Wow – what a week it has been since I last wrote! It has only been 12 days since we arrived in Strasbourg but it seems like it has been much longer!
We found an apartment and moved in this past Wednesday. What a relief – but the drama is ongoing and the story of how we got here will take some explaining.
So the last time I updated the blog I wrote about how to secure an apartment in Strasbourg, particularly if you were going to go through an agency, one needed to have a co-signer/guarantor. We could not get our bank to be our co-signer and we did not know a French citizen who could be one for us either. So last week I was pretty much in despair about what we were going to do.
Well on Saturday I saw an ad for an apartment that was available immediately in Strasbourg as its owner had to move to England for work. I sent an email inquiring about this apartment and received a response a few hours later. The ad was posted by a woman named Monica who wrote that she was a civil engineer and the company she worked for in Strasbourg had won a bidding contract in the UK and she had to depart quickly for London and was now looking for someone to sublet her apartment. The pictures of the apartment looked lovely, and the price was right – so we emailed Monica back saying we were very interested!
Over the next couple of days we emailed back and forth trying to figure out how we could move the sublet along. She was in London and had the keys to the apt with her....so on Sunday she suggested we use an online company called moneybookers, where she would deliver the keys and sublet contract to moneybookers and we would wire the money to them. Once they received the funds they would hold the money and send us the keys and contract. Once we had the keys and contract we could look at the apartment and decide if we were going to take it within two days. If we decided to take it, moneybookers would forward our funds to Monica’s account and we would sign the contract and keep the keys. If we decided not to take the apartment, we would return the keys, etc to moneybookers to forward back to Monica and then moneybookers would return our funds.
So it sounded a little complicated but do-able. We went to set up our moneybookers account but then realized it would take 3 days for moneybookers to verify our credit card....so we emailed Monica with this information and she replied back with a solution. She laid out step by step instructions to transfer funds to moneybookers thru Western Union instead of through the moneybookers website. Once moneybookers received the funds (we would email them the Western Union receipt along with the Western Union id number which would allow moneybookers to access the funds), they would then fed ex us the keys.
Well – at this point if this is sounding like a scam to you, it was!!!! We looked into the information she had given us and the contact/agent at moneybookers who was dealing with our transaction. I called moneybookers in London and asked if they had an agent by the name given to us. The customer care person told us that moneybookers did not have agents, nor did they use Western Union – all funds had to come through the website after credit card verification and security checks were fulfilled. No Western Union!!!!
So we were very close to being scammed and ripped off of lots of money that we could not afford to lose...it was very scary and made me very angry. Here we were, vulnerable people, foreigners trying to find a home in a new country and feeling desperate and we were so close to being taken advantage of and stolen from. I can’t describe how upsetting this was – not just the whole scam situation, but oddly more than anything I was so upset about “losing” the apartment! We thought our search was over only to find out that our desperation put us in a dangerous situation.
The next day was a Monday and Dave and I decided to take the ½ hour tram ride south to ISU to talk to the Student Services staff – we were desperate for some advice about what to do next! Turns out that going to ISU really lifted both our spirits. It was just amazing to be at this place that we had only seen pictures of and Dave was so excited to just be in the building. We looked around at all the displays and pictures and wandered around the building exploring classrooms, the library and the student lounge. It just made every struggle we were going through worth it – we were in Strasbourg for Dave to go to ISU and to fulfil his dream, so finding an apartment and running into roadblocks was just part of the road we had to travel to get to that point. The Student Services staff had a few suggestions for us, and we left with more hope than we came with.
That afternoon we went to see an apartment – we had made an appointment with an agency to see this particular apartment days before but it had to be postponed until Monday. So we went to meet the agency lady, thinking there was not much point going to see an apartment offered thru an agency as we did not have a guarantor, but we decided to go see it anyway. Turns out the apartment was not furnished as we thought it was, but Dave talked to the agency lady and found out that they had a furnished one a few blocks away that we could see tomorrow. He repeated that we did not have a guarantor, but the lady said she had talked to someone about our situation and we did not need one if we paid a larger deposit!
So the next day we went to see our apartment! It was in a perfect location, still in centreville, close to the Cathedral and the Petite France district of the city, but just a block away from the tram station that would take Dave directly to ISU! It was rented to two ISU students the previous year, one student took the bedroom and one student took the living room as a second bedroom (it had doors that sealed it off, a futon that folded down into a bed, a closet and a desk). There was a large bathroom, good sized dining area and decent kitchen. It also had a washing and drying machine (they are 2 in 1 machines here!). We decided to take it! We were able to move in the next day.
We were very happy to finally have our own place – somewhere to unpack, put up our pictures and a kitchen to cook real food in again! Being in the apartment has made life in Strasbourg even better, it is just wonderful to have a place to call our own to come home to after a busy day.
However, the apartment costs a small fortune. It is a good size for a European apartment and its location is prime and the building is well looked after. And once we unpacked everything and spent a couple of days in the apartment we realized we did not need the living room and began to think about renting out the living room to another ISU student.
We would share the kitchen, dining room and bathroom. And then have our bedroom to ourselves. Our bedroom has two parts to it - what I call the “nook” has the bed in it and the bedside table, and the other part has the desk and wardrobe in it. The nook is set off from the other part and we are thinking we will put up a curtain to divide the two parts of the room a bit more. That way, I can sleep at night whenever I want to and Dave has his own area to stay up and study at the desk.
So we have sent out an email seeing if any of the ISU students who do not have accommodation yet would be interested and we will see what kind of a reply we get. We can afford the apartment by ourselves, but it just makes our budget a lot tighter. We would rather rent the room out and have extra money for traveling and doing fun stuff together rather than penny pinching! So far we have two interested students who are moving to Strasbourg next week - hopefully one of them will work out.
In addition to finding an apartment, so far our days have been busy trying to get everything set up and ready for Dave to go to school. We need to set up our electricity account, get internet and cell phones, do some shopping for a few extra household items we want for the apartment, etc. We also want to do some fun stuff around Strasbourg in the next few days - a canal ride, a city tour, check out some restaurants and parks. Orientation week begins on Monday and there is a lot of stuff going on for the incoming ISU students so we will also be participating in some of those activities (bbq, beach day, hot springs in Germany, etc)!
I will try to write more frequently now that things are settling down a bit - there is a lot to share of just day to day things that we experience and see here in Strasbourg and of course I need to get some pictures up to give a visual of our new city. So stay tuned!
Love Heather & Dave
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