Moved

So, we moved house yesterday, and about an hour ago I managed to extract the configuration information for ADSL from Telefonickers. The previous tenant had very kindly put the phone and ADSL into my name, but couldn't give me the required info, because Telefonickers never actually tell punters that. It's hard-wired into the routers they supply, but I prefer to use my own device. It's prettier, and doesn't have a phone-company logo on it. I'm a bit narked with JazzTel, though. They persuaded me to switch to them as my ISP about six months ago. I had no complaints. The service was what it said on the box and it was signicantly cheaper than Telefonickers. But it turns out they don't cover my new bit of Madrid, so I'm back where I started. Ho hum. It's funny how helpless I feel when I cannot get on line. It was only about 30 hours, and I had a quick fix in the Internet café up the road yesterday evening, but I felt completely lost.

Anyway: packing, moving and unpacking was the usual exhausting nightmare. We'd hired three men with a van, but it soon became apparent that they would have to make two trips. The boss man wanted twice as much money as originally quoted, but I manged to beat him down a bit.

We still have far too much stuff than you can sensibly fit into a modest-sized Madrid apartment, but we do have a trastero (storage room) in the basement. We have, of course, filled it already.

House Hunting

We finally got fed up of living in the smallest flat in Madrid, and gave the landlord one month's notice at the start of this month. Have we found a new place? Not yet.

Today is a public holiday (St Joseph's Day, methinks), and our agent had made us an appointment to view a brand-new flat in the north of the city. It's quite a bit bigger than what we have now (although not enormous, by any means). The kitchen area is much bigger, and that's important to me. Best of all, there's a dining area where we can do a bit of entertaining, and a separate bedroom so we can have guests staying with us. There is a roof terrace, which is shared by the other six flats: for drying washing, maybe housing our bigger plants, possibly a bit of sunbathing. And there's a big storage room (trastero) in the basement where we can keep the stuff that won't fit into the flat. There's a small park nearby, a view of the northern mountains, and it's a 10-minute Metro ride to the centre.

The landlady and her daughter were very keen on us (because of our obvious maturity, etc), and even reduced the amount of deposit required. We'll be looking at a couple more places over the weekend, and expect to make a decision on Monday.

And back to Chueca. Our building has become a bit of an eyesore. We lost our Portero (watchman) just after Christmas, and the mail doesn't get sorted into our pigeon-holes , we have to take out our own rubbish (some of the occupants don't seem to have realised this yet), the hallways don't get cleaned, the lift breaks down frequently and nobody knows who to call to get it fixed, and there is unsightly graffiti on the street door. Plus the rent has gone up. We feel the landlord is ripping us off. And now that the weather is good again, the buskers have returned to the square - a never-ending stream of accordianistas and trumpeteros who play the same five tunes. Over and over. Badly.

Looking forward to moving!

UPDATE

We didn't get the one I described above, but we have got the one next door - it's a bit bigger - for the same price. WooHoo! Moving on Monday. Relief.