Finding a flat

Finding a flat

This was probably the hardest thing I've done since getting here. Our school kindly gave us a list of about 15 flats, for 22 people. We were given about 5 hours per week and told good luck (more or less).

Gwilym was the obvious candidate to live with, though it transpired that we wanted different things. He wanted to live near the party centre and didn't care much about being near gyms etc and I preferred to be in tranquil/chilled out settings, near amenities. I was hearing stories from the other teachers that they had to put down massive deposits, some had to pay 3 months rent. Me and G were decided that we both wanted flexibility so decided not to take this option.

By the end of the week we were having no luck. It was the first time I had to use any language skills (or lack of). Negotiating in English is hard enough but in Portuguese it was near impossible. It turned out finding a flat for two boys, preferably with native Portuguese people our age was never going to be easy. With my lack of the local lingo it is akin to trying to find rain in Lisbon- possibly but unlikely.

I'd complied a list of the most attractive flats by location, price and general suitability in terms of a balance of both our requirements. At the same time I'd done one for myself, as I wanted to be prepared, just in case something didn't work out. All the flats weren't available. I called a few on my own list and got a viewing for the next day. Doubts started to creep in when I needed to start teaching at my new school on the Wednesday and still didn't have anywhere to live by the Saturday.

A friend had told me to join easyroomate, or the Portuguese equivalent, easyquarto.pt. A Godsend!I got an elegantly typed email from a man called Carlos re- a room in a shared house with students. I arranged the viewing for the same day as the other one.

The next day I was picked up by Carlos, a talkative Portuguese middle aged landlord. He was talking the whole way there about the bus stops, metro and all the things he felt I needed to know (and to be fair, he was right about 99% of it).

When he showed me the place I was amazed. The room was a double, with its own extra room! It had a double bed, Tv with cable and the net already!! I chatted to the housemates, who seemed fine and I was pretty sure that this was the place. On our way out the sun was setting and it felt like one of the property shows on channel 4- the view was/is amazing.

Carlos drove me another 15 mins to my next location. The next place wasn't too bad, but the housemate was never there and I didn't fancy living alone just yet. So I called Carlos to tell him I'd move in on Tuesday!

Voila!

G found a flat on his own, though unfortunately just heard there's no running water,.. updates will follow!