:Burning Burrito

OK so I’ve been proper shit at updating this so far. But I’ve been busy. I’ll try to put a load up in the next few days to catch up from my last post… at least what I can remember anyway. This one is about moving in!

I had been staying in a hotel since I got here because the apartment I wanted wasn’t immediately available. I had put a deposit down and booked the day off work when I would be moving in so I’d have a chance to sort the lease and move all my stuff etc.

The first good news was that I managed to pack all my things and fit my 3 cases and guitar into my car. So I checked out of the hotel and went to the apartment place to sign the lease, pay them and get my keys etc. My first mistake is that I hadn’t signed up for gas and electricity which apparently I was meant to have done beforehand.. so I did this over the phone while they waited. So then I signed all the lease stuff and they were like ok all done just give us the check (cheque) and you can have your keys. What I didn’t realise is that they wouldn’t take one of my ‘personal’ cheques that I got from the US bank I opened an account with.. it needed to be a casheirs check which you could only obtain by giving the amount in cash to your bank.

Seeing as what I had to pay was like 2 months rent I thought hmm how the hell am I gonna get that much cash today. I went to the nearest cashpoint I could find and withdrew the max I could from various cards I have… this only came to about half of what I needed though. I rang the apartment place and they were like theres no way you get the keys without the full amount. So I started to look at my car and work out how far the seat would go back with all the stuff in there and where the safest place might be to park it for the night…

In the end I managed to get hold of someone I work with who also had the day off, and they said they would try and withdraw the cash. Luckily they could and so I could go and get my cashiers cheque and keys to my new place. Unfortunately all this had ended up taking most of the day and my new apartment was completely bare - I had been planning to use the rest of the day to get hold of some furniture.

I was also very tired as I hadn’t slept much the last few nights mainly due to work. But anyway I really wanted to get things sorted so I started making some calls and found a place I could hire a truck.. I could then drive this to IKEA (about 30 miles away) which was open late.. and get some cheap stuff like a bed, desk, chair, sheets etc. I was shitting myself when I got in this truck it was huge like driving a bus or something. You have to do U-turns here quite alot but with this thing you had to do a 5 point turn in the middle of a load of traffic.

Anyway after about 3 hours in IKEA I got most of the stuff I wanted and got it back to my apartment, unloaded it all.. and drove the truck back (which I had to refill with petrol) to get my car. By this time it was about midnight and I was fucking knackered.

The apartment is really cool though - I’ll put pictures up etc. in another post. For now here are some pictures of the hotel room I was staying in for about a month, and also some I took on a later trip to IKEA…