Creepier and crawlier

I feel, after the events of today, that we have been giving our beautiful apartment a hard time. It's really quite lovely. Never more lovely than it was when we returned to it from - I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Well, not quite the beginning, because I suppose that would be the day Ben called me up and said "Hey baby, how would you feel about moving to Belgium?" To which I replied "....Belgium?!" Which funnily enough was the standard response that we receieved from most of the people we told. So, not the beginning, but today when Ben got home from work. Usually he buzzes for me to let him in, but today he just marched straight through the door. I did not have time to remark on this new turn of events as Ben announced,
"Come on! We're moving!"
Caught off guard, I just said
"...What?"
He explained. The company he works for out here actually has two rooms ('apartments') in this block, and the other has just been vacated by the other student that was here. Apparently that's the better apartment, what with its working fridge and shower, opening window and connected phone line, so we went to check it out. We trotted excitedly down the corridor, Ben unlocked the door, and in we went.

One word summed it up, and that word is "Gunnnnnnackkkkkergh", a word which begins with mild distaste and ends in complete disgust and horror.

It was an awful experience. On the bright side we did find out where that one rogue cockaroach had come from.

So; from the top. The room itself was depressingly and half heartedly painted (and didn't have our cool 80s brick 'accent' wall) and had horrible blue lino like the stuff on the floor of a cafeteria instead of our nice cheerful mock wood effect lino (I never thought I'd say that). The furniture was dilapidated and it didn't boast the sofa that pulls out into a double bed that our apartment has, instead favouring the look of an old stained grannyesque chair that looked on its last rotton legs. It did have a small oven - I say 'did', because we've yoinked that. The toilet, whilst being gross, was also missing its seat. Well, not missing, because it was propped up on the wall beside it, but they were not strictly as 'as-one' as one might hope. The shower, to give it its due, worked quite well, but the scores of cockaroaches milling about put me off ever wanting to shower in there, whilst ironically making me desperate to wash. The window did open properly, but you'd need it to in order to get some fresh air in whilst spraying insect repellent. There were three cans of insect repellent just on the worktops, so it's not a new and exciting problem - oh no, they're ESTABLISHED bugs. The fridge worked, but was full of - you've probably guessed it, and if not you haven't been paying attention - dead cockaroaches.

That's the apartment they've been putting all the students in. This apartment, with its sturdy furniture and comfy sofabed and discerning lack of creepies and crawlies is the second choice. That's the room we would have had to had spent the last week and a half in if the girl before us hadn't had too much and gone mad/home months before we got here. No wonder she went!

So everything in our apartment looks much cleaner and shinier and nicer after that - AND, joy of joys, Ben's been given the keys to the bike shed, post box and rubbish cupboard (it turns out they were in his boss's drawer all along. Oh these crazy Belgian people!). So now our bikes are outside and we can access our post and keep the rubbish in an outside cupboard and everything (touchwoodtouchwooktouchwood) is right with the world.