(Day 6) The Second viewing

(Day 6) Wednesday 7^th March

I went on my second viewing for a place to live today.  I found this place off the same website as the first place and it was for the same price so my expectations were incredibility low.  I wasn’t sure if I could even be bothered going after yesterday’s fiasco.  But I did go in the end, probably out of curiosity more than anything.

The place was only about a 20 minutes’ walk and I arrived at the house at the same time as a Japanese girl, she was here to see the room as well.  I joked that we were going to have to fight it out over the room.

The guy who was selling the room opened the door and showed us around.  The front section of the house looked nice but the further we followed him the more dilapidated the house got until we finally arrived at the room (just like going through the classes on the plane coming out here).

The room was small and dusty with bits of clothing thrown everywhere, he clearly had not bothered tidying the room for viewing.  There were different scraps of odd fabric on the floor overlapping each other making some kind of makeshift carpet.  There were no windows in the room, instead there was a blanket pinned up in the door frame so you could leave the door open whilst maintaining some privacy. 

He then showed us the back garden which was the communal area for this house and the house next door.  The garden had several old armchairs and settees placed around a big table.  There was a large TV in the garden that was sheltered under a wooden panel.  The chairs and table were also shelter by a large blanket that was strung up by several metal wires.  There were cigarette butts and empty beer bottles scattered all over the garden. 

The guy showing us around said that people from both houses chill here and the atmosphere in the house was very good.  There were about 10 people living in the 2 houses, their ages ranged from about 20 to 30 and they were all different nationalities, no Australians were living in the houses.

When it came to making a decision about the room the Japanese girl said that she was not interested at all, which was great for me because I was very interested.  The house reminded me a lot of the student houses I used to live in back in England.  The houses weren’t nicely furnished or very clean but living in a house with like minded people who are doing the same thing as you is great.  I told the guy I was interested but I had one more place to look at tomorrow.

I managed to get back to the hostel using my map without much difficulty.  I started to worry about the house; I knew that other people were looking at the house that night and that the room would go very quickly because of the low rent and the house’s proximity to the city.  I had a viewing tomorrow for a place that I thought looked very nice (from the photos), although the rent was more expensive.  But by tomorrow I was worried that the place I had just seen would have been taken.  Holding off to see the place tomorrow was a big gamble, I phone the guy who showed me around and he said that the other people who had seen the room were also very interested and I would have to make a decision quickly so I told him that I would take the room!

I had to go straight back to the house to drop off a deposit before someone else beat me to it.  By this point it had started to rain heavily, I managed to make it to the house and drop off the deposit okay but the walk back to the hostel was terrible.  I thought if I walk back really quickly I could avoid getting too wet but my map by this point had become illegible in the heavy rain and I ended up getting lost.  I had been around this area before so I knew roughly which direction I needed to head towards.

I managed to get back but getting lost added about 20 minutes onto my journey.  When I got back to the hostel people where giving me funny looks.  I was so wet it literally looked like I had just walked out of the sea.  I didn’t feel well at all, I had felt a cold coming on in the last few days and getting soaked made the feeling a lot worse, so I went straight to bed.  I didn’t bother looking at the board to see what night out was planned for night, I was just going to have to write this night off and hope that I feel alright the next day.