Moving House

Pic reference: http://www.instantdisplay.co.uk/KS2_Other.htm

I have been in a bad shape for the last 2 weeks, because of “apartment problems” and have had to solve the problems in a very short time span. But I decided not to blog about it so as not to jinx the solution.

So heres the story, I can narrate it now that it has a happy ending :). The lease of my current apartment, where I have been staying for the past approx two years was supposed to expire at the end of July. My landlady, who had been living in Italy, had decided to return to Sweden, so she would not be able to extend the lease. I had seen a few apartments and had liked one in Skänstull. Everything seemed to be going fine till one day early morning a few men, dressed in repair overalls rang the doorbell. There had been a major leakage downstairs in the Storage room and the Söprum (Garbage disposal room) and they will have to rip out the kitchen walls and floor. No, they cannot wait for even one day, it is urgent. So out came all the furniture and appliances of our nice modular kitchen. And guess where everything was shifted to? The Living room/Parlor of course! So we had our beautiful kitchen walls and floor ripped out, and our living room had a non functional fridge, a big OTG oven, a dishwasher, a microwave and loads of utensils.

The kitchen BEFORE disaster struck


The kitchen AFTER disaster struck

Overnight life became a nightmare. Nothing could be cooked and it became tough to eat out two times a day (thankfully my friends were sooo nice, there were free flowing dinner and lunch invitations :). Even morning coffee, made with hot water from the microwave became messy because the only place to wash the cups was the basin. The workmen in the kitchen would drill the floor and the noise and the dust was sickening. The fuse would trip every few hours because of the machinery being used. And to top it all, the guy who was supposed to rent out the Skänstull apartment changed his mind because his shift out date got changed. And so if I did not want to live in the hell hole I had to start searching an apartment and fast.

So I saw a number of apartments. And I realized how difficult it is to find the right apartment. As Iya was telling me the other day, for a crab, the home and everything related to it, the house, the location, the size, the partner/bf/gf, is very important. I guess it holds true for me as well. So either the apartment was not located in a good place, (like the amazing lavishly furnished, ground floor 90 square meters apartment in Akalla). Or it was in the most sought after locality in Sweden, but was not a good apartment. (like the 46 square meter apartment in Gamla Stan, small, creaky, falling apart, but a kilometer away from the palace of the King of Sweden, in the old town of central Stockholm).

And the day our fuse refused to take the load of even a bulb, the basin started getting clogged and the heavy noisy machinery started being deployed in our kitchen, we finally saw the perfect apartment. Located in Gullmarsvägen, it was close to the metro station (a very important factor in winter, because you don’t want to walk a lot when its minus 15 degrees with inches of snow on the pavement). Beautiful locality, roads lined with trees, lawns around the buildings and spacious sidewalks and parks everywhere. Amazingly large apartment, very well furnished, a big living hall to have nice parties in and a big kitchen. I love cooking, and it is very important for me to have a nice kitchen more important than any other room in fact (now you will not hear a lot of guys say this!). This one had a spacious kitchen with a nice window facing the trees and great kitchen appliances. Ok, I wont go into the details, but in short, I love the apartment. It is as good as it gets. My office is a bit far off, but I have no regrets about travelling the extra distance (12 minutes extra on the metro) because the apartment is so awesome :). And now I should really stop raving about the apartment. The move, with all its intricacies and hurdles has been completed with everything intact. Alls well that ends well :).

For those who have are on my Orkut/Facebook friends list, I uploaded my apartment pics there, for the rest, heres a nice view just in front of my apartment :).