Find new apartment, check.

It's official!  I found a nice place to live in Lisbon.

I'll be moving in on Saturday, so I finally have justified the fact that I never really unpacked into my room here by the University.  Haha, that's right, I've still got most of my stuff in my luggage.  But now, I'm glad I do!

So, it all kinda fell into place on Wednesday, I had been looking online and at a bunch of listings for rooms and apartments and houses, and I got in touch with 3 people and made arrangements to view the places during the day on Wed.  That way I would only have to go into Lisbon once (it's about a 45-60 min of transport to get there).  The first address I went to was this super sketchy door leading to a dark and sketchy stairwell, with 2 guys in an "office" at the top floor.  And by office, I really mean a room with a round card table and a pile of papers and a laptop on it.... Oh, and the stairwell smelled like death.  So, no the best first impression.  At all.  However, I soon realized that one of the guys, a really short but super friendly Portuguese man, was going to lead me to the building where the room was actually located.  It wasn't in the scary stairwell, yay!  We walked about 15 min and rang the bell at this tiny door in a little alley, really cute place, looked completely "local" with laundry hanging between the buildings above us and everything.  A cute girl comes to the door and introduces herself (I have since then forgot her name) and says that she will show me the room.  At this point the guy departs and the girl takes me to yet another building!  By now I've gone through "oh god, this building is terrible, let's get this over with" to "this place is really cute, I wonder what the interior looks like" and still haven't actually seen the place that they are offering.  We round the corner of the alley and she pulls out a key to open another door, this time glass.  We hop into an old elevator with the iron gates for doors and head up to the 5th floor where I finally get to see the room!  The guy who lived there was just starting to pack, so the room was mostly still lived in (which was actually kinda nice to see it that way), but it was a nice looking room.  It's maybe 10'x8' or so, with what looks like a full bed (a nice little improvement over my single in my current room) and a desk, full closet with drawers at the bottom and a cork-board on one of the walls.  As I walk in, I immediately head for the most tantalizing feature: the glass door leading to the balcony!  Being on the 5th floor I can barely see over the rooftops around and it's a pretty awesome view of the city and the bay.  Plus there is a grill out there (and I am already imagining a hookah as well), so not too shabby.

Inside I see the kitchen and meet the 2 residents who will continue living there, a girl from Germany and another from . . . . well, I don't remember.  I want to say Czeck Republic, but I think I'm mixing that up with another apartment I visited.  Anywho, they were having lunch in the kitchen, which is a bit small and has some paint peeling on cabinets, but is fully equipped.  Fridge, freezer, microwave, stove, oven, all the basics.  There is even a little "greenhouse"-esque balcony on the other side of the apartment with a washing machine and racks for drying clothes!  I chatted with the girls for a bit, (they seemed really nice and have English as their common language, so I will have an easy time with that.  Not sure if that is a pro or con though...) and then told the girl showing me the place that I liked it a lot, but had a few more to look at today and would email them that night with an answer.

By now it's about 1pm, so I grab some lunch at this little cafe with some tables in the back.  The food is cafeteria style, but it's quite yummy and cheap, so I'm happy.  It consisted of french fries, pork, rice and some red sauce with lots of cabbage, and was ready and on a plate in front of me in about 30 seconds.


My next apartment appointment was to call after 4pm and arrange a time which meant I still had a few hours to kill, so I wandered off towards the main square to explore.  I'd been there before, so once I reached it I immediately decided to aim towards the castle to the east and see if I could navigate the winding labyrinth of streets that surrounds it.  As it turns out, the neighborhood in that area is beautiful!  Lots of little cute things, hard to sum it up without pictures though.  The highlights included a building in a row, where they usually share walls, but one was missing and had been recently, within the last few weeks, been filled in by this really cute garden!  Another was the answer to the age-old question "what do you do when you convert a building into apartments..." a doorbell for everyone!

Another highlight was the view of the city I got from the top of a hill, with this cute little cafe/restaurant and a nice garden with benches.  My phone wasn't quite up to the task of capturing this view, so I'll have to return and bring my camera next time.  I never actually made it to the castle, so that will have to be another adventure sometime.

By this time I had to head to see the next apartment.  I called at 4, but no answer, so after calling again at 4:30 and still not getting through, I had to go meet my 5pm viewing.  This time I got SUPER lost.  It turns out that Lisbon has 2 mechanisms for screwing up my map-reading abilities (which I usually take a lot of pride in): first, the map I had is full of lies.  There was definitely a street about 50 meters before where it was drawn on the map and after missing that, I had to walk around a hill and a train station.  The hills themselves are the second confusing factor.  Roads that look like they intersect or are parallel on the map are actually 30 feet different in elevation, so many of my simple "first left, 2nd right, on the corner" type mantras actually led me quite astray.

I finally made it to the next place, and called the number they gave me.  I won't go into as much detail about this one, as I crossed it off pretty much immediately.  My phone call was answered by a woman while I was expecting a guy named Antonio.  I said as much to her, and eventually realized that he was not around, and she did not speak English.  As our conversation grew more difficult, she said in a very un-hopeful tone "espanol?"  Ahha!  I can do that one!  I'm a little rusty, but it's better than my Portuguese.  So, they showed me around a cramped apartment with a nice little interior patio and a 4-bed bedroom.... yes, 4 beds, shoved into one long room.  It looked like a nightmarish cross between a hostel and a hotel.  I'm all for meeting people, but that's ridiculous.  I said my goodbyes (still in Spanish) and told them I would send an email later that night, and responded to the text from the girl I was supposed to contact after 4pm.  She wasn't at the apt, but her friend was, so off I went for my last viewing. 

It was a super nice new place, but the room they had available had no windows... and what looked like a giant filing cabinet for a wardrobe and no desk.  It did have a double bed though, which was appealing, but not worth living in a cave for.  So, as you surely can guess, I decided to accept the first place I saw! 

In an interesting twist of fate though, the first and last apartments are really near to each other, so when I told the girl from the last place that I found something else, I also asked if she had any recommendations on where to go and what to see, and she responded that she has some friends from London in town this weekend and will be showing them around, and I should join them!  So, I'm not even living there yet, and already am on the inside track.  I've got a great feeling about this year, this is just what I was hoping for.

On Saturday I will move into my new place, and I will post pictures as soon as I can.

There is always more to tell, but this post has gotten long enough!  Short summary of everything else on my mind: 

• My first/trail language class is tomorrow.  
• I gotta figure out how to get public transport to IKEA and what is the largest object I can realistically carry home.
• I hope I can get all my stuff (including all purchases since landing like kitchenware, food, and towel) to the new apartment in one trip.
• The other 2 people in my program, Tatiana and Tewodros, just found an apartment in the beach town near the university, so I'll have a great place to visit when I want to be by the beach, and they will have a place to visit in the city.  A nice compromise I think!
• I love and miss you all, and finally have a floor to offer if you wanna come visit!  It's not super big or comfortable, but it's free and in the heart of Lisbon and has an awesome host.