My Moving In

My Moving In

Taking in the morning train into Leuven from Rotterdam, I rushed back to my overheated monastry room, checked out and took the World's Most Expensive Taxi ride to my new house, where I was to stay with 15 other people.

Now, when I viewed the place, it was under construction. They had just installed the cooker and the stove and the cheerful Belgian temp at the housing agency assured me that all would be in order by the time I moved in on the 15th.

When I came into the room, I discovered this.

The problem was, NOTHING WAS READY WHEN I MOVED IN.
The problems were

1. No hot water the first night
2. No internet for the first 5 days
3. Wonky electricity - EVEN TILL NOW
4. A wonky oven and cooker hob - EVEN TILL NOW
5. NO TELLY
6. NO FOOSEBALL TABLE
7. NO MICROWAVE OVEN
8. NO CHAIRS and TABLE
   
9. NO TOILET PAPER!! (even though they promised that in the contract)
10. A front door with a darn fancy system which was not installed yet and caused me to be locked IN the house on a Sunday night.
    
11. A malfunctioning room door - my stuff not secure
12. A mattress I had to retrieve from the garage. I chose the one that was least likely to disgust me, afterwhich i vacuumed it, inspected it for stains(thankfully nothing), scrubbed it a bit and bought a slip for it.

Rather bare, don't you think?
Somehow, I survived without all this for a few days (or until now, as the story with the missing toilet paper and the wonky electricity goes) due to an immediate friendship with the only 2 other people dumb enough to move into an uncompleted house - Marco and Giancarlo from Sicily.

That night, after the hard labour of cleaning and eating from a small coffee table, I toasted my Italian house-mates, the Polish builder Jan and his Lithaunian assistant Raimond in all the langauges present at the table on Italian coffee and bootleg Chivas Regal.

To my new home!

Up next, My Amsterdam Trip