This last week was a frustrating one for us. On Monday and Tuesday, we spent some time lounging around the house (since Monday was yet another all-German-stores-aren't-open day) We caught up on more Grey's Anatomy, House, and Desperate Housewives and on Wednesday morning, I was going to catch up on some of my Facebook messages when a big, blaring phrase "account blocked" popped up in my browser. The page was in full German and I was given four different numbers to call: 2 for Arcor(?) and the other two for Vodafone. I tried to fiddle around with it a bit but I couldn't get past the page, much less translate what the said page was telling me. So we opted to take our laptops to World Coffee and hope that our internet would be back on at home. World Coffee likes to masquerade under the false identity of "Free Wi-fi Zone" and so much to our frustration, you must pay to use their internet. 1 euro per hour doesn't seem like much but I refuse to encourage this day light robbery. I tried to hack into other W-Lans but I was unsuccessful. Steph went and paid the euro. Once home, we hoped that all would be restored but we were very, very wrong. This continued for the next four days. We went to tell our landlord and each time, he said it would be fixed. If we went up again to tell him it wasn't working, the door mysteriously wouldn't open. I had an apartment viewing early Saturday morning and so I was most frustrated with the internet problem. On Thursday, Steph came home with some interesting news. Her "nanny-family" asked her how she thought the job was going. Steph said she liked it a lot but she didn't want to move in (a tiny issue) and her "nanny-parents" had already decided that they didn't really need to have an Au Pair after all. They really liked her and the girls liked her and so they want to keep her on as a babysitter three times a week. They are paying her a little bit more (around the same as a high paying Canadian babyitting job). Steph's "nanny-father" suggested we do some tutoring and gave us an ad in the Neuss paper for people who are looking specifically for English tutors. He even offered to put the ad in the paper himself. He is all for helping us which is super fantastic. We, of course, will do it ourselves but use him when necessary. On Saturday morning, we tried to find a coffee shop that would be open because Germans like to sleep in on Saturday mornings. Steph had the idea that Starbucks would be open in the morning so after a mini argument on the street, we headed to Altstadt Starbucks and, thankfully, it was open. I quickly wrote down the instructions and we headed out to Pempelfort which is only 5 minutes out of Düsseldorf's Downtown. The apartment was very nice but very small. The lady wanted us to pay the damage deposit and the four months rent all up front before she went to work in France. We were not down for that. Luckily, I received an email from her stating that she gave the apartment to some one who could speak German. After the apartment, Steph went to work and I went to home to clean. By Sunday, the internet was still not working and that was very frustrating. We spent most of the day out and about, wandering around all the closed stores in Alt Stadt. Then on Monday, when we arrived home, our internet was back on and it was glorious. We also discovered a bit of an apartment scam. We have discovered an number of ways to tell if the apartment ad is a scam:
Clue #1 - The English is really bad
Clue #2 - The person gives way too much information without you asking for it
Clue #3 - They are mysteriously out of town for some business trip for an extended period of time which is nearly always a bit longer than what you wanted to stay for.
Clue #4 - If they mention any postal service...don't even bother finishing the rest of the email.
Clue #5 - If the place seems to good to be true, it is.
Our particular "future landlord" claims to be a civil engineer who is currently in Cyprus who wants us to check out Moneybookers who will take care of the whole transaction. He also gave us the full address and Steph and I went to take a look to see if he really lives there...and surprise surprise, his name wasn't on there. Man, I hate those apartment scammers. They always dash my dreams...
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