pure christmas spirit © Lilly Schwartz 2011

Yesterday we had two flat viewings. The second viewing was quite memorable actually: The owner apparently sits all day in his office on the ground floor looking at CCTV cameras waiting for people letting their dog shit in front of the house. The guy was a gold watch sort of guy and what we would call “gutbürgerlich”. If this was a suburban rather than urban area he would be the one with the lawn mower. He was telling me all this stuff about his house in Spain and his daughter who is the official owner of the flat. Let’s just say that I wasn’t really impressed or, well, interested. I prefer renting a flat from a faceless company or from people who live far enough away so that I don’t always have dealings with my landlords. And above all I’m really not interested in any information about their relatives.

The flat itself was on the fourth floor and the current tenants were still living in the place. I have hardly ever seen a more hideously decorated place. From awful black plastic sculptures of headless naked women and men to the biggest brown sofa imaginable it had everything. Including purple rounded corner mini shelves. And of course there was a massive flat screen TV and not a book in sight! The living room had a view over the sports ground of the police station that was just in front of the house. The other guy looking at the flat immediately asked whether the sports ground was accessible to play football there. He fit right into the place. As the owner said “We only want nice people living here”. And I’m proud to not fit into that category, thank you, but no thank you.

Don’t get me wrong. Everyone can live as they please, with hideous sculptures and watching TV during all of their spare time, I don’t particularly care, since they would take their stuff with them anyway if we would move in. However, having some guy who is rich enough to own an apartment building sit there all day play landlord, that’s seriously out of order and ridiculous! You can believe me, the conversation I was forced to have with this guy was certainly not the highlight of my day. The good thing was though that after seeing this flat we could definitely decide to take another flat we had seen on Thursday. I called the estate agent yesterday and if all goes according to plan we can sign the contract on Monday.

The picture I took yesterday while trying to find an internet cafe with a fax machine. Serious Christmas spirit going on in this picture. And no, I’m not being ironic. Not at all …