You see, it is because it is French.

January 8, 2010

We have been in our lovely little apartment for five days now.  3 bedrooms, two baths with awesome water pressure, a good sized kitchen, dining room and living room...quite comfortable.  In France, when you rent a flat, especially one that is furnished, you must complete an inventory on the day you move in.  One counts everything and notes its condition...every spoon, every nick on a frame and even the number of books on the shelves.  This process took about 3 hours.  What we did not note was all the operations manuels for the washer/dryer...one machine two functions...the dishwasher, oven, etc are written in French.  So just imagine your English owner's manuels and the difficulty of that techo-speak and add a foreign language to it!  Oh yeah and then there is the difference in electrical current, celsius and metric measures and doing laundry becomes a multi-tasking science experiment and translation exercise!  Another thing not checked were the light switches and outlets.  We have this switch by the front door...DO NOT TOUCH IT!!!...it shuts off the electricty in the entire apartment.  Half of the electric outlets are not working so we need to buy multiplugs. Put that on the 'to buy' list. 

Back to inventory...our kind and patient yet somewhat hyper transistion assistant furiously turned on the radiators in each room, listening as the water which had been sitting since May gurgled.  Periodically, she would run around and touch the radiators to see if they were working.  Some yes and some no.  On to the inventory notes are made.  Having never experienced such a process before, I let the pros do their work.  my first lesson learned in Paris, never let the pros just do their work.

So with the inventory complete, we go about cleaning the apartment, which has been empty since May (mostly for painting and a few renovations).  But there is dust everywhere.  And don't you know it, as we clean we find things that were missed by the professionals; a wine stain on the rug, a curtain rod, not properly secured, as the bump on the top of my heads attests, the useless switches and plugs and of course by now 3 cold radiators.  As we clean, and scrub and ponder how to clean a waxed wooden floor without water as per the nice transistion assistant's instructions, the daughter of our landlord calls.  She is just lovely!  So kind and patient and a little hyper and her English is very, very good.  And, lo and behold, she was the former tenant in this flat for 10 years!  Bon,bon, bon!  Surely she can tell us of all the ins and outs of this lovely little flat.  The heater in the bedroom has not worked for 10 years...she never needed it so neither should we.  The gas stove, it has a little igniter button for lighting the gas...not working for a longtime, just use a lighter.  The front door, it sticks.  You must push it hard and listen for the click or you will wake up one night like she did with the door wide open.  She will show us when she comes to visit and she will bring the heating guy to look at the other two radiators.  Whew!

So we met the daughter of our landlord and she brought wine...really, really good wine.  And she brought the heating guy who is trying to learn English so we agree to a language exchange program in the near future; coffee and conversation once this brutally cold spell gripping Paris breaks.  He fixes one radiator in the front hall, actually bangs the radiator in the bedroom with a hammer and it clicks on! and looks at the third and declares that when the painters took the radiator off to paint behind it, they did not put it back on correctly. To fix it, he would have to...wait for it...shut the heat off in the ENTIRE building...not just the flat...the whole building to fix it.  We agree that he should come back in May.  But we'll have coffee together before then.

I don't think I can tell you about the cable...it hurts my head too much.


So here we are, minutes from the Sorbonne, Notre Dame, St. Germaine Du Pres.  We've broken bread at the table and had some good cheap wine with our dinner.  We are tired but we are home.