Right, so things had already been
screwed up with the strikes in the last exciting episode, so
Wednesday morning dawned with lots still on the to-do checklist. The
general plan was to go pick up the moving van, already reserved and
paid for online, that evening with my lovely friend Caro, and then
complete the move on Thursday morning, leaving Thursday evening for
the cross-country drive.
So Wednesday was to be devoted to some
administrative stuff and packing, none of which had been done of
course due to my being away for the previous 12 days. Back on the
31st, when I was on my way to the airport to England, I
had got a letter from my rental agency acknowledging the notice
period and telling me that I had to inform them of my leaving date
for the inspection at least 10 days in advance. I was literally on my
way out the door at this stage, so knowing my phone didn't work in
England, I planned just to send them an email to make the
appointment. Full disclosure, my route to the airport took me past
their office and so I could have called in and made the appointment
on the way, but I had already been browbeaten into letting them have
my keys to do visits on the Friday before, and there was noooooo way
I was going to let them persuade/cajole/threaten (technically the
lease says you have to let them in for at least 2 hours each day) me
in to leaving the keys with them for the whole 11 days I was going
away. My holiday with my parents was already planned long before I got the new job (which would have started from the 1st of September if I'd been available) and had to plan out my move, resulting in some chaotic, stressful timing finding the new apartment and getting everything together. So I wanted to use my holiday as just that - 11 days where I could just chill out and relax and leave the stress behind in France.
So I'd duly sent them the email from
the UK as soon as I arrived (and I had actually already told one of the staff members I
was leaving on the 12th), but got no response. So I called
in to the office to explain this, and you should have seen the guy
flip from all smiles to absolute rudeness the minute he understood
that I was leaving the apartment the very next day. He totally
refused to listen to me, patronisingly explained to me that email was
« not a guarantee » because had I heard of spam filters? (seriously,
what is this, 1997?) and said that I didn't give a f--- (vous vous
en foutez) about
anyone but myself, which is seriously unfair. I'll hold my hands up and say that it would
have been better if I had locked down the appointment 100% before
leaving the country (but that probably would have resulted in them
blowing up at me for going away for almost two weeks without giving
them access to the apartment anyway), and I could have tried again to
email them (not phone them though, since again, phoney no workey), but
the guy was just unbelievably unpleasant, screaming at me and
refusing to listen to the fact that I had told one of his colleagues
informally and that it wasn't my fault if their goddamn email system
doesn't work properly. I mean, when's the last time anyone's ever
seriously said to you that they sent you something you didn't get, or
vice versa ? It's 2013, normal people do business on the
internet. I'll give him the right to be quietly pissed off, but he should
have been a professional about it. I'll guarantee you that he
wouldn't have spoken to me like that if he'd been trying to get my
business. At the end of the day, it meant I was leaving the apartment about 2 weeks early (since I could only send my notice in once my new job had been confirmed), leaving them time to do any necessary renovations and show the place to new tenants in one of the busiest apartment-hunting times of year to their heart's content, while I continue to pay the rent.
So by the time I took care of that,
changed my details with my bank, arranged for my electricity and
internet to be cut off, took out an insurance policy on the new flat,
bought a new sim card since I would need one that would actually work
in foreign countries, arranged for my mail to be rerouted and went to
the town hall to pick up parking authorisations for the van (turns
out it's BYO traffic cone, that I did not know), it was early afternoon. So I
packed up as much as I could until Caro turned up and we drove into
the burbs to pick up the van at Leclerc.
And here's where more troubles began...
We were nice and early for our pick-up time, but had to wait for an
age since there was only one woman staffing the desk and taking
people out to inspect the vehicles etc. When it was her turn, she
confessed that she hadn't been doing the job that long, so she'd go
through the checklist for internet reservations to make sure
everything was in order. And then shortly thereafter, she flipped her
lid because Caro didn't have a French ID. We pointed out this was a
normal turn of affairs when you're not French, and here was her
passport, UK driver's licence and French proof of address. All of
which, by the way, had already been scanned and sent in online at
least 2 weeks before. The woman just kept repeating "you're
not French, I can't rent to you, I can't take the risk, it won't go
in the computer, I don't understand your licence, etc. etc." We tried everything to persuade her, pulling every card out of Caro's
wallet – health insurance, French driver's insurance, student card,
etc. etc. - to try and prove that she resided here and drove here all
the time. Why that was even necessary, I don't know – after all,
foreigners have got to make up a pretty big slice of the
rental pie, even if not necessarily van hire at Leclerc specifically.
It was after 5 pm and the woman, to her credit, was valiantly ringing
around seemingly everyone in the entire world trying to get an answer
from non-existent higher-ups as to whether she could let us take the
van. My heart was seriously sinking into my boots as we heard
snippets of conversation such as "that's what I said, we
couldn't risk it...", and I really thought she wasn't going to
let us have it, and then I have no idea what I would have done.
At long last, she evidently managed to
get through to some blessed saviour, who okayed the hiring of the
van, so with typical French officiousness, she then took photocopies
of everything, retyped in all the information that I'd already
entered into the website while making the reservation, and somehow
blocked (for a month!) 800€ on my bank card as a security deposit.
(She almost gave Caro a heart attack by initially insisting that it
had to come out of the driver's bank account, until I pointed out
that I had paid for the rental fee with my card, so why not?) All
this took at least an hour, so by the time we were finally, happily,
on the road with the van, we were even further behind schedule.
Caro had a conference presentation the
next day so she had to leave, but once Liz had run her back to Leclerc pick up her car, she (Liz) stayed to help me pack, so we got a good deal in boxes that evening
before it was time for bed. We hadn't managed to park the van nearby
(I had blocked off a space but someone just moved the rubbish bins in
our absence despite my parking permit, thanks), so I set up the parking authorisations on the
footpath and just hoped for an opening the next day.
I was up at around 6 on Thursday
morning, stressing out about everything that had to be done before
the 1 pm inspection (and I had been shouted at that it would be 1 pm
PRECISELY and I had to be ready with all my stuff out at that time). At 9, half an hour earlier than I
had thought, the doorbell rang and the guy I'd hired to help off
leboncoin turned up. He must have been at least 50, and I had
stressed repeatedly, by phone and by email, that I had heavy things
to move down several flights of narrow, awkward stairs, was he
absolutely sure that he could do it ? He was absolutely sure,
but it turned out that a key part of his master plan involved making
me help him. And here I thought hiring someone meant that I *wouldn't* have to do the worst of it myself, silly me. So I got on the phone to Liz, who had promised to be
there before 9.30, but who is always late, and once she got there,
the three of us tackled the giant, taller-than-me fridge.
It was actually surprisingly not too
bad to get down the stairs, despite a few awkward bits. The worst
part was probably that the guy, who was going down first, with Liz
and I taking up the rear, absolutely did not understand/listen at any
point when we told him to stop. Every time it was like "hold
on, hold on, stop, stop, STOP !!!" before he would
respond in any way by stopping pulling the item further down the
stairs. I'm not sure what the problem there was, since he would
almost certainly have the worst of it if we had dropped a giant
fridge or insanely heavy washing machine on him.
Talking of the washing machine, the
handle on the pipe was broken and so we had to dispatch Liz off to
her place to pick up pliers and drop Bob out of the way while she was
at it. She took a loooong time about it, first because apparently Bob
escaped in her apartment, and then she dropped off the pliers on my
doorstep and it took her ages to find a park. Joy of joys, this gave
the dude and I the chance to take down the oven and then the washing
machine all by ourselves. If you've ever moved a washing machine, you
can maybe sympathise on how awful this was. I think I seriously just
about died. It was SO heavy. The dude had not a drop of sweat on him
and I was about as cool, calm and collected as someone having a
massive embolism. Liz conveniently turned up just after we finished
with it (I am honestly very grateful for her help, don't get me
wrong) and said that I was bright red and looked like I was just
about to explode. And she's seen me do a Step class. Added to this the
fact that the dude had judged it to be unnecessary to tape up the
cords on the back of the washing machine (my side) so I was
constantly in danger of tripping up on them going down the stairs.
And of course he didn't listen any time I told him to stop because of
this, despite the fact that I am quite sure I would have killed him
if I'd tripped up and fallen down the stairs with the world's
heaviest washing machine on him.
That was the worst of it, but it was
still a hugely tiring job getting the rest of the furniture and boxes
down three flights (really, 6 half flights plus two short flights of
steps by the front door, then across the road – we never did manage
to find a parking place for the van, so it was up on the footpath on
the wrong side of the road), and I was just wiped out by the end of
it. To the dude's credit, I had told him 1 hour just to help me with
the whiteware, and he stayed for three and never got stressed out or
annoyed about anything (I mean, I paid him for three hours, but
still, I could see some people getting less than cheerful in that
situation. On the other hand, it would have been mighty nice if he's
come with a trolley or some ropes or anything that one might
reasonably expect a semi-professional to have to make the move
easier). Still, no way that fridge and washing machine were coming out of the apartment with just Liz and me!
By the time the move was over, we had
about 45 minutes to try and speed-clean the apartment, which frankly,
was not looking great. Caro turned up from her conference at about T
minus 30 minutes, so we each took a room and tried to do our best to
power clean at least the most grimey spots where 2 years' worth of
dust and dirt had settled (under the fridge, for example). I hereby
apologise to the next tenant who has to clean my hair out of the
shower drain, but I had to do the same when I moved in. Such is the
circle of life.
We were still frantically trying to put
a few finishing touches on when the agent arrived. He tutted a bit to
find the landing full of all the last little bits and pieces
(cleaning equipment, for one), reminding me that he had given a
strict 1 pm deadline, but overall, this time at least he kept his
cool, and was even semi-pleasant. Whether he felt bad about how he'd
acted the day before, I don't know. He was meticulous in noting down
the damages, essentially places where Bob had scratched the walls,
which I'd had no time to cover up and couldn't really deny. Plus the bit where Liz had tried and failed to paint over some mould (when she told me she'd given up because the paint didn't match, I'd pictured a tiny discreet test patch, when in fact she'd gone with a huge stripe before abandoning it, cheers love). So we'll
be waiting and seeing how much of the bond I get back (they get 60
days to make up their minds on that one, I'm not holding my breath).
After a quick shower and a bite to eat
at Caro's, it was time to hit the road for the 7ish-hour trip to
Metz, which was really not bad at all. It was so sweet of her to
drive me there (no way am I capable of commanding a giant van for 600
kms of French roads), help me unpack everything in to the new
apartment, and of course, drive back all by herself. Liz was an
enormous help as well, very lucky to have such lovely friends,
although as I sit here by myself on my first weekend alone in Metz,
where I have NO friends, I miss them very much ! :(
