Arrived
We found a place. I'm almost a bit afraid to say too much about it as the (for us) perfect apartment seems to have dropped in our laps, literally and those things don't really happen. Not in realy life at least. On the other hand this seems to just fall in place with the otherwise incredibly serendipitous course of this entire move. More on that some other time, but the distance between how it all could have happened and how it actually did is about a trillion miles long.
We found the apartment on first try. The first Saturday we had assigned to looking at apartments, I had two lined up and saw this one the morning of and quickly added it to the itinerary - by chance ahead of the other two. We spend 45 minutes looking at it. Another 45 minutes talking about it afterwards and then called the owner to say we wanted it. We had not seen anything else at that point. This is crazy behavior, except it would be crazier to not take it simply because one hasn't seen another 200 apartments. It has all the things that were really important to us plus a bunch of bonuses. Here goes in no particular oder:
- 4 bedrooms (FOUR!)
- separate kitchen from the living room (I'm tired of the kitchen/living room combo)
- kitchen fits a small table for every day meals
- new kitchen incl. appliances
- hardwood floors everywhere
- it's an old apartment, newly renovated, we are the first ones to live in it after the complete renovation
- the master bedroom and living room have french glass doors (Ah!)
- neighboorhood has everything in close walking distance
- giant park nearby (Baroque gardens and stuff...)
- elementary school at the end of the street
- church around the corner
- subway station a two-minute walk away
- rent was 3 euro under our limit (a crazy good price for what we get)
The only thing this place lacks is an elevator and we are on the fourth floor. This is a bit strenuous and probably explains the favorable rent, but given the rest we did not care one bit. I might reconsider this once I have to start lugging groceries up there, but I also know that the chance of finding a place like this for the price we did was nearly impossible, so elevator? Bah. The owner does want to put one in, so who knows... Another issue for me is the lack of storage, which is a stark contrast to lots of American apartments were built-in closets are standard, so we will have to invest in a lot of wardrobe type furniture in the future. Still nothing that would have deterred us.
We had considered briefly to try to find a place with a yard, which is very hard to find and usually very expensive. I looked into it, but having a yard which would fit our budget would mean living in the outskirts to the point where we needed a car... which goes directly against our plan of not having a car. This will sound funny to American ears (who lives without a car?), but we figure this is our only chance. We are certainly strongly influenced by the fact that we don't have money to buy one, but it's also something we are both looking forward to. We have driven all the time in the last few years, we were 100% dependent on cars and left so much money at the repair shop and the gas station that not having a car to take care of sounds like a vacation itself. Living in a city also makes parking a huge and costly problem... I was resentful enough to have to buy the car new parts all the time and now to pay for its very own house? No, thanks. We do plan to drive, Vienna offers short-term and long-term rental places for people just like us.
And so we will be city people now it seems. We are moving tomorrow into a big mess, but I can't wait.
Thanks big!
It looks wonderful. Good luck with the move. the bonus of four flights -maybe the kids will burn off some energy on the stairs:)
That's a long haul but the view and amenities definitely look like their worth it :) Good luck!
Very cool.
I am glad you found something that fit all your needs so quickly.
Definitely don't need a car in Vienna. You talking about all this makes me want to move back. In theory anyway. LOL.
So exciting! We can't wait to visit. Have fun getting settled. Hope the first day of school went well.
They've arrived! Looks fantastic, happy you found what you were looking for on the first attempt. One question: where does the flat screen go?