The Eagle Has Landed (in the Apartment)

Again, still so behind on blogging it’s not funny. I’m going to Lille this next weekend for a music festival, so I need to get these done real quick-like. Nonetheless, there’s a fair bit of stuff to report on during the week as well, so I’m planning a sort of lock-down session Thursday night to catch up on all of this (I’m about 3 days behind).

Anyway, here’s the news for Monday: I MOVED INTO MY NEW APARTMENT!

As you might recall from the my panicked posts from the first week of September, I was having a tough time finding an apartment; and when I did finally find an apartment, it was only available from Sep 22 (i.e., today). So I’ve spent the last 3 weeks in a temporary place in the 10th arrondissement. As much as I was really glad to find a place to crash for those intervening weeks, I was getting really sick of living out of suitcases and cooking with a counter-top hotplate. In other words, I was really, really looking forward to today.

I got a fair bit of work done while at the office (most of the images and video from the Techno Parade were prepared and uploaded from work) and then headed straight over to the new apartment. I had been storing one of my pieces of luggage filled with winter clothes at work, so I took that directly over to my apartment and lugged it up the 6 flights of stairs. I was a bit sweaty at the top, but I was actually pretty impressed with myself for not being completely winded. Go sporty spice!

From there, I began making a bunch of trips between my old and new apartments, carrying my life in luggage and hauling up those same 6 flights of stairs, over and over. For the heaviest piece of luggage, I actually walked all the way between the apartments, rather than have to haul it up and down the steps of the subway system. Anyway, the work was tiring and pretty sweaty, but I paused about halfway through one of the trips to get to know one of the local boulangeries and buy a sandwich and a dessert.

When the moving part was over, I went up the street and tried out the kebab at the nearest Turkish food place. It was better than most of the kebabs I’ve had in Paris, but still nothing like the total AWESOME I regularly had in Berlin. *sigh*

Thankfully, the owner of my new place had left the TV/Internet/Phone in his name, which meant all I had to do was turn on the TV, connect my laptop to the internet box, and break open a bottle of wine. After watching BBC and Al Jazeera (in English) ravenously for a few hours, I got around to unpacking. I was convinced that if I didn’t unpack EVERYTHING and get it put away now, I would never get it done. On the upside, I had everything neatly put away before going to bed. On the downside, I didn’t get to bed until 4h00.

So that was Day 1 in the new apartment. I know that I’ve promised pictures to everyone, but I haven’t had a chance to take some pictures while the sun is up and streaming through the windows. I’ll post pictures soon!