Finding A Place To Live

Finding an apartment in Vienna went much easier than expected. It was almost too easy. Bjarni had been on an email list for a while where staff and students from GMI (his new research institute) are posting adds with apartments for rent. We had been looking into one specific add before leaving Denmark, and we ended up making an appointment to see the place the same day we were to arrive in Vienna. I was a bit skeptical to begin with, wanting to see other places before making a decision. I mean, how can one rent a place without having seen anything else to compare it with? We had no clue about the standard of apartments in Vienna. On the way down through Germany Bjarni eagerly argued that by taking this apartment we would save money for an agent, which is otherwise the norm in Austria: You pay an agent one to three months worth of rent in order for him to find you a rental apartment. This apartment was privately owned by some staff at the institute, and thus we would save the agent fee.
Anyhow, we arrived in the city Friday late afternoon and went straight to the apartment, and it looked SO GOOD! Hardwood floors (which I was missing badly in the US), high ceiling, new kitchen with dish washer and washing machine (horraayy!), new bathroom, and a big park around the block. And all this came for a price that was much lower than what we were used to from LA.
The apartment was ready to move into, which was another tempting factor. That meant we could move our belongings straight from the trailer and settle in, instead of moving it to the storage room, which was the original plan.
We thought about it overnight and it wasn’t all that easy even though we really liked the place. My dad would go back the following morning, so we only had Saturday to figure out if we should take our stuff to that apartment or the storage place. After a lot of discussing back and forth we ended up taking it. Yayy!
Now we have unpacked everything and are eagerly waiting for our last boxes from Los Angeles to arrive. The only bad thing about our new place, something which we discovered after moving in, is that it’s quite noisy. We live on the first floor, and apparently there are a lot more traffic during the day than when we saw the place that late Friday afternoon. Other than we are very excited about our new home.

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