You might wonder what took all my attention in the past month, looking at the limited posts here on blog. After some days off (in the East – of course :-) and after conquering a determined summer cold I went on a house hunting tour. Last June I had to decide weather I stay or not in my current flat. After a long debate with myself, I decided to quite, since I have enough of the gym practicing mice who turned my ceiling into their base camp. I also got completely fet up with the typical problems of a falling-apart old city building together with the limited measurements. The books are literary stocked until the ceiling. (well… the ceiling is very low, so it makes the small place even looks smaller.)
The trouble is that it ain’t easy to find something in the city of Gent. I did the test during my online search on immo websites between Gent, Brussels and Antwerp. What you can find in Brussels and Antwerp is so much better and nicer for the same price compared with Gent. So there was a moment of hesitation of moving to another city. I just LOVE the city and city-life and I should never want to exchange ‘my’ city for the countryside.
Back to Gent, in general, there are 2 options. Flat’s who were ‘payable’ are in general: 1) as large as my old studio, 2) bathing in an intense sewer smell, 3) having the air of a garbage dump, 4) falling even more apart as my current house, 5) lacking some basic; like floors for example, or windows. And especially these last can be important counting on the Belgian climate. The second option where those I actually liked, which were usually a few euro par month above what I wanted to spend on rent. So there was a time for a second debate with myself.
At the end, I finally found something that is more or less where I’m looking for in a completely different part of the city. (Escaping my current neighborhood was also one of the requirements.) I went to the visit-day of the immo office renting out the place and found out there were about 36 other people looking for that particular flat. *urg* I decided to give it a try and so I handed in my candidature. I thought for I didn’t make a change since I in general always think other people have better qualification as me. I was surprised when the immo office called me two days later to tell me I got it! Waaaw! I almost jumped from joy (which I better can’t do taking in mind the state of the floor. I don’t want to end up one floor below me.)
In the past days I’ve been busy with fixing the necessary paperwork for the new place. Since Wednesday it’s ‘officially’ mine for 3 years at least. Hopefully it was the right choice and hopefully it will turn out to be a nice place to live. It’s located near the river Lys and even though being rather in the suburbs, it’s still very close to the city centre. Now I’m all the time thinking of how I’m going to equip it. I definitely want to paint, since the walls are now covered in yellow and I hate hate hate yellow on walls. Ironically this was the color I found on the walls of 3 other places where I lived too. I want to work with grey as basic/main color and I want to combine it with another color. The trouble is the blue fixed carpet which I can’t remove. (I hate carpets, this is the only point I didn’t like in this place.) It’s hard to find a color that actually goes with a blue carpet without becoming horrible for the eyes.
I would like to paint the kitchen wall…I thought of using raspberry pink or black. I will upload a picture of it – please give me your suggestion! And please give me your color advice! :-)
(kitchen situation)
(good view on the ugly blue carpet)
(I stole the pictures from the immo website… I know – the current inhabitant made a little mess from some parts of it. I definitely want to have it look different!) Other good things of the new place: I have a bathtube! Yay! And a real kitchen!!! And an own postbox! (Important if you write a lot of letters in the old fashions way) and it’s allowed to have a cat! =) I’m happy!
Estimated move date: October 1. I’m looking forward to it!
