fourth place was actually a house outside of center city. The house is beautiful and perfect in every way . . . except for the location. There is no place within walking distance for me to go shopping and the tram is a good twenty minute walk away. There is a bus station right by the house but the busses are so slow it would take a very long time to travel, while the tram has it’s own route that avoids car traffic so it is very fast and much more efficient. We figured that while the house is the ideal place for us and our pets, we would be miserable traveling to work and the center city every day so it was crossed of our list.
Now we only have seen one place that actually met our criteria and guess what? S doesn’t work tomorrow, so can we continue this next week? We remind S that we are only here until Saturday. She sounds surprised and had thought we were here for longer. I guess the multiple e-mails with our availability were ignored along with our request of an elevator. So we return to the hotel in a sour mood. While we like that one apartment, it is really the only one we have seen that met our criteria. We wanted to see more to make a better judgment. Jeremy called Olivier to ask his opinion. Olivier to the rescue! He says he will take off work tomorrow and help us find more places! Not only that, but he will call about the other apartment to get more information on the water damage since between S doesn’t seem to feel obliged to find out for us.