By wink of water

Yesterday was a very exciting day. After working till Sierra’s bedtime on the UIST paper, I awoke at 7 am – not exactly bright-eyed and busy tailed, but wide awake. I was (am) very tired, but my brain wouldn’t let me sleep. Kinda like when you have too much coffee late at night. So of course I went right back to work and managed to get a close-to-final draft of the paper done. Where “right back to work” means I worked on my laptop, in my pajamas, not bothering to turn the bed back into a sofa. Made some eggs on my horrible horrible burners. Left the apartment in shambles when I went to French class at 1:30.

French class was good. I should maybe jump a level, but I like my teacher a lot and I’m missing a week in Italy. I think it’s okay; good practice. But what’s even better practice is trying to speak French over the phone in order to obtain an apartment. For instance, today I had an appointment and I was very proud of myself for managing to make this appointment. Unfortunately, in relating it to a labmate, I said the time and he said “douze heure or deux heure?” And I just laughed. Because I had no idea. Later, someone called for me and we established that it was at 2, by saying “quatorze”. Saw the place today, on rue Cardinal Lemoine, which avid readers will remember is where Hemingway had his first apartment. This was within a stone’s throw, totally cute building, totally tiny and dark apartment – so, not taking that one.

But back to the larger story. I had an apartment rendez-vous at 7:45 pm, this one very close to work, 3 blocks away. Gathering my things to leave, I double check to make sure I have my keys. I do not. They are not in their usual pocket. They are not on my (already really messy) desk. They are not in some other obscure pocket of my bag, nor in my coat, nor in my jeans, nor in the bathroom, nor in a random drawer. My keys are gone. I indulge in a bit of cursing, grab my dossier (because I’m now going to be late) and run out the door.

I’m in a terrible mood, trying to figure out where on earth I’m going to sleep tonight, praying that I left the keys at French class. I have the door code so I get into the building, but the ad said it was on the 6th without a lift, and there’s a lift right in front of me. I take it, but it only goes to the 5th floor, and there’s nowhere further to go, and only one door (it seems there’s only one door per floor). So I get back in the elevator and go down, thinking there must be some staircase I’ve missed. I notice a door to the outside and peek out of it, but it seems to lead to an alley. I hear a guy come down the stairs and wait, hoping it’s my landlord. Which it is, it seems, and he directs me to what I thought was an alley but is just a passageway to the back of the building, where there’s a staircase. He tells me to go the sixth floor (ok I assume this is what he told me, I don’t ACTUALLY know what he said, but the information was conveyed) and he leaves. I trudge up seven flights of stairs because in France, they are good computer scientists and start counting at 0. But the building is promising, nice and old, in a great neighborhood, steps from the rue Mouffetard.

I make it to the top of the stairs and wait – there’s no open door or anything, and I’m starting to doubt that guy actually WAS the landlord. Maybe he was just telling me that the studette is on the 6th floor but I’m supposed to knock on doors.

I am not at all interested in knocking on doors.

I am about to descend back down the stairs when I hear a door open. The same guy comes up the stairs, but from the fifth floor. We go to an apartment at the end of the hall, still occupied.

It’s gorgeous. Small of course, but at 14 sqm it’s 40% larger than what I currently have. There’s a full bathroom and the kitchenette is far nicer, with a real stove top and a nice stainless steel sink. And it has high ceilings and a big window overlooking the courtyard (no vis-a-vis, like I have now, not that I’ve ever minded that sort of thing). It does not come furnished, he explains, and I nod agreement, and we establish that we will go somewhere else to work out some details.

Where we end up going is his apartment, which is on the fifth floor. Mystery solved. And it’s BEAUTIFUL. It takes up the entire floor, with a large living room, dining room (where his family is having dinner), and bedrooms in the back. This is the equivalent of 5 or 6 apartments above, maybe more. Lovely high ceilings, old windows, gorgeous moldings. To be rich and lucky! I can’t imagine it was an easy find.

So we sit down to talk details and he comes out with this perfect English. This is sort of baffling. He doesn’t think he speaks very well, either, but he does, and it’s much, much better than my French. The apartment is very popular but he wants to rent it to me because I’m American. He wants me to talk to his children in English. Which I agree to do. I’m not exactly sure what this will entail, but I guess we’ll see! His daughters are young (maybe 7 and 4?) and very very cute.

Upon leaving the place, I’m in a much better mood, because I appear to have found a great place to live. There is still the problem of the keys, though. On my way back to the lab, I run into Jan, a Dutch postdoc, who I talk to for 15 minutes or so; he offers up his place if I still can’t find the keys. Long story short, I can’t, so I walk about 30 minutes down to rue Tolbiac and Jan’s shared apartment. And his place is also quite nice – large, as big or bigger than my Seattle apartment, and shared with 2 others. There are 3 bedrooms, a shower room with washer, a toilet room, a large kitchen (by French standards, roughly the size of mine in DC), and a living room. The period details are nice too, and their living room looks out on Église Sainte-Anne de la Butte-aux-Cailles. Speaking of Butte-aux-Cailles, we had dinner there, and it was great – a neat little neighborhood, lively, sans tourists, good food, good bars. It would be cool to have Jan’s situation, a nice big place with French roommates, but it seems difficult for me to achieve, as I don’t speak French very well and I have two cats. Ah well.

I woke up early as usual and walked to Alliance Française. I conducted all my inquiries in French and discovered, to my great pleasure, that the security guard had found my keys! No need to bother the concierge, or the agency, or poor Nathalie (the secretary) with the loss of the keys and all the mess it would entail. I went home and the cats even still had some food left. I was so grateful to be there, I took an hour to make it clean and livable again.

On tap for the weekend – some clothes shopping at H&M (elementary school girls dress better than I do), some ultimate watching at French nationals, grocery shopping, getting a SIM card, sleeping, maybe checking out a church. Writing. Taking a Velib around town. It will all happen, I swear.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2009 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.